The Complete Idiot's Guide to Knowledge Management [Paperback]

In contrast to the more serious and academic tomes on KM, this guide is written in a refreshingly witty, humourous and 'in-your-face' manner, with numerous sidebars, checklists, and reminders.

The 25 chapters are divided into 6 sections: basic foundations, KM strategy, IT infrastructure, change management, KM measurement, and potential pitfalls.

The first section briefly covers some of the key literature and pioneers in KM, such as Karl-Erik Sveiby, Peter Drucker, Tom Stewart, Michael Polyani, Ikujiro Nonaka, Peter Senge, David Gavin, and Etienne Wenger - as well as some of the earliest conferences (held by Ernst&Young, Arthur Andersen, and APQC).

"KM refers to the systematic processes by which knowledge needed for an organization to succeed is created, captured, shared, and leveraged," Rumizen begins. KM draws on numerous concepts and processes like shared vision, team learning, mental models, systems thinking, and intellectual capital.

KM is key for companies that seek to increase efficiency, cut costs, innovate, preserve and enhance organizational memory, and operate on a global scale in an environment of high employee churn rate as well as accelerating mergers and acquisitions. Merely gathering all kinds of business information may lead to "data junkyards" if a focus on actionable knowledge is not adhered to.

According to Nonaka's "knowledge spiral" model of knowledge evolution in a company, there are four conversion processes: socialization (tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge), externalization (tacit to explicit), combination (explicit to explicit), and internalization (explicit to tacit).

IT approaches particularly shine in the combination process, where explicit knowledge in documents, email and databases can be manipulated to create new kinds of knowledge. "Without the quality of connectivity and the simplicity and commonality offered by the software interface to application that is provided by an Intranet, an organisation's ability to create, share, capture and leverage knowledge is stuck in the Stone Age, just above the level of typewriters, faxes and snail mail," says Rumizen.

Studies show that companies focusing on explicit knowledge tend to devote more time and effort on codification and maintenance of content and knowledge, whereas a focus on tacit knowledge involves more of connecting people.

Rumizen advises companies to start with a pilot or several pilots with clearly defined objectives, and then scale up depending on the lessons learned. New roles will need to be created, both within a core KM group as well as throughout the organization. A steering committee including senior members of diverse backgrounds - and possibly external consultants as well - is a critical success factor.

The real killer application for KM is the communities of practice, with clearly defined activities, roles (especially community coordinator), and connections support infrastructure. This includes a best practices database, lessons learned database, expertise finders and corporate yellow pages (which list employee qualifications, experience, network affiliations, project experience).

Communities of practice are known by various catchy names like Learning Networks (in HP), Best Practice Teams (Chevron), Family Groups (Xerox), COINS (Ernst&Young's community of interest networks), and Thematic Groups (World Bank). Corporate yellow pages have been known variously as PeopleNet (Texaco) and Connect (BP).

Many companies now have full-time positions for Chief Knowledge Officers (CKOs), who often have had a prior role as a CIO, librarian, academic, IT engineer, or independent consultant. A good CKO has an entrepreneurial streak, is a good communicator, can negotiate well, benchmarks new ideas, and is IT savvy. Other KM roles and titles include KM architects, KM managers, KM stewards, KM researchers, and KM brokers.

One section of the book focuses on IT infrastructure like electronic whiteboards, Intranets, content management, and knowledge taxonomies, but the treatment of actual KM architectures - particularly for large enterprises - is quite weak.

The section on change management touches on rewards and recognition for KM system usage and inputs, training programs, marketing the KM idea, effective design principles for KM Intranet interfaces, telling springboard stories (as exemplified in Steve Denning's book "The Springboard: How Storytelling Ignites Action in Knowledge Era Organisations"), and moving from awareness to commitment to passion for KM.

The "Achilles heel" of KM, according to Rumizen, is measurement of performance beyond mere anecdotes. Quantitative and qualitative metrics for actionable understanding should target RoI, barriers to sharing of knowledge, employee attitude, level of knowledge standardization, KM systems maturity level, and assessment of intellectual capital and knowledge assets.

Numerous organizational measurement tools have cropped up here, such as Balanced Scorecard (financial results, customers, internal business processes, and learning). Other tools and benchmarks have been proposed by APQC, Celemi, Skandia Navigator, and Intellectual Capital Index.

The final section covers some of the challenges and roadblocks that typically arise in KM systems, such as cultural differences in knowledge sharing across a global enterprise, poor linkages between KM and business strategy, lack of IT scalability and interoperability, inadequate training, lack of employee support, and improper measurement.

The book offers numerous anecdotes and case studies of KM in action. "A successful KM program usually takes several years," according to Rumizen.

Thanks to KM practices, Ford Motor Company has cut costs in areas like brake installation, and Chevron saved operating costs of $2 billion in 2000.

In sum, a good KM strategy must incorporate vision, top-level sponsorship, alignment with business objectives, and clarity of scope. The focus of the initiative could be on entire corporate culture, introduction of new business lines, new markets, organizational restructuring, M&As, or new leadership. The balance between innovation and reuse is a critical success factor for any KM effort.

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Madanmohan Rao is the author of "The Asia-Pacific Internet Handbook" ...

Cheers
nv