The Specialist Pipeline by Kent Jonasen

Author:Kent Jonasen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Forbes Books
Published: 2022-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Communication Upward and Sideways

Despite companies organizing themselves differently, we often find that people in the knowledge leader role are placed organizationally at the bottom of the hierarchy in relation to their actual significance for the company. And we simultaneously experience that, even though they are not placed quite high up enough in an organization chart, they participate in meetings, on project teams, or in organizational cross-working groups, where very senior people often participate and where crucial business decisions are made.

The knowledge expert role contrasts starkly here. Knowledge experts are characterized by the fact that contact with their closest colleagues is far greater than with the rest of the organization. Their primary communication is with those who are organizationally close.

The consequence is that knowledge leaders spend a lot of time communicating with people from completely different functions within the company and often communicate directly at the vice president level.

An example is Bill, a construction engineer and knowledge leader in a company that designs and builds nuclear power plants, among other things. Bill formally reports to a team leader far down the organizational ladder. But when they design offers on big-asset projects, it usually takes three to four weeks for up to twenty people from different functions and across various formal hierarchies to draw up one offer. They are also often called into various everyday meetings in which their domain of expertise is relevant. Thus, many knowledge leaders work on their own most of the time outside the formal organizational hierarchies, communicating in many different directions within the organization.

Not to mention that knowledge leaders don’t just have to set aside time to seek out people they themselves need, as described under the stakeholder management section. Instead they also have to allocate time for when other people need them. Just as they themselves fight for other people’s time, their time is something that others fight for—and they have to prioritize making time available and being available to others at their request.

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