The Social Network Toolkit – Patti Anklam

Knowledge is power. But where does knowledge come from? Patti Anklam looks at the role of social networks in generating and transferring knowledge in her new 100 page report, The Social Network Toolkit published by the Ark Group. She starts by providing some convincing evidence that most knowledge comes form people and those with strong social networks have access to the most knowledge and thus have the most power. This certainly resonates with my experience.

Patti quotes one study that found that 85% of people found business knowledge from other people and only 15% from systems. Those 15% were newcomers who had yet developed their networks. Yet, most organization flip their investments in the opposite direction, over investing in systems that do not get properly used and under investing in promoting the networks where real knowledge is transferred.

The book is organized around answering these questions:

What are the recent rends that have further elevated the importance of social networks?

Why should manages care about social networks?

What do they need to know about social networks and what practices best support their growth and development?

What tools are available to enable social networks?

How can you successfully integrate social network management into an organization to align with its business practices and gain maximum business value?

There is a lot of great substantive content here. I have been looking at this issue for some time but learned a lot from reading her report. I liked her chart on the three stages of KM. First there was a focus on putting knowledge in to documents to make it explicit. Then, the focus shifted to supporting the sharing of tacit knowledge. Now, with the focus of social networks, there is a shift to emergent knowledge. This third stage is where organizations need to be to remain competitive today.

Here are some more details about ordering the Social Network Toolkit from her blog. Patti also teaches workshops on the topic. Her next Master Class will be in Chicago, October 6-7.