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Knowledge Management & Information Technology July 19, 2009

Posted by stewsutton in Collaboration, Communications, Community, Information Technology, Knowledge Management, Stewardship.
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How can improvements to organizational knowledge management be realized most efficiently:

  1. By integrating the available information technology services made available by the enterprise?
  2. By representing the requirements of new information technology services and designing these services?
  3. By coordinating the priority of specific information technology services via organizational governance?
  4. By overseeing the implementation and project management of information technology services?
  5. By taking an active role in the daily operations of information technology services?

This may be a rhetorical question for some and for others it may be the critical question that establishes balance to their knowledge management program.  Within every organization, the staff coordinating knowledge management may find a slightly different home base. The typical locations for where to host the knowledge management function vary across industries and across different organizations within those industries.  Here are some typical host locations for the knowledge management function and the general emphasis when they have that hosting organization:

  • Human Resources – focus is on organizational development and human capital management
  • Engineering – focus is on improving sharing and stewardship of explicit technical knowledge
  • Administration – focus is on performance of knowledge sharing across the enterprise
  • Information Technology – focus is on the technical service or solution that improves staff collaboration
  • Standalone – focus is toward improving organizational performance through knowledge sharing

Each hosting location provides a different organizational emphasis and all have some relationship toward information technology. Only one has a specific focus on improvement of IT services.  The other hosting locations for KM have a relationship with IT but it is not the primary focus.  Which location can provide the most effective home for KM?  That depends it seems on the performance of the IT organization.  If the IT organization has the capability to deliver innovative solutions with great efficiency, then there is the potential for a great partnership between KM and IT without KM being directly nested within the IT organization.  If however, the IT organization struggles to deliver capabilities that are essential for efficient knowledge capture and knowledge sharing, then another arrangement may be necessary.

Consider the questions on how to improve KM within the culture of your organization and comment on where you think it has the most effective influence and the most effective hosting location to deliver that influence.

Can you really manage knowledge? October 30, 2008

Posted by stewsutton in Knowledge Management.
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Most would agree that knowledge is the stuff that we carry around with us in our heads.  It’s a combination of experience and the ability to draw on that experience as we do things.  In many instances we may agree that when the right knowledge is applied, that is an example of “good judgment.”

So how can we “manage” this stuff?  Is there a special technology device that can be hooked up to a person that identifies, orders, and extracts this stuff we call knowledge?  And if such a device exists, will it really be able to create a product that would give sufficient emphasis to the context of “when, how, and why” to apply the extracted knowledge?

Most knowledge that we seek to “manage” is of a form that is described as “explicit”.  It’s the tacit knowledge that we generally refer to as residing in our brains and embedded within our experience.  So with that clarification, can we really manage the explicit stuff?  These are things that we can write down.  Say for example you have a really good technique for doing a particular task.  If you are able to write that technique down and it can be followed by another person based on your written instructions, then you have an effective example of explicit knowledge.  Let’s call that gem the “expert task procedure” to continue this example.

Once that a piece of knowledge has been articulated explicitly it is a candidate for being managed. Since we have the expert task procedure in an explicit (written) form, it can be managed.  To manage this knowledge we need to accommodate the following three elements:

  1. stewardship –  knowledge needs to be updated and maintained in proper context
  2. distribution –  knowledge must be shared and made available to others
  3. access control – only those with the correct permissions can use the knowledge

A formal approach to knowledge management will assure common procedures following corporate process and leveraging enterprise technology accommodate the three preceding elements.  Knowledge must be applied in proper context to have value.  Stewardship (including the original authorship) is directed at that objective.  Stewardship may be as simple as ensuring that the written procedure has a caretaker that will keep it “up-to-date” and address different variations that might need to be articulated to tune application within a different context.

Once the expert task procedure is created, it is not going to really add value to the organization unless it is made available to others in a form that assures its “accessibility”.  Sending out the explicit knowledge in a “one-time” email is probably at the other end of the spectrum of “good knowledge management.”  Also, just posting the knowledge on a “web site” may be a bit better, but it fails to address the need to classify and present knowledge according to explicit inquiry.  So the distribution of knowledge in explicit form is generally done through some form of knowledge management system (that is really a fancy database system with a friendly interface to address “search and locate” needs).

Once we have knowledge recorded in explicit form, and there is an agreed procedure following standard process to assure that the knowledge is “up-to-date” (stewardship), and that knowledge under stewardship is placed within a special data system where it can be easily located and referenced, we must consider how to “protect” and manage access to that knowledge so that only those with proper authority (according to organizational policy) can get to it.

Access control to knowledge moves into the field of “identity management” and at the enterprise level it requires that knowledge systems integrate with enterprise identity systems.  This can be complex technically but it is essential in assureing that knowledge is properly managed. Let’s say for example that you had everything in place except for access controls.  Then the knowledge of that expert task procedure could benefit many, including the competitors to the company that gained access to the knowledge system with the open front door!  Protecting knowledge is essential to leveraging knowledge for competative advantage and that is also what makes it so difficult to collaborate and share across organizational boundaries.

Knowledge Management During Difficult Economic Times October 30, 2008

Posted by stewsutton in Knowledge Management.
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How many are thinking about the economy of knowledge under the current world economy?  We notice that some percentage of investments (buying) is emerging as traders speculate about a “bottom” to the market valuations of many.  Is there a parallel for buying and selling of knowledge?  What kind of “investments” are being made in the corporations that with high probability, will weather this economic storm?  We see movement by some corporations to capture market share by investing in marketing.  Buying exposure when the marketing dollar gets you more mileage.  Do marketing dollars compete with dollars spent on corporate knowledge management?

When the economy gets tough, it seems that the resources directed at improving the knowledge transfer and retention at a corporate level are often seen as luxury items – things that are best financed when your core infrastructure costs have been allocated.  Buying a few more blackberries for corporate staff gets traded against financing administrative startup costs for knowledge communities.  The blackberry purchase usually wins.  Then you get to the more difficult trade offs of technology infusion, quotas on information technology resources, disparity on where to publish knowledge across an increasingly mixed set of destinations (blogs, wikis, cms, doc management, web sites, etc…).  The ambiguity of multiple copies within the information enterprise forces the question of “which destination is authoritative?”

So KM has a role in these constrained economic times.  It seeks to establish pathways to knowledge assets that are valued by a peer community. Really knowing what knowledge assets matter becomes even more important when the costs to produce results have been constrained.  KM is not something that is a luxury during difficult economic times, it is a way to improve the economic efficiency of knowledge-based transactions.  Just be sure to tell that to the person that want’s a blackberry upgrade.