denotes premium content | May 24 2013 Inside Knowledge Magazine /Knowledge Management Magazine Archive
Volume 14 Issue 2
Features
Delivering results
One of the strengths of Accenture is our ability to collaborate with highly specialised colleagues around the globe to provide the best knowledge-based business and technology solutions for our clients. With a workforce of 190,000 Accenture employees have an opportunity to build relationships, share knowledge and develop ideas with colleagues who serve clients in more than 120 countries.
Our efforts are part of a new multi-pronged initiative, Accenture Collaboration 2.0, which enables Accenture employees to connect with anyone at any place and at any time. By sharing resources and knowledge, Accenture professionals help clients achieve high performance by delivering more effective solutions for their business issues.
Change reaction
Most organisations have applied change management techniques to their business model and continue to develop an ongoing process in response to an increasing demand for change. Organisations have also become adept at recognising the emerging requirement to change, managing successful change within their business and staying vigilant for the next requirement to implement change.
The real game begins
A new generation of semantic web tools, search engines and search engine optimisers (SEOs) have waded into these new oceans of social media data with their own commercial agendas and secret algorithms promising to produce meaningful infocologies from the info-chaos. Even the most fervent believers in this great semantic technology research project would not deny that it’s a big one – and a very expensive one, too. They would also have to admit that its realisation will take an unquantifiably long time and that currently there is no proof that the technology will work, when scaled up to internet size.
The thing about all varieties of social media is that it is the creation of the intelligence of its users who are learning how to write, to record and to curate themselves and have as a result created what could already be the world’s greatest knowledge resource. Everybody agrees that the name of the game is to find ways of tapping into the flow of social media data in order to extract meaning and intelligence.
Getting to grips with document capture
Unsurprisingly, paper still plays a significant role in today’s business environment. This is generating an increased use of document capture technology and the term is now common place in many organisations. But there are still a number of errors being made in approaches to capture, which means organisations are not reaping the full benefits of their investment.
Regulars
The last word
So everyone’s convinced of the organisational (and personal) relevance of sharing their knowledge before, during and after their endeavours. Everyone’s ready and willing to share with and learn from each other. And where there’s a will, there’s a way, right?
I am in a cold Glaswegian board room. I’m witnessing the potential demise of a recently formed team of directors. The team has universally disappointed their managing director (MD) on a continuous basis for several months now. The atmosphere is frigid and words are being spoken through clenched teeth. No one sits near the MD as the chairs at the end of the table where he is sitting are in arm-swinging distance. This MD is physically expressive.
Anti-social behaviour
While being shown around one of my younger daughter’s potential grammar schools last night I was struck by how anachronistic the sixth formers looked in their business suits. I found myself wondering how many of them would end up in jobs that required them to wear suits when they leave university in a few years time. I then began musing on some of our assumptions about what the term ‘businesslike’ means and how things are changing. We have disparaged the soft social skills of relationship building as being un-businesslike, in favour of dispassionate coldness. Maybe with the advent of social media, we should think again.
The Gurteen perspective
I love quotations and have many on my website, although I only add them if they appeal to me in some way. I usually come across one or two each week, so over ten years I have accumulated approximately 1,000 quotes.
As I say on my website, quotes are extremely effective at capturing and concisely communicating thoughts and ideas. They can be inspirational but, more importantly, can help us reveal and assess the assumptions, values and beliefs that underlie the ways in which we perceive the world.
