“In
a post-Cold War era of ‘openly available’
information what you need are observers with the language ability, with
understanding of the religions, cultures of the countries they are observing.
Inman thought we needed fewer spies and more ‘slightly batty’ geniuses”
–
From “What the dog saw”
As we observe organizations
from the perspective of Knowledge Management maturity, the ones lower down the
scale are still struggling with the problem of making information available,
while the ones that have gone past that stage have a different kind of problem
– one of information overload. These
organizations that have implemented core solutions and sophisticated business
intelligence applications have a new problem to deal with – how to make sense
of all the information that is being pushed out to them. One the one hand you don’t want to set off
alarm bells at every trough or dip in a trend graph because of an
over-sensitive intelligence system; at the same time you don’t want to be
caught napping because you have made your trigger-points less sensitive. Many a time we are able to connect the dots
only post-mortem; perhaps a lesson learned a little too late. And with Big Data and the rest of the talk
about integrating noise from twitter, linked in and what-have-you…this problem
is only going to get bigger.
Knowledge Management is full
of such ambiguities. How do you trust
decision making tools that are based on probabilistic inferences based on
incomplete and fragmentary information? Or would you rather wait for
evidence-supported narratives that perhaps reduce your ability to prepare a
response in time to avoid a disaster? Is
it possible for organizations to create a system that will allow fragments of
information to be deciphered – to see a pattern even as it starts emerging, and
then prepare an appropriate response? Can organizations become adaptable enough
to be able to create an ecosystem that will allow such information to flow so
that such analysis is possible? Is the knowledge manager supposed to be this
“slightly batty” genius who can enable this?
The year 2009 was when we
first heard about Cognizant becoming a
serious threat to the Big Three. A Forbes
article of 2010 explains the rise and rise of Cognizant to a position where it
has even overtaken Infosys. While there
is quite a detailed note on the strategy adopted by Cognizant to become a
dominant player, what has probably been left unsaid is the preparatory work it
has done to metamorphose into a serious challenger. The integration of so many acquisitions, the
transformation of its culture, and the transition from a process-driven
organization to a knowledge driven one has surely played a significant part.
The subsequent
years of continuing dynamic growth seem to suggest that the decision to use
Knowledge as a primary driver of growth was indeed one of the key factors
responsible for such a quantum jump in Cognizant’s fortunes. In 2007, together with the young and dynamic
CEO, the Chief Knowledge Officer - the “slightly batty” genius, R Sukumar
charted a course for Cognizant 2.0 – their integrated and pervasive,
collaborative knowledge management system.
I have been following his impassioned speeches on Knowledge
Management, and what little is available in the public domain s probably
sufficient to provide evidence that they have a very vibrant and impactful KM
system in the organization.
Sukumar is one who I would
like to call a truly “batty genius”; the idea of bringing on someone like him
to a role that is generally considered a “put-to-pasture” function was
path-breaking and indicative of the importance accorded to the knowledge
management initiative. Although many
companies already had some form of knowledge management going on, most of them
were under the garb of quality initiatives; Cognizant took it a step further by
making it a prime driver of strategy.
And being someone who had been in the system for quite some time, he was
the kind of person who understood the culture of the company and could speak
the language. He had worked in the
frontline and knew the pains and pressures; it is this kind of a person who is
best suited to don the mantle of a Knowledge Manager. I wonder if Sukumar can give an inside
perspective that goes just beyond the tools and technology aspect of Cognizant
2.0, and provide an insight into the role the KM team performed.
In a sense, the role of a
Knowledge Manager in an organization is quite similar to what countries do in
war time (or even peace now) – to follow closely events occurring in countries
that can be potentially detrimental to their domestic and international
interests. Where there is a veil of
secrecy surrounding such operations, a corporate entity requires a lot more
openness. The information that is
“openly available” needs to be transformed to insights; this transforms the
function to into one of collaboration – one in which the knowledge manager
enables the organization consume the extant content, while facilitating active
conversations that will throw up interesting insights. And like top secret government organizations,
the process of integrating the insight into the strategy becomes a centralized
role. However, the information, the
analysis and the insights themselves are crowd-sourced, in other words,
obtained locally from the people who are best informed. The knowledge manager has a team of knowledge
stewards who constantly scan the “chatter” while enabling subject matter
experts ensure that the entire organization receives value from the content
that is available in the knowledge repository.
Their role becomes one of interpretation and analysis of these
conversations, engaging with the organization in enabling these conversations
take on new meaning, influencing conversations that drive the organization
towards their knowledge-driven strategy to the end objective of achieving
sustainable competitive advantage.
Does your organization have a
Knowledge Manager? What kind of
structure do you think best suits an organization – one in which information
analysis is centralized and becomes the function of a specialized team? Or one
in which there are silos of information analysis, but a centralized function
that is responsible for transforming insight into learning and then to
knowledge?
#disclaimer: I have no
personal or professional interest in Cognizant, nor do I hold any shares in
this company. My fascination for this company
primarily stems from their involvement as one of the key participants of the KCommunity in
Chennai.
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