When the digital gens meet the KMers

By Jerry Ash
Smart People magazine.

For 175 years we have been taught that people are hired not for what they know, but for what they can do. They’ve been trained, handed job descriptions and told their futures depended on performing to the standards. Without regard for what people have already learned, we have been schooled and trained in the company way.

You know the old yarn: “The new hire is a college graduate, but now the real learning begins!” In that scenario, having completed an education – any education – only means we’ve passed a test that indicates we are teachable.

For almost two centuries the top-down industrial model of management has been the only model of management – the one taught in MBA schools and applied to all work, even when it doesn’t make sense. It works on the assembly line, but it is a silly way to run a hospital or any knowledge-driven enterprise.

This has been the way for dozens of generations. It’s, like, in the genes. And reinforced by a teaching system where students are taught but don’t learn, absorb but don’t think.

The knowledge factor
The Industrial Era is over. Sure, industry still exists. But it no longer rules the economy. The command and control way of managing still exists but does not make sense in the knowledge-driven economy.

During the past 55 years, courageous pioneers of Knowledge Management (KM) have been hard at work analyzing the Knowledge Factor – observing a natural shift in which people are in transition from chattel to knowledge worker. Management guru Peter Drucker first uttered the phrase “knowledge worker” in 1954, a lifetime before today’s Digital Generation.

From the management point of view, KM advocates have been studying, analyzing, theorizing, experimenting, applying lessons learned for the last 30 years. They have spent fortunes to assemble a deep body of knowledge about the Knowledge Factor to exploit knowledge in the workplace. Many of these initiatives have been hugely successful, mostly in mega companies in the global setting. And, surprisingly, heavy industries are among the winners as they become aware of themselves as knowledge-driven enterprises.

All knowledge originates in the human mind and it can’t really be managed. Rather, in a savvy enterprise, management gives way to facilitation, with command and control giving way to a self-motivated, knowledge seeking, sharing, collaborating environment.

The most important realization in Corporate KM has been that people are the key. And the most important tool for unlocking and extracting value from human knowledge is the community of practice (CoP).

The people factor
Unfortunately, ordinary smart people have not been privy to the dialogues. We’ve been programmed to stay out of corporate’s business and mind our own (unless we work in research and development or something like that). And our experience reminds us to stay in our own domain; outsiders – even inside the company – are unwelcome in other business units.

Further, rarely has the dialogue stretched beyond the workplace to life or vice versa.

The digital factor
Meanwhile, the digital factor has caught fire, bringing people to the Internet to seek, learn, share, even collaborate and accomplish great things.

Digitals are engaged in the rush to social networks where they tell all to friends and strangers, and yet they lack trust in communities of practice (CoPs) set up by the hierarchy back on the farm.

Into this clash of cultures rides the Digital Generation – Don Tapscott’s wired warriors who are now ages 11 to 32. They’ve never known a world that wasn’t digital and they don’t understand a world that has yet to adjust to its great truths and principles.

There must be a grand plan. Business really wants to change, but it doesn’t know how. The old ways are so ingrained into the structure of the company and the culture of both company and the people it hurts. But here come the Digitals, unencumbered by the past and intent on the future. And older generations are catching up digital.

As usual, this latest generation and the changing generations will be ridiculed but they won’t be broken. After surviving the hierarchy of formal education and learning in the self-directed, democratic world of the Internet, Net Geners simply won’t cower to command and control.

Having dabbled in knowledge management for tens of years, business and industry will be learning from these Net Geners who are the future of everything. The savvy companies, the ones who have cherished the promise of knowledge management, will be more than ready to catch up digital.

The age factor
Because they will meet in the digital space, the new culture will also learn from the old. The older generation(s) really are catching up digital. And the Digital Generation, contrary to popular belief, are veritable sponges of knowledge. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that Mom and Dad, the Boomers, aren’t already learning from the kids. And pay attention to the grandparents too. Tapscott says the Digitals are very much family oriented, making the exchange of knowledge much more likely than many have predicted.

I recently started a competitive tennis league for men age 60-90. As I gathered contact information I asked for their email addresses. All but one had one. And the one who didn’t was embarrassed and said he would be getting an address soon! Now, email may be so yesterday, but these guys are wired and the young of mind are capable of changing their ways. Yes, Boomers+ have weathered change during their lifetimes and they still know how to adjust to it. Many, like me, welcome it.

The magazine factor
Smart People magazine jumps into that cauldron of change and synergy.We are bringing knowledging to the mainstream and we are marrying it with the dynamics of a Digital Generation that has never known a life without knowledge sharing, learning, collaborating and innovating.

The Digitals need to know what the pioneers who have gone before them have been doing to clear the way for thinking differently. And, the pioneers need to know the great opportunities riding the wave of the New Gen.

In the spirit of the Digital Age, Smart People magazine will be different – a new media publication. It has been developed collaboratively with the help of 60 volunteers in an open space online. It is more than a magazine with feedback channels now at work in several of the major social networks – Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin, Twitter, Xing and Ning. We are offering Webinars and talk radio featuring some of our authors. And we are working on a virtual reality Meeting and Conference Center which will become the first resident of our Smart People Online Community.

Together, we will change the way we live, laugh, learn and earn our livelihoods.