First of all, why bother if things are already good enough? Well, it all starts by thinking on the organization’s goals. If we just aim to be “good enough”, then there is no need to worry now about KM since the company will continue to operate without it. There is one caveat to that, though. If other organizations are gaining competitive advantage because of having a proper KM culture, the moment we realise that we should implement it may be too late even to be “good enough”, or the cost to regain the competitive advantage will be too high compared to the gradual introduction of such a KM culture.

Much related to the previous, I find this quote by Jim Collins in “Good to great”:

“Good is the enemy of great [...]The vast majority of companies never become great, precisely because the vast majority become quite good - and that is their main problem.”

Therefore, if our organization pursues excellence, knowledge management must be taken seriously. Not having a proper optimization of the intellectual capital hinders the company performance, making the achievement of excellence more difficult than it should be.

Finally, there is an important threat when knowledge management is not used properly for decision making. Let’s see what Prusak and Davenport say in “Working Knowledge”:

“Just as the value of quality is really the cost of poor quality, the value of knowledge equals the cost of stupidity. Just think of all the poor decisions managers have made in our organization, and how much richer the firm would be if the right knowledge had been applied to those decisions! Then think of how short your career would be in the organization if you attempted to measure the cost of stupidity.”

“Good to great”, by Jim Collins

"Working Knowledge", by Prusak and Davenport

Image by Pixabay

https://pixabay.com/en/clouds-weather-sky-atmosphere-1701660/