In the early 1980s, when Buckman Laboratories was scrambling to meet the rapidly changing needs of its customers, CEO Robert Buckman realized than an organization positioned for the future would have to be organized around knowledge—creating it, sharing it, and applying it—rather than around traditional corporate hierarchies and systems. He embraced this belief and created a knowledge-sharing culture among Buckman Labs’ 1400 associates serving in 80 countries. Buckman Labs become the undisputed pioneer and leader in implementing knowledge management.
Building a Knowledge-Driven Organization is a practical primer on how your managers and employees can move from “hoarding” knowledge in order to gain power to “sharing” it—building a global strategy that will allow your organization to respond faster than your competition to any customer’s need, anywhere. The book focuses on the hardest part of knowledge management—the people side—explaining exactly what it takes to contribute to a knowledge system. Buckman explains how to turn a fragmented, geographically dispersed group of people and information into a seamless array of knowledge that can be directed whenever and wherever it is needed. He reveals that the greatest challenges are not technical but political—and explains how you can effectively orchestrate a culture change in your organization, drawing from the hard-won lessons learned by Buckman Laboratories in implementing its award-winning knowledge systems.