Dump the blame game and look to the future

Few areas promised quite as much 'efficiency' as Knowledge Management. If only we could learn to see information as our main asset and share a bit more, the KM revolutionaries would say, we could become kings and queens of a new Knowledge Economy.

Where did it all go wrong? The IT professional, of course. Delegates and exhibitors at last week's KM 2003 conference in Amsterdam were falling over themselves to talk about past geeky misdemeanours.

"We don't deal with the IT people any more," said one vendor, who shall remain nameless. "You'll never get them to understand the business."

There's a lot of this kind of talk around. IT companies are often convinced that, if only they could talk to the chief executive, sales would rocket. The small-minded obsessives in the IT department are holding back the future, they say.

OK. So all of us know IT professionals from the Planet Zorg, who simply cannot mix with Earthlings. We have all seen data centres that are the eclectic product of years of bodging, where shelves bulge with redundant kit that was once the Next Big Thing.

But let's also recognise that few businesses historically really understood the role of IT in the value chain.

What we need is to dump the blame game and look at future opportunities. IT-led business projects may often be a recipe for disaster, but it's difficult to envisage a business-led project that does not have IT at its core.

Sam Marshall, knowledge management specialist at Unilever, says that a successful project ought to be 20 per cent IT, 30 per cent processes and 50 per cent people.

But those making a success of projects, like his company, understand that only a harmonious relationship between the three can really work. Jaw-jaw is better than war-war.