Sharing Hidden Know-How: How Managers Solve Thorny Problems With the Knowledge Jam

To manage business operations &; let alone innovate &; amid frequent restructurings, outsourcings and retirements, leaders must quickly capitalize on hidden know-how (knowledge). That is, know-how that lives inside their organizations or networks &; in the teams, processes and experts that comprise them.

Yet, many organizations are coming up short in this race. Knowledge sharing and transfer have been reduced to reports, e-mails and tweets replacing vital personal interaction. The lack of meaningful conversation coupled with intense fragmentation across organizations and networks has left leaders floating in a sea of information and ideas without a map to channel insight into action.

Sharing Hidden Know-How starts the conversation that allows organizations to take what they know to the bank. The &;how-to&;/&;how-act&; guidebook unveils Knowledge Jam, a facilitated collaborative method for helping organizations rediscover the fundamental discipline of knowledge transfer &; the conversation.

Developed by Katrina Pugh, president of AlignConsulting, the proven process uses human interaction to capture unwritten insights, and more importantly to put them to work. Offering a step-by-step process and practical tools, Sharing Hidden Know-How will help any organization harness untapped knowledge to solve today&;s thorny problems:

• Accelerating New Product Development and Market and Segment Innovations
• Maximizing Combined Knowledge in Mergers Integrations, Restructurings, Off-shoring and Outsourcing
• Overcoming Information Overload (Focus on Social Media)
• Smoothing Executive Transitions and Succession Planning
• Smoothing Team Transitions
• Spreading Insight across Geographies and Network Partners
• Tapping into Sales Insights

The next generation of leadership effectiveness is about conversation and reflective facilitation, not just texts and tweets. Sharing Hidden Know-How makes the case for intentional, conversation-based leadership, and provides the practice model to pull it off.  Viewed from above, this important book is itself a conversation between Kate Pugh&;s basic propositions and those of a diverse group of other thinkers, all woven into a unified whole. Viewed on the ground, it is an intellectual joyride, coherent, insightful, promisingly pragmatic, and with just the right measure of the personal to fully reveal a fruitful mind in motion.
&; David Kantor, director, Kantor Institute; author, Reading the Room (Jossey-Bass, 2012)

&;[This] book addresses one of the time-honored problems in organizations: &;How do you get people with experience, solutions and knowledge to share them effectively with those who need those valuable assets?&; Technology, we now know, is not the answer&;human discus­sion is. [Pugh] tells you how to structure and facilitate these important conversations.&;
&;Thomas H. Davenport, President&;s distinguished professor of IT and Management, Babson College; author of Analytics at Work and Thinking for a Living.

&;In this innovative and useful book Kate Pugh shows how you can be a far better knowledge practitioner just by releasing the power of talking in your organization. A fine example of the new generation of knowledge books.&;
&;Larry Prusak, author, Working Knowledge; visiting scholar, Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California; and senior knowledge advisor to World Bank and NASA

&;[This book] meets an urgent need within leadership practices: an effective conversational process for capturing and transferring deep smarts.&;
&;Stephen Denning, author, The Leader&;s Guide to Radical Management and The Secret Language of Leadership

&;Leaders have long known that the &;know-how&; of experienced teams is key to their orga­nizations&; ability to achieve strategic goals. The challenge has always been to distill this wisdom and deploy it in a way that maximizes and accelerates its impact on organizational effectiveness. [This book] provides a practical approach to addressing this challenge, and, in so doing, improves competitiveness.&;
&;Paul Lucidi, chief information officer, Insulet Corporation

&;A fantastic replacement for the long dormant and never used lessons-learned repository! This book provides well documented and effective tools for really learning from your orga­nization. As our business continues to go through transformational change, I hope to make good use of the Knowledge Jam to make that transformation efficient.&;
&;Sheryl Skifstad, senior director, Supply Chain IT at a Fortune 100 company

Katrina Pugh is president of AlignConsulting, a firm that specializes in helping organizations channel insight into action. Kate held leadership positions with PwC Consulting/IBM, JPMorgan, Intel Corporation and Fidelity Investments.

Katrina Pugh is president of AlignConsulting, specializing in business planning and knowledge-based transformation. Kate held leadership positions with PwC Consulting/IBM, JPMorgan, Intel Corporation, and Fidelity Investments.