It’s been about a year since the last time our FM Study group got together for a good discussion, and last night, we made up for one year blank. I think it is the chemistry our group has, especially when Oshima-san, Shimazaki-san and Yasuhara-san are all present.
We really got into hot mode when we delved into current trend among companies (not just Japan, globally, we think) in outsourcing the data center. We all felt the danger of outsourcing the storage of entire explicit knowledge to outside of organization, with the link left up to IT person who usually has no clue about the significance of company knowledge they have sole control over. The thread that link a company and its data center (knowledge galore!) is so fragile, should anything go wrong, (and you can bet it will! Remember Endeaver? Enron? Bearing Securities? Mizoho Bank?) its effect on a company can be fatal.
The redundunce of storage of such knowledge within a company is left up to individuals, and should anything happen to the data center, the knowledge will become hopelessly fragmented.
So few of us understand the brick and mortar of IT system, and when IT people tell us something has to be done in a certain way, we don’t have the confidence to argue with them, like Shimazaki-san does. How do we overcome our relationship with IT people? Develop communication link, talk, I guess.
FUJIKO SUDA 