Building a Knowledge-Driven Organization [Hardcover]

Robert Buckman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 27, 2004 | ISBN-10: 0071384715 | ISBN-13: 978-0071384711 | Edition: 1

This is the first book to focus on the people side of knowledge management--what it takes to get employees to contribute to a knowledge system. Robert Buckman explains how to orchestrate this culture change, drawing from the lessons learned by Buckman Laboratories--the leader and pioneer in knowledge management--in implementing award-winning knowledge systems. His book is a practical primer on how organizations can move from "hoarding" knowledge to "sharing" it, building a global strategy that allows them to respond faster than the competition to any customer's need on a global basis. Buckman reveals how to:

• Combat the biggest problem with implementing knowledge management--creating the culture that supports it
• Increase the speed of innovation globally across an organization
• Resolve technical problems quickly
• Make immediate, informed decisions to help solve customer issues
• Create new products based on customer input and demand

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Buckman Lab's technical experts and far-flung sales force conduct dozens of virtual conversations each day, trading tips on arcane points of paper and leather making, water purification and sewage treatment. In the process, they've made this closely held, Memphis, Tenn., chemical company with USD300 million in annual sales, a leading practitioner in the emerging field of knowledge management." -The Wall Street Journal; "Buckman Labs has become a Mecca for other companies looking for "how-to" lessons in the art and science of knowledge management. Executives from AT&T, 3M, Champion International, International Paper company, and US West have made the pilgrimage to this small, privately held chemical company to look and learn. What they've seen is a company that is fast, global, and interactive, built on a system that is simple, powerful, and revolutionary." -Fast Company "Buckman doesn't just sell chemicals, it sells human chemistry." -BusinessWeek"

From the Back Cover

"With knowledge [as] the only source of sustainable advantage, bringing knowledge effectively to bear on customer problems is Secret No. 1 to success. Bob Buckman's story of turning a traditional company into something completely new and different is both practical and inspiring. Building a Knowledge-Driven Organization should become an instant classic."

--Tom Peters

"Buckman Labs may have been the first company to realize that speed of knowledge sharing was a driver of cash flow and competitive advantage. Buckman pioneered collaboration around the globe to solve customer problems and create new business. This book is a powerful record of Bob Buckman's two decades of leadership and experience creating the deep cultural and human context for knowledge--and cash--to flow. If you want to know what works--and what doesn't--read this book."

--Carla O'Dell, Ph.D., President, American Productivity & Quality Center, and author of If Only We Knew What We Know: the internal transfer of knowledge and best practices.

"A must-read for executives trying to drive a knowledge management program, or for that matter any technology-based initiative."

--Dave Snowden, Director of IBM's Cynefin Centre for Organisational Complexity

"Bob Buckman--arguably the first CEO to personally lead a knowledge-based corporate strategy--combines a bold vision with practical tips for how organizations can become team-based and knowledge- and solutions- driven."

--Brook Manville, Chief Learning Officer, Saba Software; Former Partner and Director of Knowledge Management, McKinsey

"Buckman Labs' technical experts and far-flung sales force conduct dozens of virtual conversations each day, trading tips on arcane points of paper and leather making, water purification and sewage treatment. In the process, they've made this closely held, Memphis Tennessee chemical company with $360 million in sales, a leading practitioner in the emerging field of knowledge management."--The Wall Street Journal

"Buckman Labs has become a Mecca for other companies looking for "how-to" lessons in the art and science of knowledge management. Executives from many Fortune 500 companies have made the pilgrimage to look and learn from a company that is fast, global, and interactive, and built on a system that is simple, powerful, and revolutionary."--Fast Company

In the early 1980's, when Buckman Laboratories was scrambling to meet the rapidly changing needs of its customers, CEO Robert Buckman realized that an organization positioned for the future would have to be organized around knowledge--creating it, sharing it, and applying it--rather than around traditional corporate hierarchies and systems. He embraced this belief, and created a knowledge-sharing culture among Buckman Labs' 1400 associates serving in 80 countries. Buckman Labs became the undisputed pioneer and leader in implementing knowledge management.

Building a Knowledge-Driven Organization is a practical primer on how your managers and employees can move from "hoarding" knowledge in order to gain power to "sharing" it--building a global strategy that will allow your organization to respond faster than your competition to any customer's need, anywhere. The book focuses on the hardest part of knowledge management--the people side--explaining exactly what it takes to get your employees to contribute to a knowledge system. Buckman explains how to turn a fragmented, geographically dispersed group of people and information into a seamless array of knowledge that can be directed whenever and wherever it is needed. He reveals that the greatest challenges are not technical but political--and explains how you can effectively orchestrate a culture change in your organization, drawing from the hard-won lessons learned by Buckman Laboratories in implementing its award-winning knowledge systems. You'll discover, as Buckman did, how to:

• Be customer driven and customer centric in your knowledge sharing
• Break down hierarchies and build a knowledge-based corporate strategy
• Motivate and enable employees to share their expertise around the organization
• Implement the organizational values and climate of trust required for a knowledge sharing culture
• Push organizational knowledge to the front lines to solve customer problems and create new products

Building a Knowledge-Driven Organization will show you how to solve your customers' problems rapidly, share best practices, increase productivity, and produce tremendous results.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 300 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (February 27, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071384715
• ISBN-13: 978-0071384711
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 0.9 x 9.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,164,758 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb book, my choice for gift to colleagues December 18, 2004

By Robert David STEELE Vivas HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Every once in a while airport bookstores carry something truly extraordinary. This is such a book. It is so utterly perfect, sensible, readable, and on target that Monday I am buying copies to give to colleagues I know are interested in making more of our global information accessible and actionable.

I am sure this book will alter the perceptions of any management team in any domain. At a larger level of international information sharing, what the Swedes are calling M4 IS (multi-national, multi-agency, multi-disciplinary, multi-dimensional (or multi-domain) information sharing), this book is the single best and most practical book for turning Industrial era organizations into Information era organizations.

There have been other great books that captured some of these ideas early on, from the popular (Alvin and Heidi Toffler's POWERSHIFT, Paul Strassmann's Information PayOff) to the inspired (Thomas Stewart's Wealth of Knowledge, Barry Carter's Infinite Wealth : A New World of Collaboration and Abundance in the Knowledge Era), but this is the one that I think absolutely must be read by every flag officer and every colonel aspiring to be a flag officer, and their counterparts across all industries.

Heavily marked up, this book is already a classic. The author is brilliant in an elegant understandable manner in making several key points in an action-oriented implementation-facilitating fashion:

1) Technology is the easy part--changing the culture is the hard part (from information hoarding to information sharing)

2) Command and control stovepipes are a big part of the problem--we have to nurture trust and responsibility in all levels by giving all levels access to all information (within reason).

3) Communications, computers, and library services as well as external business intelligence services all have to be rolled together under one executive that has "direct report" relationship with the CEO--it is the networking of humans and their knowledge that has value, not the hardware and software and hard-wired comms lines

4) If you are not rolling over half your software and hardware each year, with nothing in your C4I system more than two years old at any one time, then you are losing capacity, productivity, and profit

5) 85% of what you know cannot be captured in structured knowledge archives--only a living network can allow employees to provide just enough, just in time articulation of answers that can be created in real time--this allows a *dramatic* shortening of the business information answer cycle, from months to hours.

6) If the CEO does not get it, live it, and enforce it, it will not happen.

The author shares with us practical real-world experience that makes this book a real-world manifestor rather than just a visionary proposal. His practical suggestions lead directly to the possibilities of global issue networks such as J.F. Rischard recommends in his HIGH NOON: Twenty Global Problems, Twenty Years to Solve Them, but this book by Robert Buckman is the real deal, a true "revolution in business affairs."

We've reached a tipping point. The day this book reached airport bookstores, the world changed. From this point forward, we are either implementing this author's wisdom and gaining value, or not.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Not enough material for a book February 10, 2007

By A. Perrin

Format:Hardcover

The author makes a few good points early in the book, like: develop a knowledge-sharing culture before expecting the technology to work, emphasize flat hierarchies over deep hierarchies, and demonstrate management commitment by having them use and lead the knowledge-sharing systems themselves. However, there's not enough substance here for the author to fill a book. Some later chapters are useful, but typically the main points are repeated and elaborated with a lot of filler.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars You won't regret picking up Robert Buckman's Building a Knowledge-Driven Organization! July 31, 2008

By Daniel Pritchett

Format:Hardcover

Elevator pitch
Robert Buckman is the CEO emeritus of Memphis, TN chemical vendor Buckman Laboratories. I discovered his 2004 book Building a Knowledge-Driven Organization during a hopeful search on "knowledge management" at a Memphis Library kiosk. This was my first real offline research in the collaboration field and I was pleased to find such a good-looking book with multiple copies on the shelf.

The jacket copy bills Buckman Labs as a bleeding-edge leader in the knowledge management space, winning awards by setting high knowledge management standards for more hidebound companies to chase. The book gets interesting in a hurry when Buckman starts tossing out traditional knowledge management ideals and downplays the extensive use of technology in his successful knowledge initiatives.

Overcome outdated priorities through culture change
This book's fundamental principle is that knowledge is the most valuable asset a globally competing company can have. Workers create and store knowledge in the course of their jobs. Customers hold vital knowledge that can reshape the goals and processes of your company. Employees change jobs and companies and the knowledge they have accumulated in their former positions needs to be tapped. Buckman argues that by putting in place a culture of knowledge sharing and openness a company positions itself to excel.

This culture is to be created by setting company-wide values of knowledge sharing and spending heavily on facilitating technology. Buckman is the sort of boss whose employees always have the best computers money can buy - he doesn't want to worry about a high-priced employee losing valuable work time to inferior tools.

Change from the top
Buckman is insistent that a new culture of knowledge sharing will not be successful unless it comes with the visible support and participation of the top official. The book includes several excerpts from Buckman Labs' internal forums highlighting CEO participation in high-profile issues. My favorite was a thread on sales awards - the company's salespeople felt that their reward program was insufficient.

Public debate (on the web forum) involving salespeople, Buckman, and managers led to a new system: Rather than giving a big check to the top 1 or 2 salespeople in a period, many smaller bonuses were awarded to people improving sales above a certain percentage. This newer and more attainable goal provided a better incentive to the vast majority of salespeople who simply weren't in the right position to be #1 or #2 each year. This anecdote was a great example of Buckman's presence and obvious concern for his employees driving adoption of a collaborative system. This type of dialogue can be imagined all across the enterprise from new product design to inter-departmental collaboration to emergency problem solving.

Every employee needs to participate
The entire book tears down traditional "command and control" style management in favor of a philosophy of facilitation. Much like Jim Collins in Good to Great, Buckman wants to hire excellent people and get out of the way as they do great things with the well-chosen tools and goals set before them. Buckman Labs held several internally publicized events where the most prolific users of their internal knowledge system were flown in to meet and discuss what they'd been working on.

One chapter includes an illuminating aside about non-participant managers being left behind as their more engaged secretaries flew to the conference to meet Buckman and the other first movers in this new initiative. A traditionalist wishing to hoard experience and ideas was of much less value to Buckman than was a networker or a facilitator who was willing and able to seek out experts and leverage them to solve problems. In the early days of his new knowledge system Buckman pulled weekly reports listing employees who weren't using the system and sent them friendly emails asking how he could help make the system more useful to them and hence get them involved. These friendly emails gently reinforced the CEO's focus on knowledge sharing.

The tools are always changing
Buckman's desire to provide the best possible tools to his organization has led Buckman Labs through a long line of technologies. At one point in the 90's everyone in the company had unlimited access to CompuServe. The goals behind Buckman's technology resources are to get every single employee participating in the knowledge sharing system and to make sure their interactions are preserved to use for future problem solving.

My impression from the book was that threaded web forums were the apex of collaboration in 2003-2004 when the book was written, but I imagine there are many more things that can be done in 2008 to help your company. There is no mention of Wiki-style knowledge bases or newer social networking platforms like Facebook. These contemporary tools are good complements to the forums around which Buckman centers his discussion.

Read this book!
Buckman's focus on management-driven culture change and empowerment using technology as a tool rather than as an end unto itself is spot on. No high-minded collaboration tool is gong to help your organization unless the right people are won over and publicly using and promoting the system.

My biggest complaint about the book is Buckman's suggestion that a culture of knowledge sharing can only be created by the top level leader. I can't say that he's wrong, only that this bit of advice sours the whole book a bit for someone like me who is not a CEO. I want to drive a culture of openness and sharing within my organization, and Buckman's advice isn't really aimed at someone in my position. There are also a few sections on measuring the financial benefits of a knowledge-sharing technology intiative that are useful in calculating ROI but did not interest me nearly as much as the culture change ideas.

The limited audience and outdated technological examples might diminish the second half of the book somewhat but the core principles Buckman elaborates are universal.

Though not every chapter is a winner you won't regret picking up Robert Buckman's Building a Knowledge-Driven Organization.