Computers can help. But there are many obstacles and complexities. First of all, if building a knowledge base means that the professional practitioner must do extra work, it won t happen. Few organizations are sufficiently enlightened to encourage knowledge recording, so there is no perceived payoff for the individual who tries to cooperate with the knowledge gathering process and a significant downside, in terms of the additional effort. Second, we pay people to be bottlenecks.
Bottlenecks rise in importance in the organization.
They are generally reluctant to lose that status. Since it is clear to them that knowledge-sharing eliminates bottlenecks, they are unlikely to cooperate with the process. Third, knowing isn t enough. It s the translation of knowledge into better products and services that counts. They must be thinking about developing the potential of the individual members of their organization.