Simon Drake – Writer

True knowledge, worldly experience and higher intelligence, is never sufficiently remunerated, but what we are paid to know – our own expertise and prime reason for employment – has to be defended, rewarded, capitalised upon and armed like a battleship in order to show those responsible for our wages or business that we are worthy of it, and also that they are worthy of us providing it for them. There’s always someone who can take your place, so the knowledge you’re paid for becomes the legs on which you stand, and can easily be kicked from under you. When the shit hits the fan people normally ask:
- Who knew it would happen? (responsibility)
- Who could have acted on it? (accountability)
- Who knew but didn’t act? (responsibility + accountability)
- Why didn’t they act? (knowledge war has begun – who knows best)
- It was you! (time to defend yourself)
- OK, so who then? (blame someone else)
When people are delegated duties to do with knowledge, they have to attack, defend, reinforce and constantly evaluate where they are on the knowledge terrain in the office regardless of what they really know. You can gauge your knowledge on an issue and rate it as being low, middle or high ground, and do the same with a competitor. Two people in the high ground have a lot at stake, while two people in the low ground might not have much to share, but much to gain.
Rather than thinking of knowledge as an abstract world, map it out and view it with a strategy in mind. After all, when people want something, they have a strategy, which means they have a plan. It’s only fair that you create a plan, and the simpler you can describe it, the easier you can explain it to someone else who can aid you.

Staff need to be Knowledge Warriors. Knowledge is not about coming up with answers to brain teasers and winning the pub quiz. Knowledge stretches from the abstract and to the definitive and all encompassing; you know how to do this, you know about that, you know how to change this and interpret that into something we can use. You work with knowledge and the target or outcome becomes a blinding source of inspiration and reward. It sounds fun and functional, yet it involves tapping endlessly at keyboards, swallowing cold and lumpy feedback, and absorbing what your manager has to enlighten you with. Some complain it’s akin to slavery but it doesn’t really compare to breaking your whipped-back building a pyramid for a Sun God.

The reason we are slaving away for knowledge is simple: an office job is comfortable; you have to use your brain, and fit into the deal: the larger plan. An office is the brain of an organisation (i.e. a business, a government, a Martian Invasion Force) and is valued for the specific knowledge it puts out to the organisation and how the organisation performs in the wider competitive environment. Without knowledge, an office sinks (so too does its parent organisation), so it is continually sourcing, evaluating and generating knowledge for the benefit of the organisation.
Even though technology has become more sophisticated at gathering information, it is still people that interpret the data and carve it up into something useful. At this tipping point, knowledge becomes a valuable and a hard-won currency. The organisation recognises that someone needs to prove that they can be trusted with the responsibility and status to use this valuable knowledge for the organisation’s gain and thus extract their reward: money, responsibility, status, and eventually a long liquid lunch with an eye-popping bar tab.
By design and human initiative, organisations have different people working on different aspects of their industry-specific knowledge. The more specific the knowledge and outcome, the safer and easier it is for people to profit from – at the expense of the people in question becoming pigeonholed and tiered to their specific knowledge. The more generic and profitable the knowledge and outcomes, the higher the chance that those involved will proclaim their knowledge as the most valuable, overlapping and colliding with others. Everyone must ‘work together’ for a common cause and everyone is entitled to a point of view but when there is a difference of opinion there will be a conflict to own the most ‘perceived’ valuable knowledge because that’s what people are rewarded for. Now people play at knowing valuable things they don’t, to exclaiming that damning knowledge they already knew actually came from someone else. The Knowledge Terrain of Office Conflict is extensive and a decider in careers and lives.
As industries rely on knowledge; organisations require their staff to be warriors for knowledge. Millions of people have careers fighting for knowledge and they go to great pains to prove their knowledge ability. It’s all about what you know, knowing it better than your competition, and delivering valuable knowledge to the key decision makers.
Stepping back from the numbing enormity of it all, your own field of operations may be safe and secure, so it may be enough to simply recognise your limitations, but it is also important to your job and career to know your competitors’ capabilities. Know what they know, perhaps not all of it, but enough. Some people have no hungering to know more than necessary. But if you want to get ahead, learn to like the mundane. Crave knowledge. Brains don’t get fat from excess.
Remember: Knowledge is Power, Anytime, Anywhere.