Book description
To manage business operations - let alone innovate - amid frequent
restructurings, outsourcings and retirements, leaders must
quickly
capitalize on hidden know-how (knowledge). That is, know-how that lives
inside their organizations or networks - in the teams, processes and
experts that comprise them.
Yet, many organizations are coming up
short in this race. Knowledge sharing and transfer have been reduced
to reports, e-mails and tweets replacing vital personal interaction.
The lack of meaningful conversation coupled with intense fragmentation
across organizations and networks has left leaders floating in a sea
of information and ideas without a map to channel insight into action.
Sharing Hidden Know-How starts the conversation that allows
organizations to take what they know to the bank. The
“how-to”/“how-act” guidebook unveils Knowledge Jam, a facilitated
collaborative method for helping organizations rediscover the
fundamental discipline of knowledge transfer - the conversation.
Developed by Katrina Pugh, president of AlignConsulting, the proven
process uses human interaction to capture unwritten insights, and more
importantly to put them to work. Offering a step-by-step process and
practical tools, Sharing Hidden Know-How will help any
organization harness untapped knowledge to solve today's thorny problems:
- Accelerating New Product Development and Market and Segment Innovations
- Maximizing Combined Knowledge in Mergers Integrations,
Restructurings, Off-shoring and Outsourcing
- Overcoming Information Overload (Focus on Social Media)
- Smoothing Executive Transitions and Succession Planning
- Smoothing Team Transitions
- Spreading Insight across Geographies and Network Partners
- Tapping into Sales Insights
The next generation of leadership effectiveness is about conversation
and reflective facilitation, not just texts and tweets. Sharing
Hidden Know-How makes the case for intentional,
conversation-based leadership, and provides the practice model to pull
it off. Viewed from above, this important book is itself a
conversation between Kate Pugh's basic propositions and those of a
diverse group of other thinkers, all woven into a unified whole.
Viewed on the ground, it is an intellectual joyride, coherent,
insightful, promisingly pragmatic, and with just the right measure of
the personal to fully reveal a fruitful mind in motion.
-
David Kantor, director, Kantor Institute; author, Reading
the Room (Jossey-Bass, 2012)
“[This] book addresses one of the time-honored problems in
organizations: 'How do you get people with experience, solutions and
knowledge to share them effectively with those who need those valuable
assets?' Technology, we now know, is not the answer-human discussion
is. [Pugh] tells you how to structure and facilitate these important
conversations.”
-Thomas H. Davenport, President's
distinguished professor of IT and Management, Babson College; author
of Analytics at Work and Thinking for a Living.
“In this innovative and useful book Kate Pugh shows how you can be a
far better knowledge practitioner just by releasing the power of
talking in your organization. A fine example of the new generation of
knowledge books.”
-Larry Prusak, author, Working
Knowledge; visiting scholar, Marshall School of Business,
University of Southern California; and senior knowledge advisor to
World Bank and NASA
“[This book] meets an urgent need within leadership practices: an
effective conversational process for capturing and transferring deep
smarts.”
-Stephen Denning, author, The Leader's Guide
to Radical Management and The Secret Language of Leadership
“Leaders have long known that the 'know-how' of experienced teams is
key to their organizations' ability to achieve strategic goals. The
challenge has always been to distill this wisdom and deploy it in a
way that maximizes and accelerates its impact on organizational
effectiveness. [This book] provides a practical approach to addressing
this challenge, and, in so doing, improves
competitiveness.”
-Paul Lucidi, chief information
officer, Insulet Corporation
“A fantastic replacement for the long dormant and never used
lessons-learned repository! This book provides well documented and
effective tools for really learning from your organization. As our
business continues to go through transformational change, I hope to
make good use of the Knowledge Jam to make that transformation
efficient.”
-Sheryl Skifstad, senior director, Supply
Chain IT at a Fortune 100 company
Katrina Pugh is president of AlignConsulting, a
firm that specializes in helping organizations channel insight into
action. Kate held leadership positions with PwC Consulting/IBM,
JPMorgan, Intel Corporation and Fidelity Investments.
