24 Nov 03 @ 5:42 pm
Piercing the Wall of Rational Ignorance
The November issue of Information Outlook contains an article we co-authored with a client, Barbara Wilson. Barbara manages the Knowledge Center, a shared services function at Rohm and Haas, a Fortune 500 chemical company. The article describes the communication and stakeholder management strategy we created to increase awareness and use of the Knowledge Center among Rohm and Haas employees.
After interviewing a variety of users and potential users, we arrived at three conclusions that would guide the communication strategy.
- Employees like Knowledge Center employees more than they like Knowledge Center technology. Consistent with McLuhan’s oft-quoted maxim—“the medium is the message”—we recognized the need to more effectively leverage Knowledge Center employees as users’ preferred information source.
- The Knowledge Center was seen more as an internal vendor than a strategic partner. This orientation commoditized the Knowledge Center’s services and promoted very transactional relationships. (This is an issue that many of our IT and other shared services clients are currently tackling.)
- The barrier against greater awareness was a “wall of rational ignorance.” Users and potential users were making a choice to not attend to Knowledge Center messages—because: (1) they were too busy, and (2) they could not clearly anticipate a compelling return on their investment of time and attention. The implication: We could not achieve the Knowledge Center’s objectives merely by making its messages “louder.”
The article, which you can download here in PDF format, elaborates the communication strategy we prescribed to address these issues.
posted in category(s): Emerging Case Studies
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