Ten Shifts in Knowledge Management

In just 2-3 years knowledge management has come a long way. It has:

• attracted significant strategic interest from many quarters, including top companies and government agencies
• spurred the release of several journals/magazines devoted exclusively to knowledge management
• become an initiative in between a third and half of Fortune 500 companies
• has delivered demonstrable benefits in a variety of situations
• created market opportunities for suppliers, especially for software products and management consultancy
• stimulated new ventures (cf www. knowledgeshop.com) devoted to exchange and sale of knowledge.

In my opinion knowledge management is really about:

• managing information - explicit/recorded knowledge
• managing processes - embedded knowledge
• managing people - tacit knowledge
• managing innovation - knowledge conversion
• managing assets - intellectual capital

So what exactly is the future of knowledge management? 

Some believe that KM will shift in the following ways in the near future:

"1. From a Dimension of Other Disciplines to a Discipline in its Own Right - it will be a subject of degree courses and a profession distinct from information management. Watch out for the first Faculty of Knowledge Management.

2. From Strategic Initiatives to Routine Practice - The CKO of the future (if they exist) will embrace some of the functions of today's HR managers and CIO.

3. From Inward Focus on Knowledge Processes to External Focus on Knowledge Businesses - companies will identify how their knowledge assets can be recombined to create new knowledge-based businesses. For example, an engineering/manufacturing company might create an engineering consultancy business.

4. From Best Practices to Breakthrough Practices - rather than improve incrementally, companies should strive for 10x improvements in key areas, such as time-to-market, functionality per unit cost (yes - we have several examples of where this has been achieved).

5. From Knowledge Codification and Databases to Tradeable Knowledge Assets. Although publishers have done it for some time, many other companies are now realizing the opportunities from trading their databases e.g. fleet car managers and car reliability information.

6. From Knowledge Processes to Knowledge Objects - just as computer applications are going object oriented, so too will the application of knowledge. We will package knowledge as objects (that might include an information record, a multimedia clip, and access to a person) that can be manipulated and transmitted in different ways. There will be knowledge markets for them - precursors e.g. for IC design rights, already exist. See also http://www.knowledgeshop.com

7. From Knowledge Maps to Knowledge Navigators/Agents - maps are static representations of objects, and without extensive realtime map making capability (which could happen in the future) we need other ways to find existing and emerging knowledge. These will be human brokers (people with know-where and know-who) and intelligent software agents.

8. From Knowledge Centres to Knowledge Networks - although aggregating knowledge and knowledgeable people at knowledge centres gives critical mass, a more effective model may well be local nodes of expertise interconnected through human and computer networks i.e. the virtual knowledge centre.

9. From Knowledge Communities to Knowledge Markets - Communities are emerging that provide an effective vehicle for knowledge exchange. But as knowledge acquires value, and becomes 'productized' as objects (Shift 6) these communities will develop payment mechanisms and other trappings of a market place. The phrase "a penny for your thoughts" will have real meaning - people microchips embedded under their skin which handle knowledge transfer and micropayments under directives from the human brain!

10. From Knowledge Management to Knowledge Innovation. As ENTOVATION Colleagues will know, Debra M. Amidon sees Knowledge Management as a transition phase to something more fundamental. Management implies custodianship and managing what you know - innovation is creating something new and better, and that surely must be the ambition of all existing knowledge managers. It certainly is for me."

Is KM here to stay?

Is KM just a passing fad like some believe Facebook is? Is there a window of opportunity we may miss? What is coming next? Only last year did 47% of managers believe that Knowledge management was a temporary topic. If you ask managers now, that percentage would probably be more around 10%. Which proves what I have been saying the past couple of months - developing and exploiting organizational knowledge is becoming fundamental like e-banking. Sharing knowledge e.g. of best practice, can improve productivity. Embedding knowledge into products can enhance value. Connecting different knowledge sources can create innovative products.

To gain some insights on the likely future of knowledge management, it is instructive to look at how some earlier 'fads' have evolved. Few large companies today do not practice Total Quality Management, at least in some form. Quality has become embedded in all their products and processes - although you still frequently find companies who are not practicing what they preach. Similarly, most organizations have introduced some form of Business Process Reengineering, even if not restructuring as radically as Hammer and Champey defined it. The point is, that these concepts have matured into a set of desired management practices, that in turn have stimulated a thriving industry for experts, suppliers of tools and techniques, training and other services. So if we have all these tools and techniques set in place, then why do companies have product call backs and deffects?

Benefits of KM

What are the Benefits of Knowledge Management?

Strategically speaking, there are four kinds of benefits from managing knowledge:

• Create new value through new products or services (innovations);
• Enhance current value of existing products (knowledge about customers);
• Reduce/avoid costs/promote reuse (knowledge about processes);
• Reduce uncertainty/increase speed of response (knowledge about the environment).

Can we quantify the benefits?

I was involved in a discussion in an open forum where we talked about how can you quantify Organizations that have adopted KM approaches have applied the following metrics:

Speed of response
Time taken to respond to customer needs, requests or problems. Time taken to bring new products or services to market. Time taken to enter new markets.

Reuse of knowledge
Frequency of access and utilization of codified knowledge assets. Avoidance of re-work and "re-invention of the wheel."

Employee empowerment and satisfaction
Growth and ability to hire talented staff. Retention of experienced, knowledgeable employees. Span of influence of knowledgeable staff.

What methods and tools have been found to work?

Communities of Practice
Groups whose members regularly share knowledge and learn from each other. Communities of practice (1) share common work activities or interests, (2) recognize the collective value of sharing knowledge, and (3) have developed norms of trust, reciprocity, and cooperation. (Buckman Labs, Clarica, World Bank, Xerox)

Knowledge Repositories
Databases of codified knowledge assets that are systematically organized to facilitate searching, browsing, and retrieval. Knowledge repositories may contain lessons learned, best practices, planning documents, project proposals, marketing presentations, and so on. (Accenture, Ernst & Young)

Expertise Directories
Profiles of employee expertise that are updated, allowing users to find individuals by expertise areas, and to make contact with or present questions to identified experts. (Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft)

Action Reviews
Facilitated processes that occur before, during, and after significant and intensive work activities in which project members collectively analyze and reflect on lessons learned. (US Army, British Petroleum)

Best Practice Replication
Structured processes that collect, codify, and 'push' innovative practices or solutions developed at a particular location to the rest of the organization for possible adoption. (Ford, Shell)

Information Technology
IT plays a major enabling role in most of these applications. IT tools and infrastructure provide communications, database management, information access, and collaboration capabilities.

Corporate Marketing and KM

What can knowledge management processes and tools do for corporate marketing?

Traditional marketing communications methods include:

1. Direct mail, email, and voicemail messages
2. Web sites
3. Links from other web sites
4. Conference calls and virtual meeting rooms
5. Periodicals and publications
6. Meetings, events, tradeshows, conferences, seminars, and training sessions
7. Audience surveys and focus groups
8. Advertising
9. Public relations and analyst relations
10. Interviews, news stories, and published articles

Using Web 2.0 technologies often associated with knowledge management, corporate marketing can better engage with both employees and customers. Here are ten ways to do so:

1. Threaded discussions
1. Internal: Allow employees to collaborate with one another, ask and answer questions, and share information.
2. External: Encourage customers to help one another, suggest products and services, and engage with each other. Example: HP IT resource center forums
2. Social software
1. Internal: Allow employees to have similar functionality to what they are used to externally. Encourage them to gain experience in using these tools.
2. External: Encourage customers to build networks built on products and services, interests, preferences, etc. Examples: Facebook, Digg,Technorati
3. Bookmarks and tags
1. Internal: Allow employees to bookmark their favorite sites.
2. External: Encourage customers to tag their favorite company-related sites. Example: del.icio.us
4. Community spaces
1. Internal: Allow employees to collaborate on topics of interest.
2. External: Encourage customers to collaborate on company-related topics. Example: Yahoo! Groups
5. Portals
1. Internal: Allow employees to interact with a single site which integrates content from multiple sources.
2. External: Encourage customers to visit a single site for all of their support needs. Example: HP IT Resource Center
6. Wikis
1. Internal: Allow employees to create and collaboratively edit their own content pages.
2. External: Encourage customers to collaboratively edit community pages. Example: IBM wikis
7. Webcasts and webinars
1. Internal: Communicate useful marketing information to employees to help them better do their jobs.
2. External: Communicate useful marketing information to customers to help them better understand company offerings. Example: HP webcasts
8. Blogs
1. Internal: Give employees a voice, solicit their inputs and suggestions, and make executives more approachable and real.
2. External: Communicate useful information to customers with a personal face to build credibility and increase engagement. Example: HP blogs
9. Podcasts
1. Internal: Allow employees to receive communications in a way which is more convenient for them.
2. External: Encourage customers to subscribe to receive audio communications on a regular basis. Example: HP podcasts
10. Videos
1. Internal: Allow employees to record and upload their own videos to share information, create excitement, and emulate YouTube.
2. External: Encourage customers to view product and service videos to learn more about offerings in an appealing way. Example: HP videos
   

IBM and KM

I came accross an article titled IBM's KM Strategy, at KMWorld. It discuss the very first beginnings of Knowledge Management inside IBM. How it has actually been really strong with the explicit knowledge exchange, i.e. asset management, through the existence of different Intellectual Capital repositories, beingKnowledgeView (From Global Business Services) one of the most powerful and popular ones, and other key areas of how KM has been envisioned all along. Such as:

Asset Management: An asset at IBM doesn't necessarily have the same definition that an Accountant would have. Every employee's knowledge is an asset to the organization. By leveraging their knowledge, the company may grow and become stronger and more competitive. Through asset management IBM allows for a worldwide Asset Reuse program for Global Technology Services where knowledge workers can capture key assets and then make them able for reuse at a later time. 

 Expertise Location: BluePages -the universal employee directory that feeds everything else like Fringe Contacts. 

Collaboration: Using different tools such as Collaboration Central, Teamrooms, Jams, ThinkPlace (Sharing and collaborating on ideas across the timezones, geographies and business units), etc.

On-demand Learning: Learning@IBM is a new way to help promote learning throughout the organisation where the employees have full control of their own learning process - methods, types, etc.

One thing I would like to not - I noticed that IBM's KM tools have all been very much focused primarily on transferring explicit knowledge as opposed to a more balanced approach between the sharing of explicit and tacit knowledge. Why is that?

Audiobooks

I came accross someone sitting in the metro with their headphones on but i couldn't hear any music, it was more like someone talking, telling a story. I thought that was pretty strange. It was a long trip and i couldn't help but feed my curiosity so i thought i'd ask the girl what it was she was listening to. She told me it was something called an audiobook. She uses it because she doesnt usually have time to read books apart from during her daily commute. Because she gets dizzy when reading in a moving vehicle, a friend of hers suggested she could listen to audiobooks. I thought this was so fascinating. 

This is a way of transfering knowledge! Those that are lazy to type things up or video it (like i mentioned in one of my previous posts) will find this rather simple. You could have a verbal blog! I actually don't know if this already exists. But I think it's a cool idea. I don't know about others but usually if i'm asked to explain something, i'm more comfortable speaking it rather than writing it out. So this form of knowledge transfer would work well for people like me or people with disabilities.

Tacit vs. Explicit Knowledge

Should companies focus more on explicit or tacit knowledge?

As i mentioned in my previous post, explicit knowledge is information that is written down and tacit knowledge is all the information generated from past experiences stored in peoples' heads.

A focus on explicit knowledge usually leads to an emphasis on search, taxonomy (categorizing the explicit knowledge), and sometimes selection (e.g. qualifying best practices). 

A focus on tacit knowledge often requires a concentration on establishing and encouraging communities (where tactic knowledge can be shared), story telling, and the technologies and events that support them (forums, blogs, face-to-face meetings, etc.). 

Search is also important, but often focuses on people rather than documents (finding expertise rather than static information).

Vlogs and Corporate Amnesia

I was doing some research on videoconferencing for another class and you know, I think it would be a great idea to somehow record our days and experiences and cut up all the relevant parts and post them on a blog, or rather a vlog (video log). As its name suggests, its a type of blog where you post videos instead. Employees can search through the videos for a step by step approach on how to do something. Whether it be how to prepare a project management document, or how to create a blog! I think as humans we learn from practice and visualizing. At least i do! If I had the option of learning how to use MSProject for example through a text or through a video, I would without a doubt resort to the video (assuming both are of good quality).

This I think ties in with the topic of corporate amnesia. The definition of corporate amnesia is what happens when businesses or organizations basically loose their memory of how to do things as a result of increased employee mobility leading to the loss of employees along with valuable knowledge stored in their minds. A way to solve this problem would be to use vlogs.

Google!

Google has been a part of my life since I can last remember. It has even become a verb - googling this or googling that! To me, google was merely a search enginge. I learnt in one of my other IS classes how google ranks the pages on the web in order to display them to the user in order of importance or popularity. What I didn't know about google was how much more it had to offer! Just recently I began to use Google groups to collaborate with my group members. it allows us to share files, chat, create our own web pages, send mass emails, etc. 

Google is in the process of developing many exciting new tools that may help organizations in leveraging KM to generate value. In my opinion, the following new tools have some potential in helping leverage KM: In Quotes, Google Audio Indexing (GAudi), Google Page Creator, Google Talk, Lively by Google. In Quotes and Gaudi are very innovative ways of how employees can search databases and compare and contrast what their co-workers have posted. Also, to those who find it difficult to explain in words could record their findings in a video and post it on the company’s portal and thus buy using Gaudi, employees will be able to search what co-workers are talking about if it matches their search terms. This is also a way to encourage employees to participate in Knowledge sharing as it does not require as much effort when it comes to just “speaking”.

Lively by Google is a tool which I believe does not fit in with all companies however to those it works with the company culture, it could be a method in which employees could virtually meet and exchange knowledge and interact. I find it similar to applications such as Second Life. Not everyone is comfortable with confronting others directly through email, chat or portals and perhaps this method might encourage those who prefer to be anonymous when retrieving knowledge from co-workers.

Furthermore, I read on Stephan's blog about zapproved. Here's what he wrote on:

http://managementblog.mcgill.ca/

Zapproved

Perhaps the most mind numbing task of project managers is running around the office reminding people of their approvals and getting their sign off. Zapproved automates all of this process, all you need to do is create the project, assign the approvers and the dates and priority. The program will provide approvers with daily or hourly reminders of the approvals that they need to commit to. This allows for more time to focus on the projects that you are working on and less time tracking down people.

I think this is a fantastic tool that Google should be looking into. This is definitely a problem all groups have that usually consumes a lot of time and effprt over something so small. This application could improve efficiency in companies as well. It can be implemented within departments where ideas could be passed around and if it meets the approval of perhaps 75% of the team, then the idea may be sought after. 

What is KM?

Before attending this class, I was unaware of the existence of Knowledge Management. After our first class i had a better understanding about it. I define it as: methods in which information and/or knowledge is stored or transferred and reused. Before we moved on to talk about how we transferred the knowledge, we discussed the different types of knowledge: tacit and explicit.

Tacit: Knowledge which is subconsciously understoof and applied. It's difficult to express and document and as a result is shared through face to face encounters or by means of tutorial sessions. 

Explicit: Knowledge that is relatively easy to capture and store in databases and documents in order for others to access and learn from.

We talked a little bit in class about how to transfer such knowledge from one person to the next and how transfering even explicit knowledge is at times difficult. I went through something along those lines at work both over the summer and last semester. Most employees do not understand its value and ofcourse since they are such busy people with a lot to do to meet project deadlines, prioritize the documentation of their experience and knowledge to the bottom of their to-do-list. I'm guilty of this act myself as well!

A lot of the time we think that the way we do things cannot necessarily be repeated because of "personal opinions" or "personal input" that cannot be verbalized nor formularized. This is untrue. I think the reason we make ourself beleive that is due to fear. Fear that our knowledge wealth is stripped away and can now be used by virtually anyone to complete your current job. Yes techinically this is true - however, this is definitely not in the company's best interest.

"Man without motivation will do nothing"

Therefore in order to make this knowledge documenting and sharing work, the employees need to be assured that they will not loose their jobs as a result or perhaps providing them with some sort of reward. The more knowledge you share, it increases your bonus or you get a day or weekend off. This will result in a win-win situation for both ends!

Hello World!

So this is my first time participating in something like this. I was a little resistant I must say but I've decided to give this a shot. To start off with I want to look into what exactly is a blog? Is there a specific format? Are there certain types of topics that are usually discussed? To answer these I did a little bit of research to see if there is more than one answer for each and here's what I found:

.

According to Wikipedia.com:

“A blog (a contraction of the term "Web log") is a Web site, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order.”

.

Evidently there is more than one type of blog:

.

Personal Blogs: More like a personal diary. Bloggers post regularly either to inform friends and family about their wellbeing and activities going on in their life currently, or is merely used to document important events or moments to remember in one’s life.

.

Corporate Blogs: They’re either used internally to enhance the communication and culture in a corporation or externally for marketing, branding or public relations purposes are called corporate blogs.

.

Question Blogging: This type of blog is a form of digital Q&A. Questions are posted and other users respond with their answers or opinions. A good example of this would be yahoo.com.