Knowledge Services in the “New Normal”

Any number of advisors, web sites, and articles (academic and popular) are coming up with recommendations for dealing with the “new normal.” It’s the term we hear a lot – the nearly ubiquitous phrase being tossed about to give us some sort of common tag for anticipating and describing the times we’ll be living in, once the pandemic has been brought under control.

For knowledge strategists – the knowledge workers who identify and strategize how affiliates manage their organizations’ intellectual capital – there is already a certain tension about how to approach what we need to be doing. And, to be fair, it doesn’t matter whether their designation as “knowledge strategist” is “official,” that is – part of this manager’s title and job description – or simply “built in,” with attention to knowledge services expected as part of their work.

The question to be answered is simple: how do we, as knowledge strategists, work? Do we continue to follow the same management and service-delivery patterns we’ve used over the years? Probably not. Choosing that path won’t work because once we inventory and wade through the different approaches we’ve been working with in the past, we’re liable to be more confused than ever, without even approaching the solutions we need.

It’s a point well made in three quotations from our revered (and now long-gone) knowledge services mentor, Peter Drucker. In his 1995 Managing in a Time of Great Change, Drucker made the point that stability and cohesion come about only when a society or an organization is in what he called “dynamic disequilibrium.” He went on, in the same book, to say that “The only way in which an institution – whether a government, a university, a business, a labor union, an army – can maintain continuity (Drucker’s emphasis) is by building systematic, organized innovation into its very structure.”

In another description that applies to what’s facing us, Drucker posits that entrepreneurial innovation must become the very heart and core of management. “The organization’s function is to be entrepreneurial, to put knowledge to work – on tools, products, and processes; on the design of work; on knowledge itself.”

Isn’t that a clarion call to the knowledge strategist? Doesn’t that kind of statement charge us – as knowledge strategists – to recognize what’s happening (or what’s going to happen)? Shouldn’t we take up the challenge being put forward, a challenge that seems to be confronting us everywhere we look? In a recent issue of The Guardian, it was noted that “mayors in many of the world’s leading cities have said there can be no return to business as usual in the aftermath of the coronavirus crisis if humanity is to escape catastrophic climate breakdown.”

And closer to the specifics of the crisis, we have clearly stated advice from Germany, from the country’s leading public health institution. Lars Schaade, the vice-president of the Robert Koch Institute, tells us that citizens will have to live with the coronavirus, “building tactics such as physical distancing and strict hygiene into normal daily life.”

So what is the role of the knowledge strategist in the new normal? As the organization’s knowledge strategist reviews the presence and effectiveness of an enterprise-wide knowledge strategy, is their attention to excellence in knowledge sharing part of the organization’s intellectual capital management picture? Equally important (but probably not much thought about), what is the knowledge strategist expected to do as they pursue their daily tasks? What might their contribution be, as their organization transitions (or is expected to transition) to managing intellectual capital entrepreneurially and for the benefit of the larger organization?

If an organization’s knowledge strategist came to me for advice, as they think about next steps in the crisis-impacted workplace, I would recommend the following, in this order:

1. Determine the status of the organization’s recovery business model. In other words, establish that the organization has a recovery business model in place (by this point in the crisis, every organization should have developed a recovery business model, or at least the beginnings of an organization-wide movement toward such a plan).
2. Review the current status of the organization’s recovery business model. In doing so, identify the senior person (or team) responsible for the implementation of the recovery plan. Then volunteer to work with the team as the development and implementation of the recovery business model move forward.
3. Examine the recovery business model (whether developed or in process) to establish if it includes a knowledge strategy based on knowledge services. If so, establish that the strategy supports converged information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning. Also establish whether the successful implementation of the knowledge strategy will result in highest-level knowledge sharing for the organization (in other words, make a judgment about the model’s effectiveness, with respect to organizational knowledge sharing).
4. If the business recovery model does not include a knowledge “component,” describe the critical value of knowledge sharing to the recovery business model team and work with the team to incorporate knowledge services into the model.
5. Conduct a knowledge-services audit to identify required professional development skills relating to knowledge sharing and use the findings of the knowledge audit to develop a strategic learning program for closing critical skill gaps (or strengthening related skills already in place).

The crisis we’re living with has serious societal implications and – from a personal point of view for the many families who have lost loved ones – it is bringing about painful, life-changing anxiety. So it is certainly a time of “dynamic disequilibrium,” but it is also bringing opportunities for doing things differently and better than we did them in the past. We knowledge strategists have the opportunity – depending on how we frame the organization’s knowledge strategy – to build that “systematic, organized innovation” into the very structure of the organization. We can take the lead in this effort. In doing so, knowledge strategists will then be making a major contribution to the common good. It’s an ambition not all professional workers can achieve. Or aspire to.