By Nilesh Bhagat, CHRP

Web 2.0 is so yesterday.

In the Web 2.0 world, platforms (and empires) were built on networks where knowledge could be accumulated and stored. Google’s rise to worldly dominance was due to its ability to enable users to search for knowledge, which was then accumulated and used for its numerous intentions. Facebook created a semi-private world of identity, where one could store and search for information related to his social networks.

Newer platforms are arising – and older ones are being re-engineered – to not only enable the search and accumulation of knowledge, but to create and maintain relationships between these pieces of information. Facebook recently teamed with Skype to bring real-time video communications, where groups of people can interact and exchange information in a social context. SCVNGR builds upon the social layer to use context and assimilate information, enabling people to build knowledge relationships through an added ‘game layer’.

We’ve shifted from a knowledge world to a connected world: knowledge is now secondary to the management of knowledge relationships. This has resulted in a fundamental shift in the ways in which power is defined.

In the knowledge world, IQ was power; knowledge was power. The higher your knowledge quotient, the more things you knew, and the more powerful you were. In the new connected world, knowledge is important, but what creates power is the ability to manage relationships between sources of information. It’s not so much what you know, as much as it is your ability to synergize what you know in relation to everyone else in your network. This means the ability to interact with others through varying media is now the driving force for what determines one’s influence. The new quotient for power is emotional: your ability to manage your own emotions and behavior, as well as influence the same in others, is the new measure by which power is calculated.

This shift in maintaining knowledge relationships is the force behind the next generation of leadership. Daniel Wegner introduced the concept of transactional memory networks as a mechanism for building and managing knowledge relationships. This concept is very much at the forefront for the modern organizational leader: knowing who knows what and how that can create synergies and drive value for an organization is now the greatest indicator of what makes a great leader. The new leader doesn’t so much ‘manage’ anymore, as she does ‘enable, connect and support’. Put another way, the new leader’s job isn’t to know everything and have full control over anything strategic and operational; rather, she must be enable collaboration across boundaries to create new synergies that re-adapt strategies to a constantly evolving competitive landscape.

As you develop the next generation of leaders, how do they enable, connect and support the synergies of tomorrow?

Nilesh Bhagat, CHRP, is a rewards coordinator with Best Buy Canada. Nilesh graduated from Simon Fraser University with a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, First Class Honours. He majored in Human Resources Management and tacked on an extended minor in Psychology. He’s a self-confessed nerd (the first step is admitting), likes to read, loves hockey and is struggling with the complexities of learning the game of golf.