Book Review: Sharing Hidden Know-How, by Katrina B. Pugh

Capturing, sharing,and curating knowledge – the elements of knowledge management (KM)– have become key activities for organizational success in this ageof superabundant information. KM as a field has been the topic ofendless books, seminars, keynotes, and academic discussions in thelast twenty years or longer. Yet we don’t have a workable,systematic way to approach actually ­getting the job done.

Kate Pugh, inSharing Hidden Knowledge: How Managers Solve Thorny Problems Withthe Knowledge Jam, attempts to provide such a system. She takesup the question, “If KM is ‘levering knowledge for businessvalue,’ what is holding us back?” Her answer is knowledge blindspots, knowledge mismatches, and knowledge jails (formats, locations,or associations that make knowledge invisible or inaccessible toknowledge seekers). Her solution is the Knowledge Jam.

The 90-minute jam

Right. What’s aKnowledge Jam? The term is an adaptation of what musicians do in ajam session. Pugh describes it as a formal process for bringing outknow-how, through a facilitated conversation between knowers andseekers, with a built-in step to circulate or “translate” whatwas learned. Think of it as a three-legged stool: conversation(sharing organizational learning), facilitation (supportingintelligence acquisition), and translation (using collaborationtechnology).

The book presentsfive key interactions (steps) between five key participants in theprocess, and supports the presentation with multiple examples fromPugh’s work while she was at Intel and as a consultant. Theinstruction for applying the process is very thorough, and makes useof templates, worksheets, lessons learned and FAQs, tips, andtranscripts from actual sessions.

The knowledge jam relies on socialmedia

While it might seemthat a formal process such as this would rule out or replace socialmedia, such is not the case. Social media are collaboration tools,and they land content onto platforms, rather than into narrow,sometimes hidden, channels (e.g., Facebook is a platform; e-mail is achannel). Pugh addresses the use of social media within the corporatefirewall – ESSPs (Enterprise Social Software Platforms), includingwikis, social bookmarks, microblogs, and SharePoint discussionforums. It’s a practical, not overly involved, way to get the jobdone quickly and to respect the time of the participants.

Add this book to your summer reading!

If you are in aposition to complement your work in online learning and educationwith change management and organizational development, by all meansyou should get this book and apply the ideas that Pugh presents.There is no more certain way to “get a seat at the table” whereorganizational leadership sits, than to build a successful internalconsulting process that gets concrete strategic results. This processwill do that.

The value forexternal consultants goes without saying. If you are a manager in anorganization and you read only two books this summer, I urge you tochoose Sharing Hidden Know-How and the book I reviewed lastweek, Flawless Consulting. It will be the best money you havespent since grad school.

Bibliographic information

Pugh, Katrina B. (2011) SharingHidden Know-How: How Managers Solve Thorny Problems With TheKnowledge Jam. San Francisco:Jossey-Bass. 248 pages. ISBN 978-0-470-87681-7.

Publisher’slist price: $35.00

Barnes& Noble: $30.80

Amazon:$29.08

Nook:$28.00

Kindle:$15.94

Noaudiobook version

(Thepublisher provided a copy of the book for this review.)