Buckman Labs Is Nothing but Net

"If you can't maximize the power of the individual, you haven't done anything," Buckman thought. "The basic philosophy is, How do we take this individual and make him bigger, give him power? How? Connect him to the world."

On his laptop, Buckman wrote his ideal knowledge transfer system:

• It would make it possible for people to talk to each other directly, to minimize distortion.
• It would give everyone access to the company's knowledge base.
• It would allow each individual in the company to enter knowledge into the system.
• It would be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
• It would be easy to use.
• It would communicate in whatever language is best for the user.
• It would be updated automatically, capturing questions and answers as a future knowledge base.

Such a system, he realized, would mean a cultural transformation. It would mean turning the company upside down.

Which was precisely what he wanted to do -- and had wanted to do since 1961 when he'd joined the company his father had founded. With a degree in chemical engineering from Purdue University and an MBA from the University of Chicago, Buckman had long been fascinated by organizational dynamics and the potential for change that computers had created. And he'd chafed working under his father, Stanley, who epitomized the classic pyramid-style leader: he oversaw every decision, sales order, check, memo.

In 1978, at the age of 69, Stanley Buckman suffered a heart attack and died on his office couch, and the reins of control passed to Bob. "I knew I didn't want to do it his way," Buckman says. "Everything went through my father. The general managers of our different ventures had never even met each other. I thought, this is too much work."

His epiphany showed him the path to the future. "I realized that if I can give everybody complete access to information about the company, then I don't have to tell them what to do all the time," he says. "The organization starts moving forward on its own initiative." The knowledge network would become the organization.

But first he had to create the organization to manage the knowledge network. In March 1992, Buckman set up a Knowledge Transfer Department and appointed Victor Baillargeon, then a 34-year-old PhD in organic chemistry, to run it. For a company that was determined to break the rules, Baillargeon was the perfect choice: he had spent the previous year as Buckman's assistant, researching the concept of knowledge transfer, and was eager to put the theories to the test. And he was no member of the card-carrying information technology fraternity; he came to the job free of mainframe baggage.

Baillargeon's first hurdle was to build a network that was both ubiquitous and easy to access from around the world. With that in mind, Baillargeon suggested that the company put its entire worldwide network up on CompuServe, the public online service. CompuServe offered e-mail access to 35 public network services and the ability to create private bulletin boards for intracompany use. And all it took was a single phone call to connect.

Baillargeon engineered the move to CompuServe in just 30 days. Every Buckman salesperson was given an IBM ThinkPad 720 with a modem. For a total of $75,000 per month in access charges, all Buckman employees could make a single phone call that established a point-to-point link with headquarters and provided access to all of CompuServe's global information services. On that platform Baillargeon built K'Netix, the company's global knowledge transfer network, and established seven technical forums to organize the company's online conversations.

That was four years ago. Today Buckman and his team have a clearer line of sight than most into what it means to do business in the knowledge economy. In particular, four categories of lessons emerge from Bob Buckman's knowledge laboratory: the importance of customer engagement; how to encourage knowledge-sharing; the value of values; and how to think about measurements.