Knowledge Matters™

I recently came across this blog-post by Marc Aafjes on what he calls the Shadow Organisation. Marc says:

"By connecting various participants across the company around the execution of our knowledge strategy we're cultivating a meta network - the shadow organisation - that enables the company to enhance the value we derive from the knowledge we have. Framing knowledge management in economic terms, the shadow organisation in effect is ‘making the market for knowledge' by connecting otherwise disparate parts of the company around knowledge needs. This shadow organisation consists of the change agents that help us execute the knowledge strategy and embed sustainable change in all parts of the company".

Now what Marc is doing is by no means new - he's weaving a network to build a community of practice! What he has done is come up with a clever name that markets his network weaving initiative.

Marc has identified five types of brokers who are essential to his organisation. These are:

• global knowledge champions in specific functions like finance and marketing;
• operating company champions who support local execution of a program;
• local brokers, who are employees recruited by the operating company champions;
• global community leaders, who link people around specific knowledge domains; and
• central knowledge management team and project leads.  

How he identifies these people and then connects them is not clear to me. I'd just love to do a Business Network Analysis™ to get an empirical understanding of how successful or otherwise this initiative really is.  I wonder if he knows who the Tertius Iungens and Tertius Gaudens players are in his organisation?  Still at least he has recognized that people and networks matter.  And shadow organisation is now part of my vocabulary!

Regards, Graham