Despite their best efforts, most companies continue to squander what may be their greatest asset in today's knowledge economy.I am referring to the wealth of expertise, ideas and latent insights that lie scattered across or deeply embedded in their organisations. This seems a great shame, because capitalising on those intellectual resources- using existing knowledge to improve performance or combining strands of knowledge to create something altogether new-can help companies respond to a surprising array of challenges, from fending off smaller, nimbler rivals to integrating businesses that have been forced together in a merger.

尽管做了最大的努力，大多数公司继续浪费他们在今天知识经济时代中最大的资产。我指的是散布在或深深植根于公司里大量的专业知识，思想和潜在的见解的财富。这看上去是一个一个巨大的耻辱，因为利用这些知识资源--利用现有存在的知识来提高绩效或者结合各种知识来创造新事物--这能帮助公司应对一系列惊人的挑战，从抵制规模小的，竞争更激烈的竞争对手到已经被强行进行的一个合并整合业务。

C Many companies have tried, with mixed success, to leverage this underused asset by centralising knowledge management functions or by investing heavily in knowledge management technology I suggest another approach, one that requires managers to change their behaviour and the way they spend their time. The approach is novel but, when properly implemented, quite powerful. I call it T-Shape management.

许多公司已都曾试图尝试集中知识管理只能或者对知识管理技术进行大量的投资，来利用这些未充分利用的资产，但成效不一。我建议另一种方法，一种要求管理者通过花费一定的时间改变他们的行为和方法，这种方法是新颖的，但是当正确实施后，相当有作用。我称之为 T型管理方法。

T-shaped management relies on a new kind of executive, one who breaks out of the traditional corporate hierarchy to share knowledge freely across the organisation(the horizontal part of the T) while remaining fiercely committed to individual business unit performance(the vertical part). The successful T-shape manager must learn to live with , and ultimately thrive within, the stress created by this dual responsibility Although this tension is most acute for heads of business units, any T-shaped manager with operating unit obligations must wrestle with it.

T-型管理方法依赖于一种新的管理者，一个能打破传统的公司等级制度的人自由的在公司中分享知识（T的水平部分），同时仍然坚定的致力于单个业务部门的绩效(T的垂直部分) .成功的T-型管理人元必须承担双重责任下的压力，并最终在其中成长. 尽管这种紧张在业务部门的负责人最为严重，但任何肩负运营职责的T型管理人员必须为之奋斗。

You might ask, why reply so heavily on managers to share knowledge? Why not just institute a state-of-the-art knowledge management system? The trouble is that those systems are best at transferring explicit knowledge： for example, the template need to perform a complicated but routine task. However ,direct personal contact is more typically needed to effectively transfer the kind of knowledge that must be creatively applied to particular business problems or opportunities In fact, this implicit knowledge sharing is crucial to the success of innovation-driven companies. Furthermore, merely moving documents around can never engender the degree of collaboration that is need to generate new insights.For that, companies really have to bring people together to brainstorm

你可能会问，为什么如此重的依赖管理去分享知识？为什么不去建立一个最先进的知识管理系统？问题在于这些先进的知识管理系统能够传递明确的（显性）知识。比如：一个模板需要完成复杂但常规的任务。然而，更典型的情况是直接的个人接触，这样可以来有效的传递一些知识，从而创造性的应用于某些特定的业务问题或者机会中。事实上，这种隐形的知识分享对一个创新驱动的公司的成功格外重要。进一步说，仅仅通过移动文档永远不会产生新见解所需要的协作效果。因此，公司真的需要召集员工进行头脑风暴。

Effective T-shape managers will benefit companies of almost any size, but they're particularly crucial in large corporations where operating units have been granted considerable autonomy. Although giving business units greater freedom generally increases accountability and spurs innovation, it can also lead to competition between units, which may hoard, rather than share, expertise.By encouraging collaboration, a T-shape management system can be a powerful counterbalance to such negative behaviour.

有成效的T-型管理者将对任何规模的公司受益，但是他们在那些大型的企业中尤为重要，因为这些公司的运营部门被赋予了相当的自主权。尽管给业务部门更大的自主可以增加责任心并激发创新，但是也能导致部门间的竞争，使得囤积知识还不是分享专业知识。通过鼓励合作，一个T-型管理体系能够有效的抵消这种负面的行为。

So, how do you successfully cultivate T-shaped managers and capitalise on the value they can create? Energy giant BP Amoco provides some provocative answers. My in-depth examination of their management practices highlighted five specific types of value that T-shaped managers can generate. Their experience also suggests guidelines for creating an environment in which T-shaped managers will flourish It is important to follow these, because the benefits of T-shaped management will not be realised if the concept is poorly implemented. Senior executives must put in place mechanisms that simultaneously promote and discipline managers' knowledge-sharing activities.

因此，你如何成功的培养T型管理者，并利用他们创造的价值呢？能源巨头公司BP Amoco提供了一些引起争论的答案。我对他们管理实践的深入研究强调了5种T型管理者可以产生的5种特定类型的价值。他们的经验还提出了创造一个T型管理者蓬勃发展的环境准则。遵循这些原则很重要，因为如果概念不当，T型管理的好处将无法实现。高级的管理人员必须建立同时促进和训练管理人员知识共享行为的机制。