Bottlenecks in knowledge transfer
Friday, 12 December 2008
Maswood Alam Khan
What skills do you possess that might be worth sharing with someone working in your bank? I asked this question to dozens of experienced bankers in Bangladesh Krishi Bank (BKB) where I have now been working as General Manager, Administration Division. To my pleasant surprise, everybody recited a litany of skills they have mastered in the fields of computer science, foreign trade, advance, general banking, rural finance etc. Then I asked: How many of your colleagues have you transferred any of your specialized skills to? To my chagrin, most of them gave me a blank look as they replied with a sheepish grin: "Sir, no colleague ever really approached me to learn. Is it not the responsibility of our Training Institute to equip them with necessary skills?"
In the present-day world 'knowledge' is not simply a power as the saying goes; knowledge is increasingly becoming the most relevant tool for economic survival as the economy that was once based on industrial assembly lines and hierarchical control is now fast shifting to a global, decentralized, and information-driven economy. The present civilization is no more recognized as iron, silver, or plastic civilization. Our civilization today is 'information civilization'. The more a country is blessed with a rich repository of information, the more it can boast about her power in the comity of nations.
Information and knowledge are intertwined. Knowledge is a wider concept than information and both knowledge and information are based on intellectual expertise.
So, an efficient information management, the cardinal goal of the neck-breaking races on the IT superhighways, may be deemed the enabler for knowledge management.
The basic aim of knowledge management, however, is to capture and increase the knowledge of individuals and 'knowledge transfer system' is the most pivotal cog in the management wheel of an organization.
But, very lamentably, the 'knowledge transfer system' in most of our government-owned enterprises is either totally absent or very poorly implemented.
Theoretical lessons the employees learn in their training institutes at home or abroad go in one ear and out the other immediately after they leave the training institute to rejoin their old desks. Because, trainings are offered and dispensed not on the need of the desk but on one's efforts to curry favour with the bosses.
And the colleague sitting next to your desk will never ever transfer to you the secret of his know-how even on the day before his retirement. The secret, after all, has glued him to the same desk for ages as he has somehow made himself indispensable to the department.
To unglue those experts with their privatized technical knowledge from their perpetually occupied desks, management discipline suggests introducing a technique, known as job rotation, in which employees are moved between two or more job desks in a planned manner with a view to exposing the employees to different experiences and wider variety of skills with an ultimate management goal to enhance employees' job satisfaction, to cross-train them, and to transfer know-how from the skilled to the unskilled.
You will be pelting a stone at a wasp's nest if you ever try to unseat one of those experts from the desk he has been occupying in the name of his special expertise. An attempt to budge a lady worker from the headquarters to a field office will invite the whole sky to fall apart. A daring step to move an employee, who happens to be a member of any of the multifarious trade unions having simply some registration numbers-elected or unelected-from the 'desk of no work' to 'a desk of little work' will spark a volcano in the human resources department. An official order transferring an employee from Dhaka metropolis to an outstation may set off an alarm from an outside source which routinely exercises undue intervention in transferring and postings on some unholy considerations.
Such is the scenario in most of the government-owned commercial institutions including banks where discharging the most unpleasant job of overseeing the administration is not possible in accordance with rules the management gurus have prescribed.
Fortunately, administration in Bangladesh Krishi Bank under a powerful Board of Directors captained by an unusually strict Chairman, a legendary banker, and a management team headed by a Managing Director, a Masters in Business Administration having varied experiences in running a number of large and difficult banks, has, of late, been a little different compared to other government-owned banks and commercial organizations. Moreover, employees and trade union leaders of this bank are docile in their manners compared to those of other commercial banks in one of which I have had horrible work experience in the midst of shirkers for more than two decades.
Thanks to a calm political environment and some courageous decisions based on 'carrot and stick policy' taken by BKB management something unthinkable is happening in the bank. Employees who under the pretext of ailments of their own or of any of their family members all along used to persist in retaining their postings in head office or in any of the risk-free controlling offices have, of late, started approaching the management for their voluntary transfers to field offices. Outside advocacy for initiating or canceling transfer orders has dwindled as middlemen engaged in such advocacy have been fatigued by the management's obduracy on not changing an order of transfer once issued.
The most praiseworthy improvement has been achieved in training the unskilled through the bank's newly tailored 'Knowledge Transfer Plan'. Employees who considered themselves indispensable to the so-called lucrative departments of foreign trade, information technology, and of loans and advances have already been and are soon going to be transferred to outstations with a promise from the management that they would have a chance to be transferred back to their desired desks only if they successfully dispense practical trainings on their own expertise to a prescribed number of unskilled employees.
The new 'Knowledge Transfer Plan' of BKB has created such uproar that under the first phase of the plan for training unskilled employees with practical computer knowledge, the trainers are now in fierce competition with other fellow trainers and some of them have trained much more number of employees than their prescribed quota.
While there were only a few dozens of data entry operators who were conversant with handling computers only a few months back there have already been a few hundred employees including higher ranking officers who have now been engaged in computerization programme's of the bank. Under this 'Knowledge Transfer Plan' almost all employees of the bank will be given 'on the job practical training' by the experienced on all the banking knowledge, especially on foreign trade, computer, and loans and advances, in a matter of two years besides regular training on general banking being dispensed by the bank's training institute.
"The more number of unskilled employees you personally train the better is your chance to get a reward" was the incentive that worked like a magic behind the sudden proliferation of trained computer operators in BKB.
Similar incentive-based 'knowledge transfer plan', if adopted in other state enterprises, may not only contribute to capacity building of those organizations but may also set shiny examples of generating employments at home and abroad and encourage private enterprises and individuals to follow suit.
If the government today declares that a mason will be offered an overseas job for free only if he voluntarily trains at least ten unskilled workers with the dexterity of masonry there would be a long caravan of Bangladeshi skilled workers on their way to foreign lands where there is a huge demand for such skillful workers.
A banker so trained under a 'knowledge transfer plan' with the intricacies of foreign exchange and international trade can now easily find a US Dollar sixty hundred per annum job in Shanghai if s/he takes an extra course to learn Mandarin.
By the way, there is a huge demand for bankers and accountants in China and experienced American bankers and chartered accountants are desperately learning Mandarin in the hope of finding jobs in China even at this time of global recession.
In seconds, computers can transfer reams of data from one terminal to another while man has made knowledge far more difficult to move from one person to another.
Unfortunately, humans -- the sole vessels of knowledge -- are very miser or deliberately inefficient at passing their earned knowledge from one brain to another.
Monopoly of knowledge has already created a digital divide between the developed and the developing nations. But a good education should not be the monopoly of the rich only.
Access to knowledge, education, and information is our birthright. But today's most profitable business is lamentably the sale of knowledge. Education, therefore, is getting out of reach for most of the poor of the world.
There are dozens of private television channels in Bangladesh catering to our thirst for foreign culture and educating our youngsters how to make subtle movements of their buttocks while dancing. But there is not a single TV channel wherefrom our poor students, instead of going to their private tutors, can learn lessons from the Nesfield's book on English Grammar, Composition and Usage or to study audio-visually the Pythagoras Theorem to learn that "In a right-angled triangle the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides".
I don't know for sure whether our government has any secret pact with the powerful association of thousands of private tutors for not doing anything that may tell upon their knowledge-selling business. But I wonder how our government could afford to be so myopic about distance learning programmes through television channels for all levels of schools, colleges, and universities! A laptop that with reasonable configurations can be bought from China at Taka 30 thousand only may be another window for our poor students to learn their lessons from the comfort of their homes.
Shouldn't our government distribute such laptops to our poor students at subsidized prices with a view to hurdling over the barriers to knowledge transfer?
The writer is a banker. He may be reached at maswood@hotmail.com
What skills do you possess that might be worth sharing with someone working in your bank? I asked this question to dozens of experienced bankers in Bangladesh Krishi Bank (BKB) where I have now been working as General Manager, Administration Division. To my pleasant surprise, everybody recited a litany of skills they have mastered in the fields of computer science, foreign trade, advance, general banking, rural finance etc. Then I asked: How many of your colleagues have you transferred any of your specialized skills to? To my chagrin, most of them gave me a blank look as they replied with a sheepish grin: "Sir, no colleague ever really approached me to learn. Is it not the responsibility of our Training Institute to equip them with necessary skills?"
In the present-day world 'knowledge' is not simply a power as the saying goes; knowledge is increasingly becoming the most relevant tool for economic survival as the economy that was once based on industrial assembly lines and hierarchical control is now fast shifting to a global, decentralized, and information-driven economy. The present civilization is no more recognized as iron, silver, or plastic civilization. Our civilization today is 'information civilization'. The more a country is blessed with a rich repository of information, the more it can boast about her power in the comity of nations.
Information and knowledge are intertwined. Knowledge is a wider concept than information and both knowledge and information are based on intellectual expertise.
So, an efficient information management, the cardinal goal of the neck-breaking races on the IT superhighways, may be deemed the enabler for knowledge management.
The basic aim of knowledge management, however, is to capture and increase the knowledge of individuals and 'knowledge transfer system' is the most pivotal cog in the management wheel of an organization.
But, very lamentably, the 'knowledge transfer system' in most of our government-owned enterprises is either totally absent or very poorly implemented.
Theoretical lessons the employees learn in their training institutes at home or abroad go in one ear and out the other immediately after they leave the training institute to rejoin their old desks. Because, trainings are offered and dispensed not on the need of the desk but on one's efforts to curry favour with the bosses.
And the colleague sitting next to your desk will never ever transfer to you the secret of his know-how even on the day before his retirement. The secret, after all, has glued him to the same desk for ages as he has somehow made himself indispensable to the department.
To unglue those experts with their privatized technical knowledge from their perpetually occupied desks, management discipline suggests introducing a technique, known as job rotation, in which employees are moved between two or more job desks in a planned manner with a view to exposing the employees to different experiences and wider variety of skills with an ultimate management goal to enhance employees' job satisfaction, to cross-train them, and to transfer know-how from the skilled to the unskilled.
You will be pelting a stone at a wasp's nest if you ever try to unseat one of those experts from the desk he has been occupying in the name of his special expertise. An attempt to budge a lady worker from the headquarters to a field office will invite the whole sky to fall apart. A daring step to move an employee, who happens to be a member of any of the multifarious trade unions having simply some registration numbers-elected or unelected-from the 'desk of no work' to 'a desk of little work' will spark a volcano in the human resources department. An official order transferring an employee from Dhaka metropolis to an outstation may set off an alarm from an outside source which routinely exercises undue intervention in transferring and postings on some unholy considerations.
Such is the scenario in most of the government-owned commercial institutions including banks where discharging the most unpleasant job of overseeing the administration is not possible in accordance with rules the management gurus have prescribed.
Fortunately, administration in Bangladesh Krishi Bank under a powerful Board of Directors captained by an unusually strict Chairman, a legendary banker, and a management team headed by a Managing Director, a Masters in Business Administration having varied experiences in running a number of large and difficult banks, has, of late, been a little different compared to other government-owned banks and commercial organizations. Moreover, employees and trade union leaders of this bank are docile in their manners compared to those of other commercial banks in one of which I have had horrible work experience in the midst of shirkers for more than two decades.
Thanks to a calm political environment and some courageous decisions based on 'carrot and stick policy' taken by BKB management something unthinkable is happening in the bank. Employees who under the pretext of ailments of their own or of any of their family members all along used to persist in retaining their postings in head office or in any of the risk-free controlling offices have, of late, started approaching the management for their voluntary transfers to field offices. Outside advocacy for initiating or canceling transfer orders has dwindled as middlemen engaged in such advocacy have been fatigued by the management's obduracy on not changing an order of transfer once issued.
The most praiseworthy improvement has been achieved in training the unskilled through the bank's newly tailored 'Knowledge Transfer Plan'. Employees who considered themselves indispensable to the so-called lucrative departments of foreign trade, information technology, and of loans and advances have already been and are soon going to be transferred to outstations with a promise from the management that they would have a chance to be transferred back to their desired desks only if they successfully dispense practical trainings on their own expertise to a prescribed number of unskilled employees.
The new 'Knowledge Transfer Plan' of BKB has created such uproar that under the first phase of the plan for training unskilled employees with practical computer knowledge, the trainers are now in fierce competition with other fellow trainers and some of them have trained much more number of employees than their prescribed quota.
While there were only a few dozens of data entry operators who were conversant with handling computers only a few months back there have already been a few hundred employees including higher ranking officers who have now been engaged in computerization programme's of the bank. Under this 'Knowledge Transfer Plan' almost all employees of the bank will be given 'on the job practical training' by the experienced on all the banking knowledge, especially on foreign trade, computer, and loans and advances, in a matter of two years besides regular training on general banking being dispensed by the bank's training institute.
"The more number of unskilled employees you personally train the better is your chance to get a reward" was the incentive that worked like a magic behind the sudden proliferation of trained computer operators in BKB.
Similar incentive-based 'knowledge transfer plan', if adopted in other state enterprises, may not only contribute to capacity building of those organizations but may also set shiny examples of generating employments at home and abroad and encourage private enterprises and individuals to follow suit.
If the government today declares that a mason will be offered an overseas job for free only if he voluntarily trains at least ten unskilled workers with the dexterity of masonry there would be a long caravan of Bangladeshi skilled workers on their way to foreign lands where there is a huge demand for such skillful workers.
A banker so trained under a 'knowledge transfer plan' with the intricacies of foreign exchange and international trade can now easily find a US Dollar sixty hundred per annum job in Shanghai if s/he takes an extra course to learn Mandarin.
By the way, there is a huge demand for bankers and accountants in China and experienced American bankers and chartered accountants are desperately learning Mandarin in the hope of finding jobs in China even at this time of global recession.
In seconds, computers can transfer reams of data from one terminal to another while man has made knowledge far more difficult to move from one person to another.
Unfortunately, humans -- the sole vessels of knowledge -- are very miser or deliberately inefficient at passing their earned knowledge from one brain to another.
Monopoly of knowledge has already created a digital divide between the developed and the developing nations. But a good education should not be the monopoly of the rich only.
Access to knowledge, education, and information is our birthright. But today's most profitable business is lamentably the sale of knowledge. Education, therefore, is getting out of reach for most of the poor of the world.
There are dozens of private television channels in Bangladesh catering to our thirst for foreign culture and educating our youngsters how to make subtle movements of their buttocks while dancing. But there is not a single TV channel wherefrom our poor students, instead of going to their private tutors, can learn lessons from the Nesfield's book on English Grammar, Composition and Usage or to study audio-visually the Pythagoras Theorem to learn that "In a right-angled triangle the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides".
I don't know for sure whether our government has any secret pact with the powerful association of thousands of private tutors for not doing anything that may tell upon their knowledge-selling business. But I wonder how our government could afford to be so myopic about distance learning programmes through television channels for all levels of schools, colleges, and universities! A laptop that with reasonable configurations can be bought from China at Taka 30 thousand only may be another window for our poor students to learn their lessons from the comfort of their homes.
Shouldn't our government distribute such laptops to our poor students at subsidized prices with a view to hurdling over the barriers to knowledge transfer?
The writer is a banker. He may be reached at maswood@hotmail.com