I’m frequently asked to take on projects in which specialist functions in organisations have been inundated with requests for training, information and help from other parts of the business. These small teams, with relatively low numbers of people compared to their potential impact on day to day work, are in charge of driving forward some change or other. The larger parts of the business in terms of their employee numbers – marketing, sales and operations often employing thousands of people in hundreds of different locations – need to know what to do and when, why and how... and they need it quickly. The ‘man who knows’ is suddenly in the unenviable position of having to satisfy the demands for knowledge from those who now recognise that what he’s been banging on about for years actually makes sense – or at least makes sense to the senior management team. The birth of these projects often goes through a fairly long gestation period. First the organisation takes the bold step of actually creating a post responsible for sustainability, or talent management, or consumer understanding, or innovation or even, knowledge management. This individual battles against a tide of indifference, just another voice from the ivory tower speaking to the disinterested and decidedly unconverted. Eventually – usually having read about it in the Financial Times – a senior business leader will recall somewhere at the back of their mind that ‘hang on, haven’t we got someone who does that’ and the poor lonely furrow ploughed by this individual suddenly has a few new boot prints in it along with a some money to expand the team and a request to put a paper to the board. (Of course if the head honcho remains unconvinced they will ask for a paper to a working party at which point the furrow just got lonelier!) Our specialist – let’s call him or her a technocrat – recruits more like-minded individuals – a kind of phalanx of mini-me’s who make our lonely technocrat feel a lot less isolated and mean the strategies, position papers, models, toolkits, policies and assessment models spring forth with greater and greater volume. The management board, true to their word, pass an edict down the line: “You must be more sustainable/talent friendly/consumer centric/innovative/connected (delete as applicable or insert your own version of this in an available space – any available space.) That’s when the ordure/ventilation device interface takes place. The phone starts ringing and when they get a moment from answering the calls, they ring someone like me with a plaintive cry for help and a deadline that’s already passed. What’s happened here? Well ideas whose time have yet to come, eventually arrive – right time, right place and usually the wrong strategy. Not in terms of the ideas themselves – the output of our technocrat is generally theoretically robust. The models, position papers, policies, strategies and toolkits are things of beauty to be marvelled at and admired. But no one thought about a simple stage in the process: “How do we get the poor bloody infantry to do this?” Somehow, the desire of the newly converted CEO has been transformed into downward pressure on already stressed managers who are expected to do all the things they were doing before and implement this new stuff. Our technocrat and their team of mini-technocrats have a million ways of measuring the fact that the guys at the sharp end are doing not a great deal about it, but few tools and – most importantly skills – to enable them to adopt new behaviours and adapt to the changed reality. Of course there’s some stuff on the intranet – the wiki, the blog, the glossary of TLA’s and the portal where all the technocratic detail can be read (assuming a long period of sick leave and a bout of insomnia lasting several weeks) but in truth the great myth of knowledge management is quickly exposed. This stuff only works if you’re really interested in the subject and have more than a layman’s level of understanding in the first place. Eventually what’s commissioned is some kind of training or education programme – an approach which recognises that as well as technical information and research results, those entrusted with making this step forward a reality, are not the specialists with the encyclopaedic knowledge of the field, but the artisans with the merest idea that there exists a field to be knowledgeable about. The programme is developed – with outside help or not – but we hit another challenge. The technocrats are nothing if not purists. They have lots and lots (and lots and lots and lots more) research to talk people through and a slide deck of not less than 200 slides with no fewer than 10 bullet points per slide (preferably in wildly differing fonts none of which are larger than 12 point) which simply must be covered. Discussions, case studies, exercises, scenarios and action planning (let alone action learning) is unnecessary or simply undesirable. After all, what could people who don’t have at least two post graduate qualifications in this subject and who have never spoken at the Helsinki conference possibly contribute to the debate? And as for action plans? Pah! We have a toolkit for the fourteen stage implementation process – why can they not use that? This maybe rather overstated, but just about all of these have happened in one form or another on projects I have been involved in. Sometimes, two or more of the most trying examples have happened on the same project. What can we possibly do about it? The idea of knowledge management in organisations is usually a conversation between the converted who disagree on a point of fundamental principle. It has an almost theological aspect as the big dogs sniff each other in ever decreasing circles and the number of angels who may or may not be able to dance on a pin head is endlessly debated. What’s actually needed is a process of engaging with people and jointly working out how something can be achieved – let’s call it not knowledge management but wisdom management. At the heart of wisdom management is a recognition of what knowledge is required, by whom and in what circumstance. It is also a process by which our main aim is to inspire – to create a desire to learn more and to catalogue our collected wisdom in a way which the intrigued may find that which they need at each level of their interest in the subject. To quote Channing (and many others in slightly different words) “The role of great minds is to make others great... to rouse them from lethargy and aid them to judge for themselves”. This all sounds well and good but in practice? There seems to be a gap in the behaviour of some (but not all) of those with great knowledge and understanding of a subject, a belief that teaching just a part of what they know is not part of the plan. Perhaps having a brain the size of a planet makes it difficult to be confronted with levels of understanding which are at the most basic level. It may seem to them like Stephen Hawking teaching a science GCSE to the hard of thinking. It is not a universal problem though. I watched with amazement this week the wildlife documentary ‘Land of the Lost Volcano’. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00mq3p1/Lost_Land_of_the_Volcano_Episode_1/ In episode one, a possibly deadly snake was found in the dark of the jungle not far from the camp of our scientists. The snake expert was called for who enthusiastically chased after this metre and a half venom delivery system armed with nothing more than a bent stick. As he dashed through the undergrowth he told us that he could only tell if it was a deadly snake by the number of scales round its eyes. He caught the snake, held it to the camera and explained how this snake had an extra scale between eye and nostril so it wasn’t the deadly version but a harmless if pretty aggressive alternative. One scale! It was a metre and half long and covered in them! That kind of erudition, lightly worn and delivered with joyful enthusiasm inspires and excites. This extremely skilled scientist was there on our screen because of his natural combination of incredible knowledge and his astounding ability as a communicator. An enthusiasm and desire to share their passion is precisely where a proportion of those I have called technocrats are found wanting. Bolstered by their position, their learning and their expert status they have lost the fundamental ability to share wisdom and inspire others to learn. As training and development people we are given the job of putting the inspiration back in. Perhaps we should have trainers, communicators and those who inspire in those roles in the first place. I would like to make a plea to all organisations – set up specialist departments by all means – they will push forward your business in its thinking and professionalism. But please don’t ever set one up without recruiting at least one trainer with a passion to share their wisdom with the wider enterprise as a central part of the expert team.