Introducing T-shaped managers - Knowledge management's next generation

Most companies do a poor job of capitalizing on the wealth of expertise sca ttered across their organizations. That's because they tend to rely on cent ralized knowledge-management systems and technologies. But such systems are really only good at distributing explicit knowledge, the kind that can be captured and codified for general use. They're not very good at transferrin g implicit knowledge, the kind needed to generate new insights and creative ways of tack ling business problems or opportunities. The authors suggest another approach, something they call T-shaped manageme nt, which requires executives to share knowledge freely across their organi zation (the horizontal part of the "T"), while remaining fiercely committed to their individual business unit's performance (the vertical part). A few companies are starting to use this approach, and one -BP Amoco- has b een especially successful. From BP's experience, the authors have gleaned f ive ways that T-shaped managers help companies capitalize on their inherent knowledge. They increase efficiency by transferring best practices. They i mprove the quality of decision making companywide. They grow revenues throu gh shared expertise. They develop new business opportunities through the cr oss-pollination of ideas. And they make bold strategic moves possible by de livering well-coordinated implementation. All that takes time, and BP's managers have had to learn how to balance tha t time against the attention they must pay to their own units. The authors suggest, however, that it's worth the effort to find such a balance to more fully realize the immense value of the knowledge lying idle within so many companies.