An extract from an article i found on CIO.com

What is knowledge management (KM)?

Unfortunately, there’s no universal definition of knowledge management (KM), just as there’s no agreement as to what constitutes knowledge in the first place. For this reason, it’s best to think of KM in the broadest context. Succinctly put, KM is the process through which organizations generate value from their intellectual and knowledge-based assets. Most often, generating value from such assets involves codifying what employees, partners and customers know, and sharing that information among employees, departments and even with other companies in an effort to devise best practices. It’s important to note that the definition says nothing about technology; while KM is often facilitated by IT, technology by itself is not KM.

Think of a golf caddie as a simplified example of a knowledge worker. Good caddies do more than carry clubs and track down wayward balls. When asked, a good caddie will give advice to golfers, such as, “The wind makes the ninth hole play 15 yards longer. ” Accurate advice may lead to a bigger tip at the end of the day. On the flip side, the golfer — having derived a benefit from the caddie’s advice — may be more likely to play that course again. If a good caddie is willing to share what he knows with other caddies, then they all may eventually earn bigger tips. How would KM work to make this happen? The caddie master may decide to reward caddies for sharing their tips by offering them credits for pro shop merchandise. Once the best advice is collected, the course manager would publish the information in notebooks (or make it available on PDAs), and distribute them to all the caddies. The end result of a well-designed KM program is that everyone wins. In this case, caddies get bigger tips and deals on merchandise, golfers play better because they benefit from the collective experience of caddies, and the course owners win because better scores lead to more repeat business.

Read the complete article Here..

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Listed below are the 10 most highly recommended books on KM as per Knowledge-managment-online.com

1. The Wealth of Knowledge, Intellectual Capital and the Twenty-First Century Organization, Thomas A. Stewart

2. Learning to Fly: Practical Knowledge Management from Leading and Learning Organizations by Chris Collison, Geoff Parcell

3. Working Knowledge by Thomas H. Davenport, Laurence Prusak

4. The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation by Ikujiro Nonaka, Hirotaka Takeuchi

5. Knowledge Asset Management by Gregoris N. Mentzas, Dimitris Apostolou, Andreas Abecker, Ron Young

6. Intellectual Capital: The New Wealth of Organizations by Thomas A. Stewart

7. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity by Etienne Wenger

8. Harvard Business Review on Knowledge Management by Peter Ferdinand Drucker, David Garvin, Dorothy Leonard, Susan Straus, John Seely Brown

9. Knowledge Management: Concepts and Best Practices by Kai Mertins (Editor), Peter Heisig (Editor), Jens Vorbeck (Editor)

10. If Only We Knew What We Know: The Transfer of Internal Knowledge and Best Practice by Carla O’dell, C. Jackson Grayson

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If you’ve taken part in any audit ( a relatively large one ) you know the pros and cons of having a Face to Face audit as well as an audit based on a questionnaire.

The questions you need to ask yourself before you start out with an audit are as follows :

1. What is the purpose of my audit?
2. Who is my target audience?
3. How large is this group?
4. Is it very diverse?
5. How much time do i have?
6. How complex do i want this to be?

I’m sure you might put together a whole host of other questions as well, but these 6 should cover the basics when deciding upon a method.

While there is no doubt that a Face to Face audit would generate a huge amount of information it also raises the question of how much time you have to spend. Setting up meetings with a large number of people, expecting them to adhere to the schedule and then filtering out the noise in a face to face meeting all take time. In most instances this is something an auditor doesn’t have the luxury of.

A Questionnaire would be a likely alternative to someone who does not have the time to spend with face to face audits.

So how do you decide between the two? Simply put, factor in what you want to achieve, and how much time you have, not to mention the size of your target group. If its simple information you want then a questionnaire is definitely the way to go, a face to face audit wouldn’t actually be very much more effective in a case like this.

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While i haven’t spent a decade working with KM, i believe working with the challenges faced on a day to day basis, over the past couple of years, has provided me with some insight on what practical KM actually is.

I’ve done my share of reading articles, white papers and case studies ( and still do ) on the subject of Knowledge Management. This is has given me tremendous insight into how the theory of KM has evolved into its relatively mature state today. Though the glaring differences between theoretical KM and practical aren’t too difficult to detect.

So where does this leave us? …..

Don’t get me wrong, a theoretical knowledge of KM is as important as a working one. It gives you a foundation upon which to build a KM strategy. A lot of what I’ve managed to achieve today was built using what I’ve studied and read about, flavored with what i know works in the real world.

Which was the reason i put together this blog in the first place, to give those of you are new to the field a little bit of an insight into what KM is all about. Just keep in mind, these are my views colored by my experiences.

KM Theory or Practice? Where do you stand?

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A large percentage of my posts so far have touched upon technology in the KM sphere. Now, while a portion of you practicing KM out there might feel that technology has no place in KM i still feel that in this day and age creating a robust technology platform that can support a KM initiative is one of the most important milestones you can set for your company.

Let me be very clear about the meaning of my statement above, technology is not Knowledge Management. As stated in earlier posts, a warped understanding of the term “Knowledge Management” have led a large number of companies to re-christen their information system initiatives under this umbrella. This aside, i do feel very strongly that unless you have a strong technology framework your KM initiative will not be as widespread as it should.

A prime example would be in the area of communications. The single biggest challenge to sharing knowledge in any organization are its barriers to communication. Once you’ve opened those up knowledge automatically starts flowing. Environment management, that’s what KM is all about.

Technology helps overcome personal limitations as well. A considerably large number of people are not very outspoken in the corporate world. These people are just as smart, if not more, than the outspoken ones. Creating a communications framework to allow them to contribute should be an organization wide goal. A technology solution, something as simple as a discussion board, would solve this problem almost instantaneously.

One thing that you need to keep in mind when creating a technology framework is, do NOT over-engineer. While you might build the most advanced KM system, at the end of the day what determines the application’s success is how well its received by the end-users. Engineer the system around their requirements and there is a good chance you’ll walk away from an application that truly helps with knowledge management.

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As any marketer will tell you, A large portion of a products success depends on it’s brand value. The same holds true for a Knowledge Management initiative.

There is no doubting that you have a good product, otherwise you wouldn’t be taking it to the market ( being presumptuous here ) . However to ensure its success, you need the brand. Once people start associating KM in your organization with something prestigious the interest in it will automatically increase.

Strong KM practices can be run into the ground because of a lack of branding. Unlike most other job functions Knowledge Management has to be sold to the general public. You need to approach your employees like customers.

There is another reason for branding, as with most KM initiatives there is invariably a rewards and recognition program tied to it. When an employee is recognized as a knowledge contributor , the prestige is much greater when there is brand value associated with the award.

The underlying idea behind Branding is to increase awareness and promote its use, there is also the added benefit of the “wow” factor.

One of the biggest ways of doing this is to ensure that there is senior management presence in most of the award ceremonies. The idea that automatically gets conveyed by this approach is that in order to get recognized by the top brass you need to be a Knowledge Contributor.

There is a lot that needs to go into an initiative like KM, but branding is something that almost always seems to lose out…

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One of the biggest challenges in Knowledge Management these days is getting people involved in the process. Unlike other initiatives which use a mix of the carrot and stick approach, KM can only be promoted using the carrot.

Now the challenge is, what motivates the average users to contribute towards the system? Is it the rewards or the recognition? From what i’ve seen its a balance between both.

However, for the long term sustainability of any KM initiative there has to a be focused move from a rewards based system to one of recognition. For one, its cheaper , second and more importantly, studies done in corporates have shown that the single largest motivator amongst employees is recognition by their peers and superiors.

Knowledge Management is that perfect platform that enables even the youngest of employees’ to show case their ideas and talents on a corporate platform. It ensures that if you are good at what you do, your voice isn’t lost in the crowd. This, i feel is the biggest selling point of KM to the average employee.

The driving force behind KM implementation for an organization is a little different. Numbers speak volumes, and unless corporates see a monetary benefit towards implementing a KM initiative, chances are they’d rather invest the money somewhere else.

So, the method with which you decide to promote Knowledge Management in your organziation depends entirely on your people. Rewards will only get you so far.

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This is a question that a lot of you might have battled with at some point in time and if i’m not mistaken continue to do so. Before we get into the “meat” of this post let me sum it up for you , there is NO right technology for KM.

While we all agree KM is more of a cultural initiative, there is no doubting that without a solid technology backbone chances are you’re heading down a dark road.

I’ve reviewed a large number of applications that claim to provide the perfect KM solution, and guess what? they don’t. No surprise there for those of you who’ve spent time trying to find an application that suites your needs. Please feel free to disagree with me, and if you’ve stumbled upon that “Perfect” KM tool do leave a comment. I’m sure the rest of my readers would love to get their hands on that information, as would I.

Traditionally speaking, a large percentage of corporates seem to have gone the Microsoft way. Starting at Sharepoint 2001 then migrating to 2003 and now 2007. The reason this is the case is because unlike certain other very specific applications like documentum which cost the earth, Microsoft’s Sharepoint is a lot cheaper and integrates extremely well with all its other products. Let’s face it, MS Office Suite is the basic technology foundation upon which almost every company works on.

I’m currently working on a MOSS 2007 deployment, and while this isn’t my first choice for a KM product, certain constraints ( like those i mentioned above ) prevent me from going in any other direction. Though, i was pleasantly surprised to see certain major improvements in the technology (There are a number of posts on MOSS 2007 in my blog if you are interested).

At the end of the day, If you want an application that is simple and easy enough to use - get one that provides the very basic features right out of the box. However, if you have more specific requirements i’d advise you to develop one from scratch.

This is a balancing act, if you have a great technology team to back you up its probably a good idea to go this route. I’m certain you’ll find open source applications that cater to your every requirement. Its just a matter of integrating them to ensure that you get a functionally seamless tool.

Would also appreciate it if you could leave comments on the various tools that you’ve used and the benefits and drawbacks you’ve observed.

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