Wednesday, February 6th, 2008
Knowledge management ground zero
We recently had to deal directly with a Very Large Phone Company, on whom most of the businesses in my Manhattan neighborhood ultimately rely for both their telephone and Internet connections. In the process of getting a new phone system installed after our recent office move, my staff and I witnessed some of the most primitive “knowledge” behavior I’ve ever seen. We noticed that, at least once a week during our ten-week (!) wait for service, a new team would arrive to scout the connections entering our new building on the street level. Rarely the same team twice. And each time, the team seemed to be asking similar questions about where wires came from, where they ran, and so on. And each time (you guessed it) their report that there were not enough lines coming into the building was oddly familiar.
Our building is a 100-year-old former medical equipment warehouse in the High Line district on the Hudson River just south of the Javits Center—now a thriving art gallery district, and soon to become a thriving business district. The building was not originally built for telephones. As a result, connection boxes are in odd places, wires run where you’d not expect—you really have to know what you’re doing.
