Book Review: Building a Knowledge-Driven Organization

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Overcome outdated priorities through culture change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 assistants 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.

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