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IS5600 - 5

Knowledge Management

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Knowledge Management

Example 1I have been searching for a solution

to a problem all day. Eventually, I find the answer on a website – and the author is … my colleague from two-doors away down the corridor!

Why didn’t I know?

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Knowledge ManagementExample Two

I am the senior partner of a global headhunting firm. We have reasonable information management (industry analysis, market research, resumé databases) but do nothing to tap into the vast knowledge resources held in the brains of our consultants. Each time a consultant leaves, our firm’s collective brain is drained. What can I do to manage our knowledge resources better?

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KM Example 3• In my team-based work environment,

none of my immediate colleagues can help me.– The corporate knowledge base is out of date

(as usual)! No one ever wastes time on that!• So, I jump over the corporate firewall –

and ask my external friends– In fact, I ask 15 of them!

• In minutes, I have several good answers– And 3 minutes later, one of those friends

asks me for helpWhat’s going on here?

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KM Fundamentals

• What is knowledge ?• Why is it important?

• What do we have to do in order to understand our knowledge

resources• How are we going to be able to manage our distributed knowledge

resources?

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Knowledge• Knowledge is

– Information that is contextual, experiential, relevant, and recontextualisable for action taking

– A representation of skilled practices• Knowledge can be

– Tacit or explicit– Operational or strategic– Emergent or static– Communicated or hidden

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How do we conceptualise knowledge?• As a formal organisational resource?• As a community resource?• As an individual resource?

• As something that can be codified in documents?

• As something that is best explained person-to-person?

• Or as something that is totally inexplicable?!

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Knowledge Needs, Validity & Use• What are the knowledge needs of

employees?• How quickly does knowledge

change, degrade, become invalid…– When is its “use by date”?

• How can knowledge be communicated?

• What does knowledge recontextualisation involve and cost?

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Does your Organisation (Try to)

Manage Knowledge?

How?

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Knowledge Organisation and Delivery

• Hierarchies• Communities• Markets

• Codification-based systems• Personalisation-based systems

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Knowledge Hierarchies• Specific knowledge that is customised

for target users and often reused• Hierarchies imply a consistent storage

mechanism that is easily searchable• High creation costs

– Accuracy, completeness and integrity (of knowledge and source) are important

• Quality is high, but validity may be short

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Knowledge Communities• Knowledge is shared among community

members, with trust-supported sharing• Community norms are influential• A coordinator will facilitate the

community’s access to knowledge• Feedback mechanisms will validate the

knowledge• Quality is variable, but validity is often

longer– Short-validity knowledge requires too much

effort to update on a regular basis.

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Knowledge Networks

• It can be very informal– Practice Area Networks – PANs

• Groups of people with ideas to share that form voluntarily

• May be industry specific or focused on a specific topic

– DIY – Do it Yourself• With management support, but not

control• Help people to help themselves

Source: http://www4.cio.com/article/27088/Do_It_Yourself_Knowledge_Management

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Knowledge Markets• A market will focus on capture, not

creation of knowledge• Each individual employee acts alone• With little formal KM, there is little

validation/organisation– This reduces creation costs, but increases

search and recontextualisation costs• This is a chaotic market, where quality

is an unknown factor– Wiki Answers– Baidu Zhidao

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Codification-Based Delivery 1• Expert System

– Formally codified knowledge; automated search/dissemination

• Knowledge Repository– Text database of documents; quite

easy to locate knowledge • Document Repository

– Text database of documents, but no specific knowledge examples

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Codification-Based Delivery 2• Exemplars and Templates

– Text database of best practices for specific tasks• Exemplars are examples that illustrate

best practices• Templates involve step-by-step scripts

• Tips, Stories, Opinions, Principles, Heuristics, Patterns– Example/scenario-based text similar

to exemplars/templates, but less structured

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Personalisation-Based Delivery

• Expert Directory– Managed and validated database of

people formally recognised as being experts

• People Directory– Organised list of people with

espoused interest in a particular area, but little validation/verification of their knowledge

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Personalisation-Based Delivery• Reference centre

– Chauffeured access point to knowledge

– Knowledge comes from a designated expert

• Q&A Forum– Web-based discussion site or blog

• Community Calendar– Shared calendar of events of interest

to the community

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KM, KS and Communities

• KM needs sharing of ideas.– A notoriously difficult barrier to

effective KM implementation.– KS needs to be rewarded; KS failure

must also be rewarded.– KS needs to be easy, not time/energy

consuming.• Sharing is often easier in

communities.• Do some communities find it easier

to share than others?

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Systematic Knowledge Processes

• Does the firm have systematic processes for – Capturing, organizing and sharing

• external and internal knowledge?

• Are there processes for enhancing knowledge creation and innovation?

• Are there procedures governing the protection of knowledge assets?

• Does senior management actively promote and engage in a knowledge sharing culture?

• Are knowledge contributions measured or linked to financial performance indicators?

Pushing Knowledge

• Could we push useful knowledge to the people who need it most?– Tell them what they need before they

know that they need it!• Look at Microsoft’s Delve tool.

– http://www.businessinsider.com/nadella-bets-heavily-on-delve-2014-7

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Knowledge and Privacy• http://www.aclu.org/pizza/• What kind of knowledge can we see

here?– Types– Examples

• How is this knowledge used for decision making?

• What are the exact privacy concerns?

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People, Knowledge & Technology• In order to execute a knowledge based

strategy, we need to think how to nurture people with knowledge

• Knowledge is most effectively applied through networks of people who collaborate with one another – not through networks of technology

• KM is a primarily human-human process, supported by technology. Treating KM as a technical problem and finding a technical solution is likely to result in failure.

• KM strategies are more likely to be successful if they are driven by human needs for help in solving problems, not by knowledge being pushed at people.

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KM and Reward Structures• Both creators and users of knowledge

should be rewarded.• Mistakes are also a source of knowledge

– so reward their reporting• Knowledge sharing should be

recognised financially and publically• Failure to use/share knowledge should

be penalised• Rewards can be designed at both

individual and team levels• Time must be allocated to knowledge

creation and sharing.

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KM, Top Management and Hiring Policies

• If people oppose KM blindly and try to destroy knowledge management efforts underway in the organisation, then don’t promote or encourage them!

• Don’t let KM initiatives be held back by old culture and old thinking– All employees from the CEO

downwards need to abandon the old and adopt the new – enthusiastically – if KM is to be successful

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KM Initiatives and Alignment

KM Initiatives

Portal Development

Knowledge Categorization

Communities of Practice

Active Capture

KM Training

Incentive System Creation/Change

Explicit Knowledge “Tacit” Knowledge

Gap Analysis

Measurement System

Vision – How are Knowledge and Strategy Aligned?

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Same Purpose – Different PathsEmployees write up consulting reports

KM team locates all such valuable sources

Documents are stored on a corporate portal

Indices, categoriz-ation, context is added

Users are provided with intelligent search

Knowledge portal is modified as use changes

Collection of numerical transaction data

KM team searches for patterns (data mining)

Patterns are stored in rule form (knowledge base)

Patterns are reported as business rules, or can be used to intelligently search through databases (profiling)

Knowledge is updated based on new records

Employees share advice via discussion boards

KM team locates all such discussions

Advice is categorized, reformatted

Web links to discussion board and categories

Old discussions are archived, while repeated questions are transformed into FAQs

Collection of e-mail enquiries

KM program searches for patterns (text mining)

FAQ’s and answers stored in knowledge base

Knowledge base either makes suggestions about best answers, or automatically answers 80% of e-mail inquiries.

Knowledge is updated based on new inquiries

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The Case of Siemens – ShareNet 1 • Siemens worldwide adoption of KM• Strong German Organisational culture• Sophisticated reward point system

– Redeemable for gifts, trips, etc.• Strong sense of employee involvement

– More for kudos than rewards• Active answering of questions raised by

others

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Siemens 2• An Italian office of Siemens was looking

for information that would help in a project bid.

• They found the information on ShareNet– The knowledge had been created by

Chinese employees.• Siemens got the project

– And rewarded those who created the knowledge.

• Overall, ShareNet helped Siemens gain €120M of projects (1998-2005)

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Other Resources

• Knowledge Maps• Conversational Knowledge• Google

– Now search results depend on networks of links between pages and page currency, not just keyword counts anymore.

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CategoriesCategories

Document popularityDocument popularity

Document SummaryDocument Summary

Awareness / IMAwareness / IM

Affinity rankAffinity rank

Community locationCommunity location

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Conversational Knowledge

• Blogs, Wikis, Email, Skype,…– Conversations become persistent,

google-searchable, part of your knowledge network

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8 Lessons for KM Implementation

• 1. Overcommunicate!– Org change is huge, so there is a

continuous need to communicate at all levels. Keep everyone in the loop. Ensure that they realise what this project will do for them and why they need it. Help them to build up a new comfort zone.

• 2. People– You need the right people for the

project. With the wrong people, you are asking for trouble.

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• 3. Ensure that end-users are involved in solution design– Don’t exclude the end-users till the

project is ready to run. Involve them. Build their buy-in! Make them content experts who identify the right kind of content that is needed.

• 4. Content gaps, redundancies and dirt– What we don’t have, what we have in

duplicate, and what we have in the wrong format. It all has to be fixed and the sooner the better for KM users.

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• 5. Incentivise user adoption– Reward employees who venture

outside the comfort zone and try the new KM stuff.

• 6. ROI – Measures and Requirements– Tricky, but an ROI measure is

important.• What are we looking for? How will we

measure it? Intangible and tangible measures.

– Measure the efficiency of the KM processes (content coverage and quality)

– Measure the KM impact• Work speed, resolution times, agent

productivity, …

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• 7. Understand End-User Needs– How do end-users actually work? Are

we helping them or hindering? Different end-users in different departments do the same thing in different ways (culture), so a new KM solution has to be flexible.

• 8. What is the goal of this KM initiative?– What are we trying to achieve? Are

we getting there? Will KM actually prevent us from doing some of what we do currently? How do we work around that?

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Discussion – Bob’s Story

• What is his working environment?• What are his knowledge tools (in 2004)

– and which different tools might he use today?

• Which skills and characteristics does Bob need to have to work? Any updates for 2014?

• What value does he bring to the company?– Could we measure the value in $? How?

• Bob’s context is limited to one country (US). How would his work change in a global sphere of operations?