Other strategy consulting companies report different problems with electronic document systems. For example, after subject experts at one firm contributed documents to electronic libraries, they were flooded with callers asking very basic questions. Two companies that we studied have scrapped their investment in electronic knowledge databases; their existing databases are used simply to connect people.
Similarly, firms that rely on codification have run into trouble by overinvesting in person-to-person systems. When they overinvest in this way, they undermine their value proposition—reliable systems at reasonable prices—as well as the economics of reuse. That’s because their people may feel encouraged to develop a novel solution to a problem even when a perfectly good solution already exists in the electronic repository. Unnecessary innovations are expensive: programming and then debugging new software, for instance, eats a lot of resources. And person-to-person knowledge sharing involves expensive travel and meeting time; those costs dilute the advantage that is created when codified knowledge is reused.
Companies that straddle the two strategies may also find themselves with an unwieldy mix of people. Having both inventors and implementers rubbing elbows can be deadly. The downfall of CSC Index, the consulting company that invented the reengineering concept in the early 1990s, underscores how serious this problem can be.
The founders of what was originally known simply as Index had strong backgrounds in IT systems. Success with reengineering, however, catapulted the company into the general management arena. It then tried to leverage its newfound access to the CEO by aggressively hiring senior consultants from established strategy consulting firms. It also started to recruit M.B.A.s from leading business schools. Soon the firm had two populations: an old guard that focused on IT systems and had strong implementation skills, and a new guard that focused on corporate strategy and had strong conceptual skills.
As reengineering became a commodity business later in the decade, some of the old guard recognized the need to standardize their methods and create more reusable knowledge. But members of the new guard had little interest in working on commodity-like reengineering projects. They had joined the firm because they wanted to work on cutting-edge strategy problems.
Other strategy consulting companies report different problems with electronic document systems. For example, after subject experts at one firm contributed documents to electronic libraries, they were flooded with callers asking very basic questions. Two companies that we studied have scrapped their investment in electronic knowledge databases; their existing databases are used simply to connect people.Similarly, firms that rely on codification have run into trouble by overinvesting in person-to-person systems. When they overinvest in this way, they undermine their value proposition—reliable systems at reasonable prices—as well as the economics of reuse. That’s because their people may feel encouraged to develop a novel solution to a problem even when a perfectly good solution already exists in the electronic repository. Unnecessary innovations are expensive: programming and then debugging new software, for instance, eats a lot of resources. And person-to-person knowledge sharing involves expensive travel and meeting time; those costs dilute the advantage that is created when codified knowledge is reused.Companies that straddle the two strategies may also find themselves with an unwieldy mix of people. Having both inventors and implementers rubbing elbows can be deadly. The downfall of CSC Index, the consulting company that invented the reengineering concept in the early 1990s, underscores how serious this problem can be.The founders of what was originally known simply as Index had strong backgrounds in IT systems. Success with reengineering, however, catapulted the company into the general management arena. It then tried to leverage its newfound access to the CEO by aggressively hiring senior consultants from established strategy consulting firms. It also started to recruit M.B.A.s from leading business schools. Soon the firm had two populations: an old guard that focused on IT systems and had strong implementation skills, and a new guard that focused on corporate strategy and had strong conceptual skills.As reengineering became a commodity business later in the decade, some of the old guard recognized the need to standardize their methods and create more reusable knowledge. But members of the new guard had little interest in working on commodity-like reengineering projects. They had joined the firm because they wanted to work on cutting-edge strategy problems.
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