Sad to hear you’re company’s on the down, maybe if they hadn’t switched to Notes things would still be rosy…

This is good summary of efforts to utilize e-mail to find the experts. At my old company we tried a third generation approach but hit up against legal and privacy issued so it didn’t go far. In the old days people knew people who knew people and we all had our trusty roladex on hand to dig up an old contact. We relied on people we had actually met or even knew, and our memories to get us to who we needed. I think the same principles apply in the internet world but the networks are bigger and the contacts often easier to find as you say. Even so, you often know who you are looking for, you just have to find them.

Within organizations it should theoretically be not that difficult to keep an active network going and find who you want when, but organizations have become so large, and data so buried, that it can be easier to find an external expert that an internal one (assuming one even exists). It seems to me that we are forcing the issue when we try to create expertise lists using e-mail, even though the tools to do so are getting smarter all the time. If we capture every little relevant piece of information about someone based on their communications, we will certainly build a picture of what this person talks about, but not necessarily when he is an expert or not. It could be argues that it is unusual within an organization for an expert to be so hidden that it is not fairly clear who to go to. Of course, there are many who have knowledge and are not recognized for it, but they will therefore lack the credibility to be believed as an expert even if the system suggests they are. These are the politics inherent in all knowledge management activities that can hobble hobble any KM effort despite the best of intentions. It is not always what you know, and it is not always enough to be right.