Knowledge management framework - Measuring Intellectual capital

Measuring intellectual capital

How long is your ignorance? Is it wide enough? Can you fit it into a handbag? Is it orange? In other words how ignorant are we really and how can we measure it. As somebody once said 'If you can't measure it, you can't manage it'.

Unfortunately they said it 3,567, 249 times and now no one listens.

Not only are organisational consultants insisting we manage our Ignorance environment, they also insist that we measure the level of our ignorance, measure our 'intellectual capital value'. These are dangerous developments for the Corporate Ignorance Officer (CIO); start using terms like 'capital' and 'value' anywhere in the proximity of the corporate directors and they begin frothing at the mouth, snorting at the nostrils and declaring that they want a piece of that action too. Which can only mean a mountain of grief and headache for the CIO. The wise manager however can turn these trends in the need to measure ignorance to his own benefits.

Develop an organisational ignorance maturity matrix to be able to measure dangerous trends such as the insidious rise of knowledge management within the organisation

An example of a maturity measurement framework is presented below.
Where is you organistaion placed for each of these aspects?

Maturity level	People	Competencies	Systems	Organization (attitude)
0	pig ignorant	‘don’t tell anybody anything’	bits of paper with joined up form of writing	‘ignorance is bliss’ and we intend to keep it that way
1	thick as two short planks	‘only tell them what they *don’t* need to know’	standard forms and basic use of PC’s other than for playing games and installing trendy screen savers	‘a little knowledge is a dangerous thing’ -we only give away knowledge that is harmless’
2	able to distinguish between their backsides and elbows - with a little prompting	‘tell them enough to know that you know and convincing them that’s all that counts’	corporate information systems with security codes that exclude everybody	‘knowledge is power’ it is kept in the hands of those that don’t need it
3	know everything about anything that is absolutely no use to man or beast	‘tell them everything in triplicate so that they can’t see the tree of knowledge through the indiscriminate forest of information’	anything that moves is turned into an information system that is openly available to all that don't need it.	‘what you don't know won’t hurt you’, and what you do know can’t hurt us
4	know everything about knowing what they need to know, but don’t know how to get it	‘tell them they have the know-how at their disposal - but don’t tell them how to get to it’	a corporate knowledge database with meaningless search algorithms and search keys to ensure that nobody can find the knowledge they need	‘using knowledge wears it out, so keep it locked up in a cool dark place’
5	know everything there is to know about everything that nobody wants to know about on a global scale	‘tell them that knowledge is out there somewhere..their mission should they choose to accept it is to try to find something worthwhile on the Internet	Intranets, Extranets Internets, hairnets, fishnets and any other kind of net you can plug your computer into used for flooding the rest of the world with ignorance	‘why should we be the only ones to suffer from our ignorance? Let’s share totally useless information with our competitors.’