Marshall McLuhan, professor of English literature at the University of Toronto in the 1960s and 70s, was fond of Edgar Allen Poe’s "A Descent into the Maelstrom." In this short story, a sailor finds his ship drawn into a vast and deadly ocean whirlpool. As powerful currents sweep him down the wall of water towards certain death on the rocks below, he observes bits of debris floating up to the surface while the heavier debris — including his boat — circles downward. Taking note of these patterns, he acts to save himself:

In his seminars, McLuhan used this passage to get his students to shift their perspectives and focus not on individual facts, but on patterns in the flow of information. In other words, he was training them to make the transition from the Information Economy to the Knowledge Economy. As the sheer volume of data has accumulated, the ability to take action has suffered. Like the sailor in the boat, we are in a data induced paralysis. But also like the sailor, the solution is not to go down with the ship, but to figure out how to operate in the new environment. Knowing what information counts—small bits of debris floating to the surface—is the key to effective action—leaping into the maelstrom and latching oneself "securely to the water cask."

We need to find the patterns in the new knowledge environment that can help us survive and prosper. It is no longer good enough to give employees powerful information technologies (like intranets) and expect the rest to take its natural course. Rather, what you end up giving them is Poe’s maelstrom—what we call the InfoSmog. Employees are left to their own devices to read the patterns in the maelstrom, or (and we bet this is more often the case) they just don’t get out of the boat.

Managing Knowledge provides you with specific skills and frameworks necessary to read the patterns and apply basic Knowledge Management concepts to Web technologies. Our definition of Knowledge Management begins with an understanding of Poe’s "Maelstrom" as interpreted by McLuhan: Identifying the patterns of data in the InfoSmog that can help your company take strategic, effective action. The function of the Knowledge Manager—and the guiding assumption of this book—is to understand those patterns and to help your company focus on the water cask, rather than the maelstrom itself. You’ll learn how to identify the particular people and knowledge that will help your company ascend the walls of the informational maelstrom. But to do so, you—the manager—are going to have to be the first one out of the boat. You’ll have to descend into the maelstrom of data, information, and knowledge to help others find their own ways.

The central concept of this book is the Knowledge Architecture. It is simultaneously an organizing principle for your Knowledge Management efforts and the overall goal for which you are striving. More than an "information infrastructure," the Knowledge Architecture blends three overall success factors:

• Skills and Corporate Culture
• People and Content
• Technology

Success in the emerging Knowledge Economy, unlike the Information Economy, is based on the ability to effectively package and deliver information to the critical users who must apply it as knowledge. This is more than a technical solution: in fact, the technology of Knowledge Management is only as good as the people who use and manage the content that rides on top of it. Merely giving users access can muddy the waters rather than deliver clarity.

We’ll discuss each of these success factors in turn. (The first three parts of this book address each in detail.) You’ll learn how to use the Knowledge Audit to combine people, content, and technology into a working Knowledge Architecture. We’ll step you through the specific deliverables and tools that result from the audit. Above all, establishing and maintaining a successful Knowledge Architecture means knowing and assessing what is critical to the success of your organization and putting people and technology initiatives behind that information.

If the Knowledge Architecture is the guiding concept and objective of your Knowledge Management effort, then the Knowledge Portfolio is the total content you are seeking to manage. It represents the specific pieces and types of information that your company must effectively package and deliver to people who can act upon it as knowledge. This can include regulatory documents, release schedules, competitive intelligence, technical product specifications, et cetera.

The point of the Knowledge Portfolio is simple: Be selective. You don’t need to organize every bit and byte of information in your company to be a successful Knowledge Manager. You need to recognize that knowledge has relative value. Relative, that is, in terms of your company’s goals and objectives. If executive management has decided that customer service is what you’ll hang your hat on for the next few years, then knowing how to troubleshoot will be more important than knowledge of emerging markets.

Recalling the plight of Poe’s sailor, he was able to take effective action not because he read, digested, and understood the total complexity of the maelstrom around him. Rather, he found the pattern that was most important for what he wanted to accomplish—survival. Given this objective, he focused right in on what he needed to know to be successful. In other words, his Knowledge Portfolio was small, but focused, strategic, and effective.

While the Knowledge Architecture is the key concept of this book, the Knowledge Audit is the basic process that we’ll describe. By conducting a Knowledge Audit as we detail it, you’ll be able to identify three key focal points:

• The critical points in your business cycles where information must be effectively leveraged as knowledge
• The key content that makes up your Knowledge Portfolio
• The important Knowledge Workers who will use the content

Mapping these three focal points against each other gives you the initial picture of your Knowledge Portfolio. You will be able to see exactly when certain kinds of information become important and who uses that information to further the objectives of your company. With this picture, you can begin to implement a Knowledge Management strategy that sorts out the wheat from the chaff—or the rising water casks from the maelstrom around you.

We’d like you to treat this book as the first Handbook for Knowledge Managers. As such, we’ve gone light on the theory and spent our time with the "know how" aspects of using Knowledge Management to leverage Web technologies inside and outside the corporation.

We see CKOs and Knowledge Managers as parallel to and cooperating with the Chief Information Officer. In most companies, the CIO is in charge of the technology your company uses to capture, store, and access data. His or her job usually involves developing standards—maybe you’ve standardized on Unix servers with Oracle databases. It also involves controlling costs—deliver the best solution for the least amount of money.

However, the CIO generally doesn’t audit the "intellectual capital" (Thomas Stewart) of your organization and determine what the critical "information leverage points" (Thomas Davenport) are. It’s probably not her responsibility to know exactly how the information needs of a sales representative differ from those of a customer service representative. He may know that telephone-based customer-service reps need powerful workstations and high-speed LAN connections to local shared databases, but he may not know that an on-site technician uses product documentation at the same time she accesses a "Tips and Techniques" database.

Welcome to the world of the Knowledge Manager. At issue is a new set of core competencies within MIS. As you’ll find in this book, this is the world of auditing, brokering, and profiling knowledge —in short, concepts, methods, and tools for understanding what information your company needs to create, capture, and deliver well to compete. In the end, you’ll have a recipe for success for a Web-based Knowledge Management effort in your own company, and as you descend into the maelstrom, you’ll help others find that water cask that brings your company safely ashore.

This book is organized in five parts, and is based on our own experiences and findings as we put together a successful Web-based Knowledge Management project:

• Skills and Culture: The first deals with the specific "core competencies" necessary to be a Knowledge Manager and build a Corporate Culture dedicated to knowledge sharing: auditing, profiling, and brokering knowledge.
• People and Content: The second looks at those skills in action, and shows you how to envision your company, not as an organizational hierarchy, but as cooperative "Knowledge Centers." You’ll learn how to "organize around knowledge" by combining content and people into the basis for your Knowledge Architecture.
• Technology: The third section looks in detail at the technologies you may need to accomplish your knowledge management goals. We’ll describe the benefits and appropriate application of each.
• The Knowledge Architecture: In the fourth section, we show you how to "bring it all together" into a unified Knowledge Architecture. We’ll discuss translation of Knowledge Centers into a Web-based organization, including knowledge-based navigation strategies and other tactical issues surrounding the deployment of Web-based Knowledge Management.
• The CKO’s Checklist: Finally, we’ve provided a quick and easy checklist to help ensure a successful Knowledge Management initiative.