Efficiency Without Relationships is Worthless

Efficiency in the Context of Relationships? Priceless..

by sanchome

Companies who once freely shared information with their customers, suppliers and channel partners are becoming more elusive and closed. They are locking down knowledge as if it were cash, not sharing nearly as much anymore. This is hurting them and everyone they do business with pretty quickly. As a result entire groups of companies risk coming to a grinding halt

If anything, opening up and sharing even more knowledge, and sharing it aggressively, freely and fluidly is what's needed. What's going on today however is a blind focus only on efficiency to the exclusion of anything else. Efficiency will not save any company from a recession but a strong network of knowledge sharing can help.

Efficiency without relationships is worthless.

Efficiency in the context of relationships is priceless.

Antidote for the Knowledge Recession

Let's face it, many of our customers, companies we partner with and even our suppliers have a crisis of confidence going on. What's the best path of a lack of confidence?

Knowledge and lots of it.

All of us can point back in our past and recite those teachers and professors who took an exceptional interest in our success. They were known for their passion for knowledge and for freely sharing it. My sixth grade social studies teacher showed how research could unshackle you and take you places you could never go as an 11 year old, yet you could go to the farthest reaches of the globe through research. There was a statistics professor in college who showed how what many students see as arcane and dry science was actually fascinating and alive with insights just waiting to be discovered when applied to mountains of data. These teachers were on a mission, and they succeed.

"Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher."
– Japanese proverb

While websites, content management or knowledge management systems can't match the impact these committed teachers had on so many lives, their worth ethic and values need to be the foundation of how your company averts a knowledge recession. We all need to step up and freely share knowledge to make our customers stronger by making them more informed. They will be more capable of weathering this economic downturn as a result.

Bottom line:

Re-think how you are making your customers, suppliers and partners stronger by sharing knowledge.

From the most simplistic portal to the most sophisticated knowledge management systems, averting a knowledge recession takes a deliberate effort to break down the walls of fear that are starting to freeze companies from working with each other.

Courtesy – Louis Columbus at Expert Access