Measurement Matters: Are We In The Midst Of A Technology Gap?

I've written about the impending retirements we're facing in our industry. It's not just in our industry, it's a demographic phenomenon. It's been acknowledged, studied, written about, re-acknowledged and affirmed.

It's real and we know it. OK, so the recent crash may have pushed some retirements back, but that will only delay the inevitable. We know we'd better do something about it. So what do we do?

Last year, I wrote about the need for an industry knowledge base. I mentioned the use of Content Management Systems like Tikiwiki, Joomla! and Drupal as tools vital to capturing and preserving the knowledge leaving the industry. I'm talking about the knowledge that is learned through experience, not books. Some call it "tacit knowledge." Since then, I've spent a lot of time learning about these tools. When I first discovered them, I thought I had struck gold. I thought I had the answer ... "This is it. Everyone will record all they know using this tool, and the problem will be solved." Visionary? Perhaps. Optimistic? Likely. Realistic? Not even close.

Let's digress for a minute. Remember Star Trek? It's a piece of Americana. I was captivated by Star Trek (color me a geek, it's OK.), but not the fancy, high production value, well-written, recent incarnations. I was captivated by the campy, fake orange sky, Styrofoam rocks, red-shirt guy is always the first to die version - the original. So what does this have to do with the current problem? Two words: "Mind Link." I was always intrigued with the idea of the Mind Link. You just touch a person's head and you instantly know what they're thinking. The Mind Link would be great for knowledge transfer. Imagine being able to "download" the contents of one of your company's "graybeards" into a database that you could access anytime you chose.

That was what I thought I had when I found Content Management Systems. I figured I could set one of these up, instruct the "graybeards" to start "downloading" everything they know onto wiki pages, discussion forums and file galleries. It would be a database of all past knowledge and experience. It was the Mind Link. problem solved, right? Wrong.

Tools such as Groupware or Content Management Systems are part of what has been termed "Web 2.0" or, more aptly in our case, "Enterprise 2.0." "Enterprise 2.0" is a concept - it has been defined best by Andrew McAfee of the Harvard Business School as "the use of emergent social software platforms within companies, or between companies and their partners or customers." "Social software" enables people to collaborate and form online communities through Internet-based communication. "Emergent" means that the software is free-form and allows the patterns and structure inherent in people's interactions to become visible over time.

This is good stuff, really good stuff. It's a game-changing technology. In fact, much of our industry has attempted to implement it in various forms. But is it accepted? How are organizations doing in implementing this tool? Based on the feedback I've received, not well. I've implemented this type of social software because it lends itself so well to project management, particularly Joint Industry Projects, where people from different companies are spread over a large geographical region.