So I finally ordered a case for my newer iPhone X. It’s been far too long and well there is significant risk of me dropping and smashing such an investment. After a little research I went for a minimalist case that is more about grip than insulation. My logic is if I don’t drop it in the first place then I don’t have to worry about it breaking. Plus the boxy cases really take away a lot from the phone being mobile as in easy to access/use.
This prevention and protection serves as a good metaphor about how we approach organizational knowledge (our practices, approaches and beliefs). Because similar to my phone, knowledge is an extremely valuable company asset.
Protection of knowledge is about effectively communicating it. It’s about consistency and compliance and maintaining what you know and do from top to bottom.
Prevention on the other hand is about helping knowledge remain useful and not becoming stagnant, it’s ensuring knowledge is current and therefore valuable.
For example:
When does a new sales technique become explicit and promoted? When we know it works. And when do we know it works? When we pick up the signal that there is a new way that has greater value and benefits than what we’ve been doing.
Successfully preventing knowledge from degrading is about remaining open to signals through open networks and connection. The sooner we have the signal, the sooner we can compare it, evaluate it and employ it.
However, it is important to keep things that work working. But far too often we wrap so much formality around a change process that protection of knowledge becomes the priority over it’s true value. When this happens we risk being too insular and our know-how and practices can’t evolve quick enough. On the flip side, too much change too quickly breaks consistency of execution.
Prevention and protection are both important but I’d put a little more of a priority on not losing your grip on the reality that information changes rapidly; changing what we know to be true faster than ever.
