Knowledge is like fine wine

Knowledge is like fine wine, begins The Knowledge Translation Toolkit , edited by Gavin Bennett and Nasreen Jessani (www.sagepublications.com). “The researcher brews it, the scientific paper bottles it, the peer review tastes it, the journal sticks a label on it, and archive systems store it carefully in a cellar.”

That is all splendid, but there is just one small problem, the book points out: Wine is only useful when somebody drinks it, and wine in a bottle does not quench thirst. So, what is the solution? KT, or knowledge translation, which ‘opens the bottle, pours the wine into a glass, and serves it.'

Stating that KM or knowledge management is about creating, identifying, capturing, and sharing knowledge – about getting ‘the right knowledge, in the right place, at the right time' to influence an action or a decision – the authors present ‘the KM strategy' as a triangle with people, processes, and technology.

They remind that technology is an enabler and a method, not a saviour nor a strategy. “The right technological tools can help us organise, store, and access our explicit knowledge as well as helping to connect people and furthering their abilities to share their tacit knowledge. However, technology alone cannot be the beginning and end of a KM strategy.”

Video messages

Take, for instance, the ‘tobacco to bamboo' case in Kenya, reported in the book. It speaks of how growers are educated about economically viable alternatives to tobacco cultivation. This involved filming interviews with small-scale farmers, and the videos documented problems associated with tobacco production and farmers' optimism about the potential benefits of switching to bamboo. “Farmers are also being taught to craft bamboo, in order to gain new skills and income before their first crop harvest. The video documentary may be broadcast on national television to transfer the knowledge to the general public.”

The book underlines that while shooting, editing, dubbing a video (all digitally) are now technically simple, flexible, and quick, doing all this well is highly specialised, complex, and time-consuming. “The most effective ‘message' videos are no more than nine minutes long, preferably less. Even with a tight screenplay, this can involve several hours of field footage taken at several dozen different sites, later edited (over days) into several hundred separate but interlocking clips. Serious computer power is needed to process many gigabytes of source and final material.”

Radio reach

To those who are keen on ‘bridging the know-do gap' the authors offer a key insight that, despite all the high-tech visual options, radio remains an extremely wide-reaching medium — in urban areas and among affluent audiences because they can listen (gather information) while doing something else (driving, ironing, washing up) and in rural areas and among poor audiences because it is the most available, most accessible, and lowest cost source of news or entertainment.

Instructive, in this context, is the story of EQUINet in South Africa, about the success of its radio spots and debates on fair financing for health. The show reached an estimated audience of about 8 lakh across the country, and the mp3 file was also downloaded from more than 40 hosts.

Educative material that can enthuse techies to engage in transformational knowledge work!

Driving through ambiguity

Go and mentor people, and you might end up becoming a mentee and learn even more, says T. G. C. Prasad in Unusual People Do Things Differently (www.penguinbooksindia.com). An example he mentions is of thirty-two-year-old Preetam Charan Anand — a technologist for a power management group in Texas Instruments based in Bangalore with about fifteen approved US patents to his credit and five more in the pipeline.

Preetam manages the technology practice, a horizontal that cuts across three verticals, viz. linear power, compute power, and storage power, one learns. “He specialises in VLSI design and nano technology. Working along with a team of designers, architects and engineers, Preetam helped architect the processing of information based on electrical impulses generated under the touch screen of any cell phone.”

Teacher-student

To the author, Preetam explains the intricacies of power consumption – such as designing the power management unit in such a way that the CPU, the real power-hogger — combined with peripheral devices like the graphical processing unit, memory and interface controlling unit — does not drain the battery.

Preetam speaks about his mentee Vikram — who studied at IIT, Delhi, and later at Stanford University — and how he has learnt, too, from Vikram. “Vikram has clarity of thought, a wonderful ability to grasp ideas and he has great appreciation for technology. He can communicate beautifully and I learn this from him. I think mentoring is a two-way lane…”

Interestingly, Preetam has also become a mentor for a distance education course on theology offered by Dayalbagh Educational Institute in the city. Theology? Yes, because Preetam is open to learning along with the mentees. “We ask each other questions. If we know the answers, we share them; if not, we take assignments, research and teach each other… I cannot have answers to every question. I cannot keep downloading. I have to upload matter into my grey cells and my mentees help do that.” As long as one is passionate about and has a basic understanding of the topic, anyone can become a mentor, advises Preetam. And, in his opinion, the real perspective is gained when we start debating and exchanging views.

High maintenance people

One other chapter in the book, titled ‘ambiguity-direction grid,' opens by tracing the role of N. S. Parthasarathy — a cofounder and CEO of the infrastructure and testing services at MindTree — in running a business, armed with commonsense and an ability to break complex problems into simple parts.

Partha, as the author reminisces, wanted to hire people who could handle ambiguity; people who are comfortable charting their own direction. Presenting ambiguity on the x-axis, low to high, and direction, on the y-axis, from ‘seeks' to ‘defines,' the chapter depicts four quadrants.

People in the left bottom box are ‘high maintenance,' says Partha, because they can drain off management energy and consume time. “It doesn't mean that those people are not intelligent or they don't work hard. They may be high-calibre people and great performers too, but their ability to work in ambiguous situations, outside a defined structure, is limited.”

Blazers, makers, followers

The author's take is that leadership positions often go to ‘path-blazers' – the top right quadrant people who can offer direction and who can comfortably steer the wheel in ambiguous situations. At the top left are path-makers who can define structure in chaos because they tend to be uncomfortable with the lack of direction, describes Prasad. “For example people in quality, business planning departments, etc, try to bring sanity to chaos. They like to create plans, processes, systems, and methods to improve efficiency and effectiveness.”

And at the bottom right are ‘path-followers' who can live with ambiguity but find it difficult to create direction. The IT application services industry in India is a great example, notes the author. “Most people in the software industry can live with complex situations, solve problems and can adapt to new technologies quickly, but they have not been able to achieve a pre-eminent spot in steering global technology direction or successfully create world-class IT software products.”

Inspiring collection of essays about achievers you can relate to.

Tailpiece

At a Bellary check-post:

“Cop: Your ID describes you as VP-Data Mining.”

“Motorist: That's right!”

“Cop: But the boot is empty. Where is the ore?”

> dmurali@thehindu.co.in

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