It’s always nice when two personal interests intersect. Obviously, I’m passionate about knowledge management in the biotech industry. Over the past year or so, I have become increasingly interested in human-focused business models. In this pursuit, I have been reading quite a few books about businesses that do this well. One of the main commonalities of these companies is their ability to trust their employees and be open and transparent with information (financial and otherwise).
“We used to operate with the implicit assumption that operators weren’t trustworthy, and that trust must be earned. We now start by completely trusting everyone, and it’s up to the individual to lose trust based on his or her actions. It sounds like a trivial shift in perspective, but it’s had a big impact.”
From Humanocracy 3
From my experience in the biotech industry, many groups like to hold on to their information and not openly share with other groups. This probably has several causes: the idea of job security, poorly defined information that requires “interpretation”, competitiveness within the company, and more. What this has done is created even more segregated silos within a company. The possessiveness of information ownership prevents companies from reaching true knowledge management. This is not just true for the biotech industry.
“Managers should work hard to ensure that they are not creating silos within the company that create an us vs. them mentality or impede communication in any way. This is unfortunately a natural tendency and needs to be actively fought. How can it possibly help Tesla for depts to erect barriers between themselves or see their success as relative within the company instead of collective? We are all in the same boat. Always view yourself as working for the good of the company and never your dept.”
Elon Musk 1
Industry leaders are realizing the need for good knowledge management, which has another benefit in reducing data “busy” work and allowing workers to truly focus on analysis, innovation, and creativity.
“want excellent people to be working on insights and innovation and not on Excel and data aggregation, what does it mean instead of where is it and how do I connect it”
From Sanofi CEO, Paul Hudson 2
Good Knowledge Management will involve tools and processes to help better manage internal information, but it will likely also require a corporate culture shift toward openness and trust.
- Bariso, Justin. “Why Intelligent Minds Like Elon Musk and Steve Jobs Embrace the ‘No Silo Rule’.” Inc.com, Inc., 28 Oct. 2020, www.inc.com/justin-bariso/why-intelligent-minds-like-elon-musk-steve-jobs-embrace-no-silo-rule.html.
- Fortune. “COVID-19 Vaccine: Sanofi CEO Shares Company’s Progress – Leadership Next.” Spotify, Fortune, 27 Oct. 2020, [open.spotify.com/episode/4SwF1uT27K6Hc5CIXyC2LP?si=yJLDYZhlTsKMzNpf8d4xnw](https%3A%2F%2Fopen.spotify.com%2Fepisode%2F4SwF1uT27K6Hc5CIXyC2LP%3Fsi](http://open.spotify.com/episode/4SwF1uT27K6Hc5CIXyC2LP?si=yJLDYZhlTsKMzNpf8d4xnw](https%3A%2F%2Fopen.spotify.com%2Fepisode%2F4SwF1uT27K6Hc5CIXyC2LP%3Fsi).
- Hamel, Gary, and Michele Zanini. Humanocracy: Creating Organizations as Amazing as the People inside Them. Harvard Business Review, 2020.