A really interesting and insightful article i came across, by Graham Durant-Law on what he calls the “Knowledge Productivity Target”.

“You should note there are four sectors as positioned by the cross-hairs and the urgent and not urgent dimensions represented by the two circles. You should also note that urgent tasks comprise a considerable portion of the total number of tasks, and the urgency dimension affects all sectors equally. Indeed the longer a non-urgent task is left and no action taken, the more urgent it is likely to become - this is true of all sectors.

In sector one the tasks tend to be important and easy and either urgent or not urgent. This is a good sector in which to work, and I suggest that this is where knowledge workers, as opposed to managers, should be working.”

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An excerpt from a book that is “A Guide for Development and Humanitarian Organizations”

“The idea of capturing, storing and sharing knowledge so as to learn lessons from the past and from elsewhere – overcoming the boundaries posed by time and space – is far from being a new one. In recent years, a growing movement has emphasised the improved application of knowledge and learning as a means to improve development and humanitarian work. The movement has led to the widespread adoption of learning and knowledge-based strategies among the range of agencies involved in such work, including donor agencies, multilaterals, NGOs, research institutes, and the plethora of institutions based in the South, including national governments, regional organisations, and indigenous NGOs.

This guide is aimed at staff working in all such organisations. There are 30 tools and techniques contained here, divided into five categories: i) Strategy Development; ii) Management Techniques; iii) Collaboration Mechanisms; iv) Knowledge Sharing and Learning Processes; and v) Knowledge Capture and Storage.

Many of these tools are simple and trying them out requires nothing more than the desire to try something new, and the drive to ‘get on and do it’. Undertaking them effectively requires effective –sometimes advanced – facilitation and communication skills. Here, we have aimed to provide comprehensive accounts of how to apply such techniques, with a focus on the requirements of potential facilitators.

Other tools covered here are more complex, and call for significant planning and resources if they are to be delivered effectively. Here, we have attempted to provide an introduction and orientation to a broad subject, as well as suggestions for further resources that might prove useful for the reader.

There are a number of existing toolkits on knowledge and learning, some of which, such as the deservedly popular UK National Health Service knowledge management toolkit and the Learning to Fly books, have served as inspiration for the current volume.

The aim behind this toolkit is to present entry points and references to the wide range of tools and methods that have been used to facilitate improved knowledge and learning in the development and humanitarian sectors. It is hoped that our efforts here will go some way to ensuring that the quote starting this chapter does not become a truism: users will have access to more than just hammers, and the diverse problems faced in this important area of work will not have to be treated as just nails.”

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One of most difficult questions I’ve had to answer with respect to the subject of Knowledge Management is why Technology is so important.

The people asking these questions do not confuse Knowledge Management with Content Management ( as a lot of people very often do ). More often than not they do understand what KM is about and what it could potentially achieve.

So what is the answer? Is technology really that important to KM?

I tried drawing a correlation between the various KM initiatives I’ve been a part of over the years and whether technology did play an important role in it. The results were pretty startling, in over 80% of the initiatives technology did play a vital role. The most common role being the ability to bridge the huge geographical divide that comes with the day to day runnings of a Multi-national corporation.

As I’ve stated in many of my previous posts Knowledge Management is very simply creating channels of communications ( in essence, getting people to talk to one another ). With the breadth of communication enablers that we have at our disposal today its no wonder KM has started relying heavily on technology.

Lets not forget another valuable contribution of technology to the implementation of KM in an organization. The ability to derive metrics! a necessary task for those of us battling with the leadership teams for funds. As with all companies success speaks volumes when it is in the form of a verifiable number. KM is held to the same level of accountablility as any other function. You need to know where and how KM helped achieve a particular organization goal.

Bottom line…. For KM to survive in todays organization a technology framework is vital.

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10 Tips of KM strategies as given by Cory Banks.

1. Manage the Change - Undertake any of these activities from a change management perspective, even IT related ones. Don’t just manage the change around the initiatives.
2. People before Technology - Spend money on travel and socialising before technology.
3. Behavioural Change - People have to be open to supporting new/different practices. They need to adapt to change. They need to see the value to them/others.
4. Organisational Culture - Depending on what the corporate and people culture is like will depend on whether KM efforts will survive. Examples could be that reward structures are personally focused and support a competitive environment so people may not be inclined to share.
5. Strategic Alignment - Activities need to support the direction and priorities of the organisation. This also assists in getting things approved/endorsed.
6. KM in the wild - Find out where knowledge creation and sharing is already happening in the organisation and study it. Learn why it has been successful (don’t just copy it) to help design other activities.
7. Technology is an enabler - Design the process/system and then look for technologies that enable this, e.g. Don’t install a wiki and then look for what you can use it for. Work out what you want to do and then see what tools are suitable to support it.
8. Adopt KM Principles - Don’t introduce separate KM processes. Modify your business processes to adopt KM principles.
9. Don’t stop at the first solution - Consider different options, methods, frameworks and see what works. Experiment.
10. Motivation - It’s not necessarily about reward and recognition. You need to find out how to motivate people to play the game.

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I came across this very interesting article by Andrew Gent.

“A standard approach for developing KM processes follows the same general outline as the methodologies for information architecture or solution architecture. The first step would be requirements analysis, including audience definition, task and gap analysis, etc. The difference would be that you are not looking at only a single business process you are trying to optimize. You need to look at and prioritize several “layers” of knowledge flow around the business. Which ones are important depend upon the organizational culture and the nature of the business processes. However, the layers that come to mind right away are:

• Knowledge within the business process. How to optimize knowledge sharing within the business process. The example from my current work in the systems integration (SI) business — where the business is customer/project-based — is the use of SharePoint spaces (WSS) for team collaboration. This is usually the easiest layer to identify.
• Knowledge about the business processes. How to optimize knowledge sharing about what business is being done. This is where businesses often have a gap. They know their processes, but what is actually being done within the process? This is either not known or scattered in multiple locations. Again using SI as an example, what projects are we doing or have we done? From a management perspective, there are management databases like SAP that are supposed to take care of this. But they tend to be high on numbers and short on context — which makes them a poor source of usable knowledge about the projects themselves. (Besides which, they are usually inaccessible to most employees). So a more open alternative often needs to be developed, as well as ways for practitioners to share reusable content from one project to another.”

Read the complete article Here.

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An excerpt from the paper ” European Guide to good Practice in Knowledge Management - Part 1: Knowledge Management Framework” at CEN.

Why KM?As organizations strive to improve their business performance and capacity for innovation, their attention is increasingly focused on how they manage knowledge. Experience has shown that successful KM implementations in business settings prioritize attention on soft
issues - including human and cultural aspects, personal motivations, change management methodologies, new and improved business processes enabling multidisciplinary knowledge sharing, communication and collaboration - and see technology as an enabler.
Despite this, most efforts so far at addressing the challenge of KM in business environments have typically taken a “technology-push” approach, concentrating major effort on putting in place IT tools that will “solve the knowledge creation, sharing and reuse problem”.

Given this, it has been the objective of this guide to investigate those soft areas related to KM which can be the subject of common approaches, good practice identification or standardization initiatives, and to situate and describe these in the wider organizational context. The overall intention has been to provide meaningful and useful guidelines to companies, and notably SMEs (see below), as to how they might align their organizations culturally and socially to take advantage of the opportunities of knowledge sharing within and beyond their organizational boundaries.

These guidelines therefore take the form of a European Guide to Good Practice in KM which describes how to implement KM successfully within an organization, and lists the benefits awaiting those organizations that are able to do it. Through its soft, culturally focused approach, the guide aims to add value to other more technology-focussed initiatives underway within companies and standardization bodies. The overall result will
be a greater complementary benefit for European companies, large and small. In short we have aimed to identify and develop good practices which can be applied to all types of European businesses, including SMEs, to ensure that these organizations can be assisted as they seek to put in place the cultural, human and environmental ecology necessary to take full advantage of their collective knowledge as they do business in the knowledge economy.

Read the full article Here.

About CEN :

CEN, the European Committee for Standardization, was founded in 1961 by the national standards bodies in the European Economic Community and EFTA countries.

Now CEN is contributing to the objectives of the European Union and European Economic Area with voluntary technical standards which promote free trade, the safety of workers and consumers, interoperability of networks, environmental protection, exploitation of research and development programmes, and public procurement.

CEN is a non-profit making technical organization set up under Belgian law.

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I came a cross a few interesting articles that i though might be of value to some of you out there… The first one is about “Asymmetry of Knowledge Spillovers Between MNCs and Host Country Firms” from INSEAD and the second on “Why commercial Wiki’s don’t work” from the CNN money website.

Asymmetry of Knowledge Spillovers Between MNCs and Host Country Firms

“Multinational companies (MNCs) invest abroad for many reasons, but invariably the quest for knowledge and information will be a part of the mix. In this paper, shortly to be published in the Journal of International Business Studies, Jasjit Singh, Assistant Professor of Strategy at INSEAD, uses patent citations from 30 countries to explore whether the flow of knowledge between a MNC and host country is one-sided, or if everybody wins.

Global economic growth is highly dependent on the diffusion of knowledge around the world, but it rarely comes in a form that can be easily transferred, such as a blueprint or an engineering diagram. Practical skills such as management, distribution and marketing know-how are just as important to growth.

To gain these tacit skills, many countries focus on attracting foreign direct investment, developing incentives intended to encourage multinational companies to establish subsidiaries and work with local companies. But while these local subsidiaries can be a significant source of knowledge for the host country, they also provide a very effective mechanism whereby the MNC can access host country technology. As a result, technologically advanced countries may fear that such subsidiaries gain significantly more than they contribute in terms of knowledge, and that foreign direct investment may come at a cost.”

Why commercial Wiki’s don’t work

“(Business 2.0 Magazine) — Nowadays, the all-powerful Web user, recently anointed as Time’s Person of the Year, is both creator and consumer of every last bit of content at some of the Web’s fastest-growing destinations. Witness the success of Flickr (the photo-sharing site), YouTube (the video-sharing site), Deli.cio.us (the bookmark-sharing site) and Wikipedia (the knowledge-sharing site).

This naturally has gotten a lot of large companies interested in the idea of outsourcing their content to the Web crowd, or “crowdsourcing.

At the beginning of February, for instance, Penguin Books - one of the biggest names in the global publishing industry - launched a month-long, publicity-soaked project that attempted to get Web surfers to create a novel. The idea seemed destined to belong in the Web 2.0 hall of fame (or shame), as the most audacious (or most arrogant) use of crowdsourcing ever.

And eighteen months ago, the L.A. Times started a Wiki to open up its editorial page content to user-editing. (Wiki software allows a lot of people to edit the same document simultaneously, as with Wikipedia’s encyclopedia entries). In January, Amazon (Charts) launched its “Amapedia” in a bid to create product pages that could one day replace, or at least enhance, Amazon’s product descriptions. Penguin opened up its Wiki novel at amillionpenguins.com in February.”

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In this day and age organizations are growing quickly, mergers, acquisitions and attrition are just some of the challenges to overcome when trying to maintain a knowledgeable workforce.

Companies battle everyday to maximize the capture of tacit and explicit knowledge from their employees and have come up with a number of ways to do so. Collaboration tools, knowledge maps , communities of practice, content management tools, after-action reviews and lessons learned sessions are just some of the methods organizations have devised to counter knowledge attrition.

No single approach however is enough to ensure that knowledge is retained, a mix and match of approaches is required. Though the bottom line is this, unless an organization’s culture is geared towards sharing knowledge, creating systems and processes to enable the sharing of knowledge is a moot point.

The After-Action review : This is a strategy that has been adopted from the military. Often after an engagement the team will sit down together and go over what occurred, analyzing strengths and weakness. This is an excellent feedback mechanism to promote learning within the team. On a large scale, trends and patterns can be observed by comparing multiple groups, allowing best practices and lessons learned to be replicated across teams.

Communities of Practice: Is one of the simplest ways of connecting people who need knowledge with the groups that have it. Communities of practice are an excellent way to collect and disseminate information to a large audience. In order to maximize the use of a CoP a careful balance of leadership and freedom needs to be given to the community to promote sharing of ideas and knowledge, as a lack of leadership or direction could seriously damage the usefulness of the CoP in the long run.

Expert Directories : Another great way to tap into the tacit knowledge that exists in the organization - the expert directories is a method by which people can interact directly with people considered Subject Matter Experts ( SME’s ) . This however requires voluntary participation by the experts as it requires them to devote time from their busy schedules to address questions that do not benefit them directly.

Information Repositories : The simplest method of extracting and storing explicit information is the information repository. In its most basic form is a large folder with information stored in some sort of a structure. Advanced information repositories or content management systems use meta-tags and taxonomy structures to organize information for the end user in such a way as to provide the maximum value. By creating processes around the system, organization can ensure that all explicit information find’s a place somewhere in the application. It also acts as a medium for the transition of tacit knowledge to explicit.

These are just some of the methods that you could use to promote knowledge sharing and transfer in your organization. Keep in mind however that true knowledge retention is a daunting task and unless you have a clear approach mapped out it could lead to some serious complications.

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