Knowledge and power has a direct co-relation as with knowledge one has power over other with lesser knowledge.

However, it may also work to the one's disadvantage, especially when the knowledge is used negatively. For example when ones missues ones knowledge for the wrong reason.

This is a reflection from a meeting I had today. My goal for the meeting was to justify for an IT project for my department. My proposal was about implementing a collaboration tool for my organisation.

One of many points and concern raised by the evaluation committee was whether existing collaboration tools is frequently used by the staff and that by adding a new tool would be of any value. So, he asked members of the meeting with intent to acquire their view on the existing collaboration tool usage.

To my surprise, a few young managers who are of generation 'x' mentioned that they rarely use any of the organisation's collaboration tool. Not only that, one of them openly said that he's lost his desire to attend training due to the organisation's learning management system. Another young officer who claimed that she is from an IT brackground finds little value of the collaboration tools in her work.

In my view, the knowledge from the young managers are valueable to me and my team. From one perspective, theses young managers seems to have power over me and my team as they raised the visibility on the flaws and weakness of the systems under my purview.

However, the point of time when the knowledge was conveyed was very untimely and adds little value to the cause of the meeting. Perhaps it would be of more value if the young managers can share their view and knowledge with me and my team before this meeting or in another time or forum. In this situation, little they realise that their knowledge could be of more value if they had used or leverage on correctly. In this case, it is a reflection of their own ignorance to the greater cause of a knowledge based organisation.

I'm no generation 'y', just happen to be there...