Getting the Most from External Knowledge
Managers are constantly seeking ways to tap external knowledge to drive organizational performance. These include traditional methods such as advisory boards, focus groups, benchmarking and best practices as well as new fangled methods such as crowdsourcing and open innovation. Of course, the effectiveness of these methods turns on a host of cognitive factors at both the source and destination of the knowledge. So I am always on the lookout for new ways of leveraging knowledge that pay particular attention to the cognitive design issues involved.
Take for example, McKinsey’s recent article, Using Knowledge Brokering to Improve Business Process. Content is free but you must register. The article describes a new open innovation method focused not on improving innovation but solving any strategic, operational or financial problem you might have. The method involves framing your problem in a context free way and enlisting the help of knowledge brokers in several other industries that have solved the problem. What is of special interest to cognitive designers, other than the method of framing problems in a context free manner, is the method used to access the knowledge. You do a 1-hour phone call. The knowledge broker starts with a story (10- 15 minutes) and then the team ask questions. To quote:
“ The best medium we’ve found for knowledge brokering is a one-hour telephone call. Visits in person and by video yield less useful knowledge because they subtly distract team members from the experience of listening while subconsciously encouraging them to form irrelevant value judgments based on the speaker’s appearance, expressions, and so on. A knowledge broker should start the conversation by describing experiences related to the process issue, simply by telling the story. Just 10 to 15 minutes is plenty of time to acclimatize the team.”
The knowledge broker is encouraged to challenge the team to adapt the story to their situation. For example:
“A team from a private bank, for example, wanted to steer its high-net-worth clients away from customized investments and toward portfolio-management products offering both higher returns for customers and higher profits for the bank. One of the team’s brokers was a physician who described his bedside manner, explaining that when hospital patients refuse to take their medication he overcomes the problem by engaging directly with the family. This was a breakthrough for the team, which later successfully applied the idea in its own context by developing ways to include the broader families of the bank’s clients in key financial decisions. ”
Very different cognitive interplay from the typical best practices interview or expert opinion session.
