{{B}} Introducing T-shaped management{{/B}}
Despite their best efforts, most companies continue to squander what may be their greatest asset in today's knowledge economy. I am referring to the wealth of expertise, ideas and latent insights that lie scattered across or deeply embedded in their organisations. This seems a great shame, because capitalising on those intellectual resources - using existing knowledge to improve performance or combining strands of knowledge to create something altogether new - can help companies respond to a surprising array of challenges, from fending off smaller, nimbler rivals to integrating businesses that have been forced together in a merger.
{{U}} (9) {{/U}} I suggest another approach, one that requires managers to change their behaviour and the way they spend their time. The approach is novel but, when properly implemented, quite powerful. I call it T-shaped management.
T-shaped management relies on a new kind of executive, one who breaks out of the traditional corporate hierarchy to share knowledge freely across the organisation (the horizontal part of the T) while remaining fiercely committed to individual business unit performance (the vertical part). {{U}}(10) {{/U}} Although this tension is most acute for heads of business units, any T- shaped manager with operating unit obligations must wrestle with it.
You might ask, why rely so heavily on managers to share knowledge? Why not just institute a state-of-the-art knowledge management system? The trouble is that those systems are best at transferring explicit knowledge; for example, the template needed to perform a complicated but routine task. {{U}}(11) {{/U}} In fact, this implicit knowledge sharing is crucial to the success of innovation-driven companies. Furthermore, merely moving documents around can never engender the degree of collaboration that is needed to generate new insights. {{U}}(12) {{/U}}
Effective T-shaped managers will benefit companies of almost any size, but they're particularly crucial in large corporations where operating units have been granted considerable autonomy. Although giving business units greater freedom generally increases accountability and spurs innovation, it can also lead to competition between units, which may hoard, rather than share, expertise. {{U}}(13) {{/U}}
So, how do you successfully cultivate T-shaped managers and capitalise on the value they can create? Energy giant BP Amoco provides some provocative answers. My in-depth examination of their management practices highlighted five specific types of value that T-shaped managers can generate. {{U}}(14) {{/U}} It is important to follow these, because the benefits of T-shaped management will not be realised if the concept is poorly implemented. Senior executives must put in place mechanisms that simultaneously promote and discipline managers' knowledge-sharing activities.
A However, direct personal contact is more typically needed to effectively transfer the kind of knowledge that must be creatively applied to particular business problems or opportunities.
B For that, companies really have to bring people together to brainstorm.
C Many companies have tried, with mixed success, to leverage this underused asset by centralising knowledge management functions or by investing heavily in knowledge management technology.
D The entire history of the T-shaped manager is one of evolution, a process that continues to this day.
E The successful T-shaped manager must learn to live with, and ultimately thrive within, the stress created by this dual responsibility.
F By encouraging collaboration, a T-shaped management system can be a powerful counterbalance to such negative behaviour.
G Their experience also suggests guidelines for creating an environment in which T-shaped managers will flourish.
H I am referring to the wealth of expertise, ideas and latent insights that lie scattered across or deeply embedded in their organisations.