I was walking into my favourite bookshop and immediately I saw the book on the shelf, as the New Arrival Section as the name implies is waiting for the customer’s arrival as well, especially someone like me. I picked the book, took out my wallet and headed for the counter, paid and went home smiling. It took me roughly one day to finish the book. If I can do that normally the book must be special. This one is indeed special – Intellectual Capital: The New Wealth Of Organization by Thomas Stewarts was what I subconsciously waiting for. I was not surprise of my reaction after reading the book mainly because it practically outlined on what I really believe in thus far. All my working live I have been working and dealing with information – acquiring, classifying, managing, leveraging and disseminating information. When I was not in the rat race I was utilising information in a great deal as well. This is not just saying in order to do my work effectively I have to know where to source out the information and how to use it effectively. But, I am saying that information and knowledge is going to be core component of my daily existence as well as for all Malaysian.
Deep down I always believe that information is one commodity that going to be very important for the future of Malaysia not to mention my own future. The book Intellectual Capital: The New Wealth Of Organization by Thomas Stewarts in a gist is telling me that the information commodity, now collectively called Intellectual Capital to emphasise on it’s economic importance, has been transformed into knowledge within most organizations today. So far corporations and organization have not been paying too much attention on their intellectual capital and we thought that we have to always create something new to be competitive. Also, we thought we have to go out of our organization to learn more of be effective. In actual fact we have spent a lot on technology, new methods of doing things and trainings to gain our competency. Indeed we know a lot and have learned a lot collectively as well. The problem is collectively we do not know what we know and have not been using of what we know effectively. The book suggests for all organization to look inwards to identify and leverage these ‘knowhow’ – knowledge..
Soon enough the concept of knowledge management came into being where the major part of the idea revolve around managing and leveraging the intellectual capital. If we looked closely at what actually had happened in our economy it is obvious that this is going to be something big in Malaysia and the announcement of the Vision 2020 and subsequently the introduction of the Multimedia Super Corridor project confirmed my theory. The knowledge economy is here and I have to be meaningfully in it.
Thus, that is how I got very passionate about knowledge management.
Showing posts with label Thomas Stewart. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thomas Stewart. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
My Calling - Part 2
I’m sure all of you have been in a situation where you just slap your forehead and go…”Hey! Now, why didn’t I think of that?” Worse, it can hit you anytime, be it while you are in the middle of a conversation or while listening to a speaker at a talk or while quietly watching a TV programme.
In my case, the forehead slapping episode happened while reading the book ‘Intellectual Capital: The New Wealth Of Organizations’ by Thomas Stewart and in this issue I will elaborate on the profound effect the book had on me.
Lest you think this is a book review, it’s not because I know there are plenty of books like Stewarts’s in the market now but for the basis of discussion, I am using his book as a case in point.
I realise that the discussions may be academic, unavoidable at times, but in this column I’ll try to confine my thoughts on knowledge management to what the “man of the street” needs to know about this subject.
The gist of the book discusses about the other types of capital that most organizations have ignored until recently.
If you think about it, organizations spend a lot of money building business empires and always put priority on acquisition of the land, buildings and even blue chip stocks but fail to capitalise on their biggest assets in this new economy.
These assets, as Stewart explains succinctly in his book, are the three types of intellectual capital that exist within the organization that have often been left untapped. Worst still some organization couldn’t even bother to look at them.
Stewart opined that intellectual capital is divided into three types, namely human capital, structural capital and customer capital. (Another thought leader in the field, Karl Erik Sveiby uses the Competency, Internal Structure and External Structure.)
The “types” that Stewart describes makes a lot of sense and struck me as very logical, something I had always believed in and what I have always wanted to explore further.
What strikes me most (and my forehead gets slapped again) after reading the book is that most what Stewart said is something that we are already dealing with everyday, yet we fail to realise it.
Human capital basically is looking at what sort of competency and skills that an organization has, the wealth of knowledge within its employees. It is these core competencies that the organization has to manage and leverage upon.
Think about it. If you spend a lot of time and money to train an employee and to have them gain these core competencies, then you should know how best to make their knowledge work for you and to retain it within the organization.
Let’s face it, it’s just common sense really and, ironic as it may be, it is always common sense that somehow escapes us.
Just think about it: organizations spend a lot of money on employees training and learning but knowledge gained are not retained or shared.
Most organizations also spend a lot of money on trips, study tours and benchmarking exercises and yet again fail to leverage the knowledge gained.
With a lot of learning organization still make mistakes - worst still – keeps repeating the very same mistakes over and over again.
A lot of organizations claim to be a learning organization but the ‘Silo’ working environment still prevails, meaning that there is very little sharing and everyone is trying to be protective of whatever knowledge they have.
The organization does not realise that it has gained enough competence over the years but, probably due to poor knowledge management, it is willing to spend a lot of money to hire outside experts to do a job that it’s own staff is capable of.
To conclude, I would surmise that in many such organisations there has not been enough knowledge sharing and leveraging on collective ‘know how’. The question to ponder is, how do we leverage on this human capital? Stay tuned
In my case, the forehead slapping episode happened while reading the book ‘Intellectual Capital: The New Wealth Of Organizations’ by Thomas Stewart and in this issue I will elaborate on the profound effect the book had on me.
Lest you think this is a book review, it’s not because I know there are plenty of books like Stewarts’s in the market now but for the basis of discussion, I am using his book as a case in point.
I realise that the discussions may be academic, unavoidable at times, but in this column I’ll try to confine my thoughts on knowledge management to what the “man of the street” needs to know about this subject.
The gist of the book discusses about the other types of capital that most organizations have ignored until recently.
If you think about it, organizations spend a lot of money building business empires and always put priority on acquisition of the land, buildings and even blue chip stocks but fail to capitalise on their biggest assets in this new economy.
These assets, as Stewart explains succinctly in his book, are the three types of intellectual capital that exist within the organization that have often been left untapped. Worst still some organization couldn’t even bother to look at them.
Stewart opined that intellectual capital is divided into three types, namely human capital, structural capital and customer capital. (Another thought leader in the field, Karl Erik Sveiby uses the Competency, Internal Structure and External Structure.)
The “types” that Stewart describes makes a lot of sense and struck me as very logical, something I had always believed in and what I have always wanted to explore further.
What strikes me most (and my forehead gets slapped again) after reading the book is that most what Stewart said is something that we are already dealing with everyday, yet we fail to realise it.
Human capital basically is looking at what sort of competency and skills that an organization has, the wealth of knowledge within its employees. It is these core competencies that the organization has to manage and leverage upon.
Think about it. If you spend a lot of time and money to train an employee and to have them gain these core competencies, then you should know how best to make their knowledge work for you and to retain it within the organization.
Let’s face it, it’s just common sense really and, ironic as it may be, it is always common sense that somehow escapes us.
Just think about it: organizations spend a lot of money on employees training and learning but knowledge gained are not retained or shared.
Most organizations also spend a lot of money on trips, study tours and benchmarking exercises and yet again fail to leverage the knowledge gained.
With a lot of learning organization still make mistakes - worst still – keeps repeating the very same mistakes over and over again.
A lot of organizations claim to be a learning organization but the ‘Silo’ working environment still prevails, meaning that there is very little sharing and everyone is trying to be protective of whatever knowledge they have.
The organization does not realise that it has gained enough competence over the years but, probably due to poor knowledge management, it is willing to spend a lot of money to hire outside experts to do a job that it’s own staff is capable of.
To conclude, I would surmise that in many such organisations there has not been enough knowledge sharing and leveraging on collective ‘know how’. The question to ponder is, how do we leverage on this human capital? Stay tuned
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