Preparing
for Conversations with Jerry Ash
Spoiling the
Mushroom Patch
Jerry Ash
Senior
Counselor, The Forbes Group
Founder and Chief Executive, Association of Knowledgework
AOK's
own Jerry Ash takes the lead this month in the AOK STAR Series,
with his tenure as STAR Series moderator taking place from July
17 through July 31.
  Biography
Jerry is a lifelong
communicator whose experience has included a broad spectrum of
advocacy and leadership roles including university professor,
editor, publisher, author, state senator, hospital public relations
director, CEO of a state hospital association, and executive
director of an organ donor organization. In every role, he has
been an innovator and agent of change.
He is internationally
known as a pioneer in the emerging new business strategy of knowledge
or intellectual asset management and is one of the E-100 global
leaders recognized by Entovatoin International, pioneers in Innovation.
His articles and opinions have been published in Communications
World, Knowledge, Inc., Computer World, CIO Canada, Association
Management and the i3 Update of the UK.
Jerry uses information
technology by teaming with IT professionals and focuses on information
content and application as the centerpiece of the business process
for the Knowledge Age. People, he insists, are the basis of all
knowledge; computers the great enablers. He was the founder and
moderator of the Association KM (Knowledge Management) Network.
He continues to provide strategic counseling to other associations
through The Forbes Group.
During six years
as CEO of the Nevada Hospital Association, he led the turnaround
of the organization. As executive director of LifeGift organ
donor centers in Texas, he teamed with its technology-wise employees
to build the first-of-its-kind 24-hour communications network
connecting 180 voluntary hospitals from the Gulf Coast to the
Texas Panhandle and increasing organ referral by 20 percent and
tissue referral by 300 percent in the startup year.
Jerry holds bachelors
and masters degrees in journalism from West Virginia University.
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Prologue: Lately I have been privately
comparing the closed corporate culture that has led to the meltdown
of giant companies and the open knowledge sharing culture we
champion as KM advocates. The following editorial comment describes
the opportunity in current events as I see it, and asks you to
"come think with me."
Commentary: Spoiling the
Mushroom Patch
By Jerry Ash, AOK
Chief Executive
During that part
of my career when I served in executive positions for not-for-profit
organizations, I often heard my colleagues joke about the best
strategy for the care and feeding of governing boards and the
membership: "Keep them in the dark and feed them shit."
At least I think
it was a joke.
In the world of
voluntary associations, there was clearly "them" and
"us." "They" were the amateurs who funded
the organization and campaigned for seats on the governing board
and committees; "We" were the management professionals.
"They" were the ones with personal agendas, "we"
were the only ones who had the best interests of the organization
at heart. "They" were "interfering trouble makers."
I'm overstating
it, but whether or not we were treating them like mushrooms,
we were forever trying to make the "volunteers" understand
that they should mind their own business -- stick to governance
and leave the driving to us.
The not-for-profit
management model was no doubt built around the Industrial Age
for-profit model, even though we were in the service business,
not manufacturing widgets. And so it does not surprise me that
the corporate world -- even Wall Street -- has maintained an
underlying culture of "keeping them in the dark and feeding
them shit."
From my perspective,
the corporate meltdown of ENRON and WorldCom is the result of
a culture somewhat like that; a culture that routinely accepted
"little white lies" to assure stockholder confidence.
According to one report, it had been a widely-used routine for
accountants to count income not yet received when issuing financial
reports to stockholders in order to keep stock value up. According
to the report, it was a practice winked at by Wall Street regulators.
Just a little white lie to give shareholders what they wanted
to hear! "Keep them in the dark and feed them shit."
The most grievous
news was that Andersen, a company whose consulting arm has been
highly acclaimed as a KM champion, was apparently talking the
talk, but not walking the walk.
In the short term,
deceptive accounting and management practices did maintain shareholder
confidence; but, it also created a corporate environment in which
excessive extensions of those practices could, in the end, destroy
confidence -- not only in extreme cases like ENRON and WorldCom,
but in corporate management in general. Now, companies that may
well be pure are being harmed by a nervous and mistrusting world,
people everywhere suffering personal economic damage.
Many others, far
more qualified than I, have (and will) give analysis ad nauseum
for weeks and years to come, but I have yet to see one peep out
of any of them drawing a line between the failed culture of closed
corporate management and the open culture of knowledge management
(KM). Perhaps this is the first.
Although KM practitioners
see broader and deeper value in KM, executives too often have
confined its potential to reorganizing work in the downsized
mode, reducing costs, increasing productivity, revenue and sustainability,
improving innovation -- all centered on operations and ROI. And,
of course, we KMers have hooked our star onto those "measurable"
goals in order to establish the credibility of KM while looking
beyond.
Executives may have
endorsed the underlying principles of KM (even its altruism)
as a line-level management tool to accomplish those things, but
how many have applied the KM philosophy to senior level behavior?
How many have seen KM as something more than a "management"
tool. Conversely, how many have embraced it as a vital "leadership"
tool at the top of the organizational chart?
KM's knowledge-sharing
and teamwork depends on the building of a two-way street of honesty
and trust. Some have been critical of that as naive in corporate
culture. Before everyone got "ENRONed," there may have
been painful truth in that point of view. But what about now?
As we clean up corporate behavior and reestablish trust with
investors and customers, would it not be an opportune moment
to extend KM practices from middle-management to senior management?
For those of us
who have realistically built our KM strategy somewhere in the
middle with an up-down approach to spreading the practice, isn't
this a perfect time to rush to the top with the KM solution?
Wouldn't this be a good time to stop mushroom farming, bringing
the "outsiders" who own the company into the light?
Wouldn't this be a good time to make investors into knowledgeable
partners, just as KMers want to bring customers to the design
table?
These and a flood
of other thoughts need fleshing out, but the prospects are electrifying
to me. The purpose of this month's STAR Series Dialogue is to
test the idea, identify the "why nots," and to explore
the "how tos." And, if enough of us are (or may start)
thinking this way, the outcome of this Dialogue could be another
strategy and another action plan for KM champions.
Come think with
me!
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