So who is confused about Knowledge Management?
Article by Alan Ward
The phrase Knowledge Management is in danger of becoming just another "flavour of the month" in management circles. In recent time I seem to have been inundated with offers to attend expensive workshops at which, the secrets of The Ontologies and Taxonomies of Organisational Knowledge and other such offerings that have promised to reveal to me the mysteries of Knowledge Management, so that I can take control of the Knowledge within my organisation.
Currently if you are considering developing a Knowledge Management System you are being encouraged to: capture the stories of your organisation; create web-portals into the vaults of electronic information; introduce Communities of Practice so that subject matter experts might share their knowledge with acolytes; implement collaborative technologies that will facilitate the Communities of Practice; develop intranets over which these collaborative tools might be deployed; implement effective records and document management systems and support all of this effort with a Mentoring program so that reflection and evaluation will become a core capability within your business. Despite all of this advice there is precious little being said about precisely what we mean by Knowledge and what it is that we are capturing in all of these activities.
Creating "organisational space" for creativity and innovation
I have believed for a long time that if you want to capture the core knowledge of your organisation, the stuff that really matters when it comes to running a business effectively, the place to start would be the creation of a clear and unambiguous set of protocols, procedures and practices that define the way that work is done in the organisation. Now before the "creatives" get stuck into me and call me a systems' fascist, let me quickly say that my desire is not to put a straight jacket on creativity within the organisation, quite the contrary.
I believe that if we can simplify and codify the core business processes of the organisation so that staff members don't have to waste their time working out how they should do such mundane things as "put in a leave-application" or "submit their monthly expense accounts" or "take a complaint from a customer - and be confident that the organisation will resolve the problem" or "report a mal-function in a some organisational infrastructure" or "any other thing that eats into their time for being creative and doing their job" the organisation will be inherently more innovative, effective and efficient.
Now this stuff may all seem very pedestrian in comparison to the descriptions of Knowledge Management activity given earlier, but to my way of thinking, this is the real knowledge of the organisation this is the stuff that, if we get it right, goes a long way to reducing irritation and annoyance for people within organisations. Whilst I don't disagree that the previous list represents a compilation of much of the activity that goes on around a Knowledge Management intitiative, I still don't think it helps anyone to understand what it is that they are trying to do from a strategic perspective.
The work that we do at changedrivers
At changedrivers we have carefully defined the relatively small "space" in which we want to play in the "Total World of Knowledge" and have developed KnowledgeGate™ that is a compilation of a set of tools and consulting processes that allow us to capture and disseminate the way in which information flows through an organisation to trigger those processes and activities that generate the organisation's outputs.
We have developed a core competence in this area which is the ability to engage staff members within an organisation who are considered to be the subject-matter-experts in some area of organisational procedure. We get them to share their experiences about what it is that has made them experts in doing the work, we refer to this as Tacit Knowledge. We then convert this Tacit Knowledge into Explicit Knowledge so that it can be shared with other people who also have responsibility for doing the work
For the past five years members of the changedrivers' team have been providing consulting solutions to our clients by delivering integrated business models that link the Policies that govern the organisation's Activity to the Processes that describe the work of the organisation and which also contains linkages to the forms, Powerpoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets and other sources of information that staff have to access so that they can do their jobs.
Our consulting teams have developed and honed a combination of skills that includes:
- the ability to engage subject-matter-experts and make them feel comfortable about exploring their tacit knowledge in such a way that it can be captured and shared with others in the organisation
- an expert understanding of how to present this information using our process mapping and business analysis applications
- an ability to sensitively and accurately validate the information that we gather with other subject-matter-experts in the organisation
- an ability to transfer skills into the organisation so that the product that we leave with the company will continue to develop, improve and grow under their care.
It is this combination of capabilities that allows us to build browsable, web-based environments where Users can access information about how the organisation expects them to do their job.
The web-sites that we create are designed to provide new employees with a "user-friendly" environment where they can use both simple or sophisticated "smart-pull" capabilities to access authoritative information about how the company wishes them to perform their duties when they first join the business. Additionally, by using "smart-push" technologies the systems are designed to ensure staff members are kept informed of changes to the policies, processes and practices that will have an impact upon how they are expected to do their jobs.
When a client engages us to build a KnowledgeGate™ System our strategic intent is to:
- Build an Authoritative System that allows staff to work with confidence because they know that the information they are able to access regarding business process, the forms that are used in the process and the policies that provide guidance and direction about the process represent the currently "approved and authorised way" of "doing things around here".
- Engage the subject matter experts in the organisation and to work with them to codify the Tacit Knowledge they have gained through training, development and experience so that we can convert this information into accessible, Explicit Knowledge that can be consulted by less experienced personnel.
- Build systems that are based upon "smart-push" and "smart-pull" concepts. We want the right information to automatically go to the right people as and when it is required, i.e. "smart-push" and we want people to be able to be able to locate information they need, as they need it through effective search tools, i.e. "smart-pull".
Defining Knowledge Quadrants
In order that we can begin to collate information from the organisation that is going to be included in the business model, it is important that we have an initial framework for categorising the information elements that we know we are going to find when we begin our process of discovery.
The two axes of the model refer to the Source of the information in the first instance and the degree to which the information needs to be Authoritative within the organisation in the second instance.
1 - External and Uncontrolled
The Internet and External publications lie in this segment. It is accepted and understood that every day there are hundreds of thousands of pages added to the world-wide-web and very little of it can be considered authoritative. In fact there are organisations in the information environment that are carving niche businesses for themselves by offering portals to assured and validated information. Every week there are hundreds of new management texts that hit the bookshops. Whilst some of them could be considered to be authoritative because of the author's reputation it can also be argued that they merely reflect the opinions of one person's view on the world. A fundamental truth is that for every management guru's proclamation we can find an opposing view from another management guru, somewhere!
2 - Internal and Uncontrolled
Although this segment is within the organisation it is not under the control of the organisation. In a recent the Gartner Group Report it was suggested that for most organisations in excess of 50% of their corporate intellectual property was tied up in their e-mail systems. From the most perfunctory review of the Knowledge Management journals today it can be seen that the orderly management of e-mail is coming under the microscope of concern. The fact that the majority of organisations allow e-mail to reside in the C drives of desktop machines without backup procedures or filing and recording protocols simply adds to the concerns.
The rumour mill is alive and well in most large organisations and in the absence of real information there will always be individuals who are prepared to provide advice and insight into any organisational issue that may come into the arena for discussion.
3 - External and Controlled
All organisations are subject to local, state and federal legislation to either a greater or a lesser extent. How well these legislative requirements are complied with, understood and used to guide the activity of the organisation varies enormously from business to business.
The increasing focus on the environment and occupational health and safety issues is putting many directors and managers at risk and in too many instances they are not aware of their responsibilities or the penalties that come with failure.
4 - Internal and Controlled
This is the segment where our KnowledgeGate™ System is put to best effect.
This segment represents all of those procedural routines that a business needs to have performed or conducted in a similar routine across the organisation. There should only be: one way to complete and process an "application for leave";one standard methodology for setting up a new client within a business' financial and customer relationship management systems;one standard process for ordering new business cards; for making a purchase requisition; for lodging an expense claim, etc., etc., etc..
It is these processes that we capture and share across the organisation.
Ensuring decision-makers have access to the "right" information
One of the primary benefits gained through the standardisation of business process is more effective decision making. We live in a world whereby we are inundated with data and information and one of our greatest challenges when we are required to make an "informed decision" is ensuring that we have accessed the information we need so that we can confidently make the decision. Because when a decision-maker is unsure as to whether or not they have been able to access "all of the important information" there is a danger that paralysis by analysis will occur as they continue to search for that elusive, definitive piece of information that provides them confidence in their decision.
In simple terms, KnowledgeGate™ provides both smart-push and smart-pull capability through our process of profiling Users and Information using the same taxonomy and then allowing the database to do its work of matching Users to pertinent Information.
- When a User is registered for the first time in KnowledgeGate™ the smart-push system creates a reading list that contains all of the files in the system pertinent to the newcomer. This reading list contains all of the information in the knowledge base that the User needs to be able to do their job and provides access to the policies, processes, protocols and documents that are Authoritative in the newcomer's role.
- When a User wants to interrogate KnowledgeGate™ for information they are able to use the smart-pull system, again based on the taxonomy of the organisation to find information that is in the public domain, but not specific to their role. Dependent upon the document management system that is employed a variety of search techniques will be available to the User that will range from simple, key-word through to "full-text" based search.
In a mature KnowledgeGate™ System the vast majority of "Authoritative Information" will have been captured and codified within the system, therefore reducing concern as to whether or not a decision maker had been able to access appropriate, authoritative information thus providing the User with an enhanced confidence in their approach to solving a problem.
Ontologies & Taxonomies
In the knowledge management world a couple of the words that are used, and some would say with gay abandon, are ontology(ies) and taxonomy(ies). Whilst I claim a classic, English Grammar School education with six years of Latin (I had to repeat the fourth!), I must admit that they are not words I use in my day-to-day lexicon.
Ontology - The branch of metaphysics that deals with the nature of being.
Taxonomy - (a) The classification of organisms in an ordered system that indicates natural relationships. (b) The science, laws, or principles of classification; systematics. (c) Division into ordered groups or categories.
In simple English we are referring to the schemas and ordered categorisation systems that scientists and librarians have been using for generations. They are simply frameworks for understanding where individual items "fit". There are a number of software systems that offer methodologies for building taxonomy structures that will then facilitate the classification and categorisation of information. We have adopted a far more pragmatic solution to this issue and have proven to ourselves that for the purpose of managing Authoritative Information within a KnowledgeGate system we have been able to develop the organisation's taxonomy of information as we have developed the framework of the way that work is done within the organisation.
In our process we start from the highest level of abstraction to define the work of the organisation. This could be from a functional perspective such as sales, operations, product fulfilment, marketing and such, or it could be developed by considering core process such as "quote to order", "order to delivery", "problem notification to issue resolution", in other words we build taxonomies that are based upon the classification of work that is specific to our client, not upon some generic system of definition.
In Summary
There is no simple solution for leveraging the knowledge that exists in your organisation and there is certainly no silver bullet.
We have not addressed the concepts of innovation and creativity and the need for organisations to manage these vital processes of organisational development. That doesn't mean that we don't recognised how important they are to an organisation's ongoing success. Rather we are proposing that the way we can add-value to an organisation is to help them get this mundane, but nevertheless vital stuff under control so that energy can be released into the organisation to undertake creative development of products and services.
The convergence of information technology capabilities, knowledge worker advancements, rapidity of change in the marketplace and a myriad of other imperatives mean that we have increasing levels of turbulence to manage in our day-to-day existence.
Our objective is to reduce the "white noise" of organisations by capturing what can be known and understood about the way work is done and making it explicit and available to those who need it when they need it.