Knowledge Leadership

The demand placed on all leaders is to deliver more, and do it with fewer resources. One way of rising to this challenge is share information and know-how. This means using or adapting something somebody else has learned. But how ?

Knowledge is the new currency. You need to know enough not to be fooled - or to be fooled by someone else. Given that there is nothing really new under the sun, just different permutations of a few original ideas, it makes sense to find out if someone, somewhere, has already done what you are trying to so. The paradox, is that new knowledge is being created all the time at an ever increasing pace, and you will look a fool if you are not up-to-date..

There is a growing need therefore for those who have the knowledge and expertise to use it to make a difference. They then hold the competitive edge. The Internet is allowing anyone to be a knowledge leader in their field of endeavour. They achieve this status simply by capturing what has been learned, in order that it can be used by others.

This makes knowledge leadership a conscious competence that everyone must develop. But what does it involve ? It's certainly means being a good listener and questioning for understanding, simply because everyone sees things from their own unique perspective.

Networking and communities of practice are a good example of a group of knowledge leaders coming together to share their know-how to improve their own capability and that of the organisation. Peers then decide what is good practice ad how it can add value.

The skill of the knowledge leader is to get the right people talking to each other. The value of the technology is that it can stimulate connections between people. Positional leaders might establish an intranet on which to deposit data that needs to be shared,, but it takes knowledge leaders to get people to integrate the data and collaborate to create new knowledge though purposeful conversations.

Knowledge leaders know how to capture, create, distil, share and use other people's know how, and how to create and capture their own. It's not lleadership until a different action has been taken as a consequence.