I identified and then purchased this book while using the "if you like this book, then you'll also like this book" tool on Amazon. As other reviewers note, the book is dated but it shows you early efforts the author used to make his company relevant as organizations were first realizing the need for applying knowledge at the point of need in the 1980-2000 timeframe--just as the Internet was starting to change the way we do things.
I rate the book only 3 stars because I think Bob Buckman had to use quite a bit of hindsight in looking back at how his organization made technical and cultural change management decisions in convincing employees to adopt a new way of working. In the beginning of the book it appeared we would be seeing how and why employees became convinced to start sharing their knowledge and how gaining access to the knowledge of the entire corporation actually remade relationships with their customers. Unfortunately, Buckman fell into a "looking back" perspective of how their decisions about systems and how they convinced employees to adopt -- typically from a management perspective. I'm sometimes leery about purchasing McGraw Hill books because they typically gravitate to that top-down, follow-these-guidelines-we-used, and platitudes viewpoint. This book fell into that pattern as well.
None of which is to demean Bob Buckman or the service he provided in writing this book. It is awe-inspiring how he saw where the future was heading with networks and evolving communication styles and embraced those for his company. Even with the above criticisms, he demonstrates the overall need for all businesses and organizations to tap what each employee can offer.
Today we are surrounded with tools and social media that corporations are trying to embrace. Many of the recommendations and change management strategies Buckman applied in 2004 still seem appropriate. Perhaps the biggest difference is that we can learn how to use such tools and share the way our children have learned. Rather than having to convince younger employees to think this way, we have to learn from them how to do that and to put tools and organizational hierarchies in place that will accommodate the way they think.
All in all, this is a good book for learning how today's communication styles started to evolve. Buckman criticized our schools for not better preparing students for these kinds of knowledge-sharing styles and--still ... 20-30 years later--they still lack that ambition and capability. As Buckman comments, our professors (and all of us) can learn from our students. More books are needed today -- not to speak about the theory or need for social and knowledge-sharing -- but to chronicle how some of the successful organizations who have done it are doing it. Not looking back on it 10 years from now, but rather how management and employees, younger employees and older ones are all working together to build the kinds of organizations Buckman was lobbying for 10 years ago.
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