Knowledge Management
What
is KM | Why KM | KM under CICM
| Main Goals | Requirements
| How-to of KM
What
is knowledge management
Knowledge
Management (KM) is the art and science of managing knowledge resources
whether they are human based (brainpower, experience, skills and competence)
or information based (databases, processes, practices and routines).
In that respect KM has to be supported by both information management
and information technology where both provide the infrastructure upon
which a KM program is build. So what does KM add to information management
and technology? KM is concerned with managing, and leveraging the knowledge
creation process and in doing so supporting all the operations and decision-making
processes of an organization. information collection, evaluation and
use (i.e. information management and technology) are only part of the
knowledge creation process. It is the human and social interaction where
such information is examined, mentally processed, interpreted and applied
that knowledge is created. Some of that knowledge can be expressed and
clearly articulated and hence codified while a major part (estimated
to be between 70-90%) is tacit and cannot be passed on except through
personal contact, mentoring, brainstorming and the like.
Why
knowledge management
The need for KM has been emphasized at the dawn of the knowledge economy
where core business processes in every industry are knowledge-intensive.
Labor and manual work is giving way to knowledge and brain work where
the worker according to the latest surveys spends around 60 percent
of time looking for information and where the main work is processing
this information and applying it to new situations and hence creating
new knowledge. the organizations that learn from their past experience,
that successfully enable employees to express their tacit knowledge
and express it explicitly in work practices and applications are the
best equipped to leverage their knowledge resources and respond more
effectively to change, hence becoming a knowledge or a learning organization.
becoming a knowledge organization is a safeguard against two main plagues
that affect future performance – organizational memory loss and
brain drain. The first problem manifests itself where knowledge is not
transferred from one department, location or business unit of the organization
to the other departments resulting in the organization repeating the
same mistakes, reinventing the wheel and not benefiting from its own
knowledge. KM responds to this problem by creating effective knowledge
networks and flows to identify and transfer best practices and create
new knowledge to tackle business challenges. The second problem of brain
drain manifests itself when the organization loses its best knowledge
resources when the employees leave without being enabled to transfer
their knowledge to the organization’s knowledge base. This is
tackled by knowledge management through building a knowledge base that
contains in addition to the explicit resources (information and data
bases) tacit resources by identifying employees as experts in certain
fields of knowledge or practice and connecting them together. Personnel
transfer and communities of practice, lessons learned and storytelling
are amongst the methods that KM uses to solve the brain drain problem.
KM
Under the CICM Approach
The
goal of the knowledge management stage under the CICM model is to manage
the knowledge resources of the organization, whether explicit or tacit,
including the internal and external knowledge networks (customers) for
value creation. The main goal is to ensure the organization has the
requisite resources to enable its production, innovation or effective
decision-making.
Defining
knowledge management as the process of managing knowledge raw resources
achieves the following purposes:
1.
To depict knowledge management as a stage of a comprehensive or total
model of intellectual capital management where the organization deploys
its resources to make new products (manufacturing businesses), new
services (for service industries and customer service businesses),
and for effective decision making (for public services e.g. defense).
2.
To include knowledge management as part of the management objectives
in the overall business plan of an organization, namely preserving,
maintaining, and growing the knowledge resources required to sustain
the operations of the organization.
3.
To provide managers with a methodology and an aim for knowledge management
that is easy to explain and justify for top-management to secure funding.
It drives home a familiar understandable message; who would argue
with the need to manage tangible raw resources. Similarly, to sustain
the main production process of a knowledge organization the raw knowledge
resources should be managed and renewed. Like tangible raw resources
it is important at all times to know the knowledge resources an organization
has, maintain an inventory in a way that preserves and improves its
value, ensure availability and quality of future supply, and develop
strategies that enable the deployment of resources to respond quickly
to market needs.
Main
Goals of KM Under CICM
The main goal of knowledge management is to ensure that the organization
has the requisite resources to attain the desired competitive position
and sustain its competitive advantage. This is achieved through attaining
the following objectives:
1.
Effecting a strategic shift in the way the organization envisions
itself where the role that learning and knowledge creation has in
the success of the organization is reflected. This vision should also
be used in transforming the culture to one that fosters knowledge
sharing. Though vision setting and creating the right culture are
prerequisites to any intellectual capital management program, they
will be outlined under the KM stage as preparatory procedures.
2. Knowing what the organization knows and the expertise it has and
use it to maximize value creation.
3.
Knowing what the organization needs to know to meet its desired competitive
position, by recognizing and analyzing gaps in the organizational
knowledge resources, and blocks in knowledge flows.
4.
Adopting the appropriate knowledge strategies to enable leveraging
existing knowledge, creation of new knowledge, and the acquisition
of the requisite knowledge for competitive positioning.
5.
Operationalizing the knowledge strategies through creating systems
to enable identification and dissemination of best practices, sharing
and creating knowledge through communities of practice, supporting
knowledge creation processes through the knowledge base and IT.
6.
Monitoring, reviewing and tracking results of KM initiative/s to measure
the effect of KM on performance and productivity. Hence the development
of performance measures.
Main Requirements
To
create and implement an effective knowledge management program it is
important for management to:
1.
Understand the human/social aspect of knowledge management. Knowledge
is distinct from data and information and is what develops when information
resources are processed by the human mind. in that respect knowledge
creation involves a human and social aspect where human and social
interaction in the business context is of utmost importance to keep
the knowledge creation activity to a level where it sustains the organization’s
operations and core processes. This can only happen by sharing and
transferring knowledge.
2.
Create and foster the right culture - A KM program cannot be successfully
implemented if the organization lacks the requisite culture where
knowledge sharing and exchange is adopted as part of the organizational
value system. Such adoption is not by mere speeches by leadership
but through compensation and a reward system that incorporates knowledge
sharing in the job design and performance appraisal.
How-to
of knowledge management
Achieving
the objectives of knowledge management involves undertaking a number of
steps including the following:
A.
Knowledge Audits – There are a number of knowledge audits,
each designed to uncover a specific aspect of the knowledge base of
the organization. First there is a stock or inventory taking audit that
attempts to ascertain the tacit and explicit knowledge resources that
the organization has, does not have, and needs to have according to
its business needs. Second, an audit that focuses on critical business
processes and if they are sufficiently supported by the knowledge resources
of the organization and how. The main goal is to uncover redundancies
and extent of automation. Third, an audit to uncover the state of internal
and external knowledge flows, to detect blocks in critical knowledge
flows.
B.
Gap Analysis – Analysis of the results of the audits
to discover gaps between the “is” and “should”
of the knowledge resources of the organization judged in relation to
a certain benchmark. This benchmark can be determined by reference to
a certain competitive position or certain competitor.
C.
Knowledge base – Information databases are warehouses
of information resources that do not necessarily address the needs of
the knowledge worker. Knowledge bases are databases were more than information
resources are stored and where they are stored with one main purpose
– to support the knowledge needs of the knowledge worker taking
the key business processes into account. The main character that distinguishes
the knowledge base from other information or data bases is that knowledge
is created and maintained by subject matter experts that
D.
Best practices – A practice that is repeatedly applied
and perfected is a best practice. Its quality is usually benchmarked
against a standard of performance, an industry standard, or a practice
by the best regardless of industry. large organizations develop best
practices through repeated applications and long experimentation in
one or more of their operating units which accounts for differences
in performance. Only through sharing these best practices, disseminating
and applying them, is the organization able to transfer knowledge from
one unit to another, learn from its previous experiences and conserve
knowledge and financial resource. An example
E.
Communities of practice - In every organization a number of
knowledge or social networks evolve between employees around a common
area of knowledge, practice or interest where the main goal is to do
the job better. These networks are informal and sometimes include external
parties e.g. experts, customers, suppliers and others. Being informal
and supported by the organization’s infrastructure, let alone
culture, the knowledge created by these networks is usually wasted or
in some situations often driven out of the organization. KM practitioners
therefore advanced the concept of communities of practice (CoPs) where
the organization enables interested employees to come together voluntarily
around a certain area of practice or strategic knowledge provided the
CoP has a value proposition. CoPs have been used successfully by many
organizations for different value propositions including
How
to build a knowledge management system is explained step-by-step in
the book: Comprehensive Intellectual
Capital Management
