Knowledge Repositories

Website populer ?

2008-04-29T03:13:00.000-07:00

Suka penasaran kenapa ada website seseorang lebih populer ketimbang yang lain ? Trus, kenapa ya, orang kerap bolak balik ke website tersebut ?

Ini rahasianya: Yang penting ISInya ! beneran.. isinya alias content merupakan syarat utama website yang kerap dikunjungi orang.

1. Isinya musti menarik dan diperbaharui terus menerus. Website jenis ini harus fokus agar mampu memiliki pangsa pasar dan menjadikan mereka pengunjung rutin.
Bagaimana supaya isi tetap menarik dan diperbaharui terus ? Buatlah website dengan fitur blog atau news update. Isinya ya, berita-berita aktuil dan fokus. Jangan tamak dengan memasukkan semua berita, kecuali website kamu emang temanya gado-gado. Tapi percayalah, tema gado-gado seringkali tidak sukses di pasaran. Alasannya sederhana: pangsa pasarnya jadi gak jelas, kecuali kamu buat segmen-segmen sendiri dan dipecah menjadi beberapa topik. Kalau maksa mau gado-gado, ya bikin blog. Nah, blog sendiri punya tema yang fokus juga kan.. apa itu diari perjalanan hidup kamu, portofolio, tips menarik buat pembaca dan sebagainya. Jadi, jelilah memutuskan ISI website. Kalau gak yakin isinya fokus, tersegmentasi dan diperbaharui terus.. pikir ulang tujuan kamu membuat website.

2. Isinya berisi sumber-sumber referensi yang diminati orang. Buatlah pembaca terbius dengan informasi akurat yang kamu punya. Ini butuh energi dan jam terbang tinggi. Seiring waktu, kamu bisa mempelajari siapa pembaca websitemu dan apa yang mereka butuhkan dari media yang kamu tawarkan. Contohnya, website yang menyajikan tutorial maupun artikel khusus mengenai suatu subyek.

3. Memiliki komunitas interaktif. Sering kali kita sebut social network features, fitur jejaring sosial. Website seperti ini biasanya memiliki fitur forum, wiki maupun fitur lain yang tujuannya membangun jaringan sosial. Website model ini memberi kesempatan pada pembaca / pemakainya untuk ikut terlibat mengisi website. Tanpa keterlibatan pemakai, website ini tidak akan bicara banyak ! Contoh website seperti ini adalah facebook, digg, dst. Tips agar pemakai / pembaca tetap loyal dan aktif memperbaharui isi website cuma satu: minta mereka melanggan website. Sediakan fitur subscribe / keanggotaan maupun agregator / feed / RSS sebagai alat lacak berita bagi pelanggan.

Tidak menafikan desain dan peluang inovasi lain, cobalah tanyakan dirimu sendiri:
mengapa website itu perlu ditandai ? disimpan sebagai favorite dan di bookmark ?
mengapa perlu kembali ke website itu lagi ? apa yang menarik ?
mengapa perlu merekomendasikan web itu ke teman-teman ?

Dengan menjawab pertanyaan tersebut, berjuanglah untuk membangun website populermu sendiri! Gutlak!

12 Steps to KM success

2006-10-18T01:48:00.000-07:00

12 Steps to KM success

The following is a 12-step framework providing thought-provoking ideas and questions that practitioners can consider in the context of their own programs.

1. Value Proposition: Does your organization have a compelling story on how KM will provide business benefit? To the organization, value is culturally determined and needs to be consistent with the executive teams worldview. The value proposition needs to consider value from the perspective of all stakeholders including the executive team, employees and customers. This will ensure that the “What’s in it for me?” question is answered for all stakeholders ensuring greater buy-in for the target community.

2. Strategic Alignment: Do you need a KM strategy or is the KM program directly supporting the existing business strategy of the organization? If you choose to have a KM strategy it needs to be aligned with the organization strategy. When you’re asked what KM is, do you discuss KM as a discipline or how KM supports the business goals? How will you determine your KM approach – top down executive driven; bottom up employee value or a blend of the two? Will it be an organization-wide, team or business unit focus?

3. Organizational Structure: What's the structure of your organization? This must be determined to understand the potential challenges (business unit silos, internal competition it may face and so on). For effective knowledge flow and transfer of best practice the KM strategy will need to overcome any structural barriers. Moreover, the segmenting of the KM team should be consistent with the scope and resource requirements of the KM program and have a very senior and powerful sponsor. Where will the KM leader report in the organization – IT, HR or operations?
4. Managing performance: How is KM performance rewarded in your organization? Do you have clear and simple objectives with effective measures or are your targets the measures?The KM objectives for the program need to be determined (relationship to business objectives), where the measurement framework is simple and integrated into existing culturally-accepted frameworks. How employees will be recognized and rewarded needs to be clarified when new behaviors are demonstrated. The reward and recognition should be congruent with existing HR policies.

5. Cultural sensitivity: Do you think KM can change the organizational culture? What are the philosophies, values, stories and myths in your organization? What are the unsaid laws that determine the behavior of employees?The KM program needs to be congruent with the organizational, national and professional culture. It will also need to be fine-tuned in various geographies and business units to cater for these three critical factors.

6. Technology: Does your technology enable KM or direct the solution? Is it consistent with existing IT platforms? Is it part of the standard workflow? Do people think KM is integral to their role as the technology is integrated into their daily work functions?Technology should be premised on enabling the KM strategy and integrated into the existing infrastructure with similar touch and feel of existing technology.

7. Knowledge creation: How do you know what knowledge is important to your organization? What knowledge will be created? Who will capture it? Who has the time and resources to capture it? How do you know you’re capturing the “right” knowledge? Tacit or explicit? What’s the scope of knowledge creation? Is knowledge a commodity that can be captured and shared or socially constructed?

8. Knowledge structure: How will knowledge be structured for reuse? Is the structure simple where any employee can structure the knowledge or do you need specialist writers who understand the terminology? What format? Who has access? The structure should be determined in the context of ease of find ability and usability.

9. Knowledge review: Will you review the knowledge before storing in a repository? Who will review? What expertise is required? What resources and processes? How will you ensure the integrity of what’s being stored in your repository?

10. Knowledge reuse: How will employees search for knowledge to reuse? Is transfer of knowledge easy and seamless? Is searching for existing knowledge a standard work practice? Do you have one search engine or multiple? Is reuse a socially constructed phenomenon?

11. Knowledge base vitality: Who owns the knowledge? Who’s responsible for updating and archiving? How will this be managed and resourced?A process is necessary to ensure that the content of the knowledge base is maintained to ensure integrity – archiving old content and updating existing content as the environment changes.

12. Environmental scanning: Do you continually scan the environment to ensure that your KM program is aligned with changes of organizational strategy? Are you aware of how employees “feel” about sharing their knowledge? Is trust high? What factors in the environment are impacting KM in your organization – knowledge is power, job security fears?Is your KM program continually adapting to changes in the environment? Remember it’s survival of the most adaptable in this ever-changing world we live in.
Adapted from "12 Steps to KM success, in the September/October 2006 issue of KM Review.

What's stopping people from sharing?

2006-09-20T00:45:00.000-07:00

By Dr. Kamal Jain, Manjit Singh Sandu and Gurvinder Kaur Sidu, University Tan Abdul Razak (UNITAR), Malaysia

What are the main barriers and key enablers to knowledge sharing? Here, we look at research carried out across business schools in Malaysia and discover the top perceived barriers to knowledge sharing.

The following shows results from one section of the research and from a questionnaire completed by 256 participants.

Likert’s five-point scale was used: 1=Strongly agree; 2=Agree; 3=Neither agree nor disagree; 4=disagree; 5=strongly disagree

StatementsParticipants were asked to agree or disagree with the following statements. Mean average scores for responses are given in brecket:

1. There's a lack of rewards and recognition systems that would motivate people to share their knowledge. (2.32)
2. There's general lack of time to share knowledge. (2.61)
3. There's a lack of formal and informal activities to cultivate knowledge sharing in my university/college. (2.62)
4. Existing university/college culture does not provide sufficient support for sharing knowledge. (2.73)
5. There's a lack of interaction between those who need knowledge and those who can provide knowledge. (2.73)
6. There's no system to identify the colleagues with whom I need to share my knowledge. (2.75)
7. Retention of highly skilled and experienced staff is not a high priority in my university/college. (2.89)
8. Physical work environment and layout of work areas restrict effective knowledge sharing in my workplace. (2.90)
9. Staff are reluctant to seek knowledge from their seniors because of the status fear. (3.06)
10. There's a general lack of trust among staff in my university/college (3.06)
11. Staff in my university/college do not share knowledge because of the fear of it being misused by taking unjust credit for it. (3.07)
12. It's difficult to convince colleagues on the value and the benefits of the knowledge that I may possess. (3.12)
13. Staff in my university/college do not share knowledge because they think "knowledge is power." (3.30)
14. Staff do not share the knowledge because of poor verbal/written communication and interpersonal skills. (3.35)
15. IT systems and processes are in place in my university/college to share knowledge. (3.58)

Excerpted from Identifying and overcoming barriers to sharing, in the current issue of of KM Review.

source

Unifying knowledge strategies

2006-09-20T00:41:00.000-07:00

By Kevin Desouza and Yukika Awazu, The Engaged Enterprise

For any organization, failure to maximize organizational knowledge can have a major impact on efficiency and effectiveness. In global organizations, this problem and its effects are amplified by however many regions in which the business functions. Here, Kevin Desouza and Yukika Awazu highlight four tips to improve and help unify the KM strategies across borders.

1. Communicate your KM strategy: Leadership must be advocates of the KM strategy in order to gain an organization-wide understanding of the KM vision. From the CEO down, all business units must be aware of this leadership vision and have the same overall knowledge sharing goals.

2. Have a global rather than local focus: To be successful, organizations need to shift their focus from local to global procedures. Individuals should also be trained on the need to follow formal procedures for knowledge sharing and storage across multiple business units to achieve global, close-looped knowledge application, reuse and innovation.

3. Appreciate local variances in KM practices: Cultural differences impact how knowledge is managed in diverse countries. We must appreciate the differences in cultural knowledge management practices and develop ways to work around them and achieve the organization's common goals.

4. Integrate enabling technologies: Divisions of the organization may operate very different technological solutions for fostering knowledge exchanges. This requires solution integration and connectivity management. Failure to appropriately integrate the different technological architectures will lead to poor global knowledge searches and failed efforts in building a truly global KM program.

Excerpted from Integrating local knowledge strategies, in the September/October 2006 issue of KM Review.

source

TOP TIPS: Barriers to business transformation

2006-08-02T01:20:00.000-07:00

TOP TIPS: Barriers to business transformation

By Michael Fung, Singapore Ministry of Manpower

Knowledge management is ultimately a form of business transformation at the business, people and technology levels. It can lead organizations to better use their knowledge for competitive advantage.
However, although various business transformation methodologies and theories have existed for some time, many such exercises have produced disappointing results. While there are factors unique to each transformation, the majority of failures can be atrributed to taking an inflexible, monolithic approach.
Five common barriers Here are five common barriers to business transformation:
1. Misalignment of business strategies and processes.
2. Gaps in information capture and sharing.
3. Functional silos and non-collaborative working culture.
4. Resistance and people issues.
5. Flexible systems and structures to enable a transformed business model.
For a successful business transformation each barrier must be accepted, addressed and overcome.
To take KM to a transcendent level, it's critical to blend the competencies of your organization and, more specifically, to break down silos between different groups and barriers in an organization as described above.
KM can be used as an inclusive term and a uniting platform to talk about sensitive topics such as integration, rationalization, reorganization, streamlining, collaboration, and sharing.
The value of knowledge sharing Few can argue against the value of sharing knowledge within any organization and the need for better and timelier knowledge to drive decision-making. Most organizations accept that knowledge flows should have no boundaries and there's a need for the right knowledge at the right time to make better decisions.
Excerpted from Breaking Silos at Singapore Ministry of Manpower, by Michael Fung, Singapore MOM in the May/June issue of KM Review.
For more information, visit the KM Review homepage.

source: melcrum.com

Finding the real value in lessons learned databases

2006-07-05T21:53:00.000-07:00

Finding the real value in lessons learned databases

By John Davidson, Facilitators UK

Lessons learned databases can be an indispensable part of the KM toolkit. Well executed, they can add a lot of value. But sometimes this tool isn't used to anything like its full potential. Here John Davidson of Facilitators UK gives eight tips for making the most of your lessons database.

1. Make sure there is a process to acquire lessons learned (peer reviews, after action reviews, quality improvement loops etc).

2. Regularly re-validate the lessons to ensure accuracy, reliability and relevance.

3. Ensure that the database is selected as the storage point for the lesson appropriately, when embedding it in a process, document, training course, checklist etc. may be a better option.

4. Educate people to use the LLD when a problem is encountered that is not answerable via other means – this is not as obvious as it sounds.

5. Put the right culture in place so that there is a facilitative environment for knowledge sharing.

6. Show the value in sharing lessons – record the benefits and impact from learning a lesson;

7. Feed back to contributors – say thanks, tell them what you’ve done.

8. Do something! It’s easy to capture lessons and expect others to read them, digest them and apply them – but it’s only by doing something with them that they will add value.

Source

Analyzing your organization before its KM transformation

2006-07-05T21:46:00.000-07:00

Analyzing your organization before its KM transformation
By Michael Fung, Singapore Ministry of Manpower

KM can be used as the beginning of a major organizational change, but there are many barriers to such a plan. Here Michael Fung, deputy director of the Knowledge Innovation Development branch at Singapore Ministry of Manpower gives five top tips to consider when planning a KM transformation.

What to consider: By using a blended approach to complete KM integration, consider the following focus areas: Strategic alignment with the business plan; business process redesign; systems thinking; information architecture; and enabling IT systems.
Execution: To successfully execute a KM transformation plan, the KM team often needs to function as the overall business integrator, which orchestrates and collaborates with various business and corporate units ranging from corporate planning to HR to customer facing business units. By actively partnering with the various domain owners, you can take an inclusive approach in the KM transformation journey.
Make KM count: Effective initiatives need to show clear contribution to business priorities and alignment with business strategies. Frequently, strategies across different departments are not aligned and each department has its own piece of the puzzle and their own, fragmented view of the customer and world at large. Hence, one of the key KM challenges is to build a bridge across those different strategies and perspectives to give all employees a comprehensive understanding of what you're trying to do. At the outset, the business study phase, consider a plan to align your business's departments. There must be widespread consensus to the plan for it to work.
Carry out a knowledge audit: Once a strategy for alignment has been developed (point 3), identify the key knowledge assets created and consumed at each part of the process. This is akin to doing a knowledge audit, with an emphasis on identifying knowledge flows across organizational boundaries. The questions to ask during this process are:What knowledge do we need to carry out at this process step? What are the knowledge flows that will enable effective interfacing between departments? How is this knowledge currently created, stored and shared? Where are the gaps in the management of these knowledge assets? What else needs to be done to collect and manage these knowledge assets?
Map your organization: Following this knowledge audit, a knowledge asset map can then be translated into an overall knowledge architecture for the organization in its entirety.

Excerpted from Breaking Silos at Singapore Ministry of Manpower, by Michael Fung, Singapore MOM in the May/June issue of KM Review.

For more information, visit the KM Review homepage.

RESOURCES: Top KM blogs and RSS feeds

2006-05-12T02:27:00.000-07:00

By Stan Garfield, HP

My Yahoo! now supports the various flavors of RSS and Atom, allowing you to add virtually anything to your page. This is a good way to monitor news and blogs from a single web site. For more information, see My Yahoo!
The following links are for KM blogs and web sites which offer RSS feeds. The first link is to the web site, and the second is either the URL to use for the RSS feed (with RSS, copy and paste this into your reader), or a web site containing multiple RSS feeds from which to choose (with feeds, visit the site and copy the link you prefer).
Enjoy!
Blogs
1. Patti Anklam - Networks, Complexity, and Relatedness http://www.byeday.net/weblog/networkblog.htmlRSS http://www.byeday.net/weblog/rss.xml
2. Tom Davenport, Larry Prusak & Don Cohen - Babson College http://www.babsonknowledge.org/RSS http://www.babsonknowledge.org/atom.xml
3. Steve Denning - The Leader's Guide to Storytelling http://stevedenning.typepad.comRSS http://stevedenning.typepad.com/steve_denning/index.rdf
4. Stan Garfield - line56.com KM Blog http://www.line56.com/blogs/contributor_index.asp?ContributorID=1RSS http://feeds.feedburner.com/Line56comE-businessBlogs
5. Denham Grey - Knowledge-at-work http://denham.typepad.com/km/RSS http://denham.typepad.com/km/index.rdf
6. June Holley, Valdis Krebs & Jack Ricchiuto - Network Weaving http://www.networkweaving.com/blog/RSS http://www.networkweaving.com/blog/atom.xml
7. Joitske Hulsebosch - Communities of practice for development http://joitskehulsebosch.blogspot.com/RSS http://feeds.feedburner.com/CommunitiesOfPracticeForDevelopment
8. Bill Ives - Portals and KM http://billives.typepad.com/portals_and_km/RSS http://billives.typepad.com/portals_and_km/index.rdf
9. Thomas Koulopoulos - Smartsourcing http://tlb.typepad.com/RSS http://tlb.typepad.com/ss/index.rdf
10. Patrick Lambe, Edgar Tan & Paolina Martin - Green Chameleon http://greenchameleon.com/RSS http://www.greenchameleon.com/feeds/rss/
11. John Maloney - KM Blogs Colabria http://kmblogs.com/public/blog/85436RSS http://kmblogs.com/public/rss/85436
12. Dave Pollard - How to Save the World http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/RSS http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/rss.xml
13. Andrew Rixon, Mark Schenk, and Shawn Callahan - Anecdote http://www.anecdote.com.au/RSS http://feeds.feedburner.com/Anecdote
14. Luis Suarez - E L S U A ~ A KM Blog http://www.elsua.net/RSS http://www.elsua.net/feed/
15. Luis Suarez - elsua: The Knowledge Management Blog http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/km/elsua/RSS http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/km/elsua/index.xml
16. Dinesh Tantri - Organic KM http://dineshtantri.blogspot.com/RSS http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/organickm
17. Jack Vinson - Knowledge Jolt with Jack http://blog.jackvinson.com/RSS http://blog.jackvinson.com/atom.xml
18. Kaye Vivian - Dove Lane http://dove-lane.com/RSS http://dove-lane.com/?feed=rss2
19. Ron Webb - APQC's Knowledge Management Blog http://apqckm.blogspot.com/RSS http://apqckm.blogspot.com/atom.xml
20. David Weinberger - Joho the Blog http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/index.htmlRSS http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/index.rdf
Web Sites
1. CIO KM Research Center http://www.cio.com/research/knowledge/RSS: http://www2.cio.com/search/rss/feed22.xml
2. Gurteen http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/RSS: http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/gurteen-klog.xml
3. ITtoolbox KM Knowledge Base http://knowledgemanagement.ittoolbox.com/Feeds: http://knowledgemanagement.ittoolbox.com/subscriptions/feeds.asp
4. KnowledgeBoard http://www.knowledgeboard.com/index.htmlFeeds: http://www.knowledgeboard.com/rss/index.html
5. KNOW Networkhttp://www.knowledgebusiness.com/Feeds: http://www.knowledgebusiness.com/knowledgebusiness/Templates/RssTemplate.aspx
Source: http://www.melcrum.com/email/source_km/0506a/km0506a3.html

Knowledge key to future of work

2006-05-03T09:48:00.000-07:00

Knowledge key to future of work

By Kate Clifton

Knowledge workers will be organisations’ most valuable source of competitive advantage by 2020, according to a wide-reaching report on the company of the future, by the Economist Intelligence Unit (sponsored by Cisco Systems).

Whether in outward-facing functions, such as sales, or internal positions like knowledge management, survey respondents cited these individuals as key to organisational success.
"Relationships, knowledge management and creativity will be essential to gaining and sustaining competitive advantage in core markets over the next 15 years," claims the report, ‘Foresight 2020 Economic, industry and corporate trends’.

It also recommends that organisations practice more systematic monitoring and measuring of creativity and innovation through service audits; invest in business-intelligence tools to help develop customer-specific sales and servicing strategies; and, re-think recognition and compensation systems that reward creativity and exceptional customer service.

"Customers are looking for a higher level of interactivity and personalisation," says Rob Lloyd, senior vice president of Cisco’s US and Canadian operations. "To be successful, companies have to invest in workers and technologies that can drive collaboration and interactions inside and outside the company across the entire value chain of customers, partners and suppliers."
Furthermore, although increased process automation remains a prominent focus for productivity growth, particularly in non-services industries, respondents expect to focus more energy on improving organisational structures and communication.

The report was drawn from a global, online survey of senior executives, a series of in-depth interviews with executives, analysts and policy-makers, and the Economist Intelligence Unit’s proprietary long-term economic forecasts for the world’s major economies.

For full details, visit: www.eiu.com/foresight2020.
source

Why measure the value of KM?

2006-03-15T20:32:00.000-08:00

Why measure the value of KM?

By Chris Collison

Measuring value can often seem like a time consuming effort for knowledge workers. Is it worth it? Is measuring the value of KM initiatives a worthwhile way to spend time? Don't get me wrong; clearly any KM activity needs to be linked to the creation of business value, and we need to be able to illustrate that convincingly. But, the concern is that to try and separate out the unique contribution than KM activities make can become something of a cottage industry and counterproductive to "getting on with the business of making a difference."

Like most business changes, knowledge management moves through the cycle from unconscious incompetence, to conscious incompetence, conscious competence and, finally, that elusive "nirvana state" of unconscious competence, where knowledge sharing has become part of "how we do things around here."

This is where there's conflict with detailed "compartmentalized" measurement approaches. KM will never become an unconscious competence in organizations where it's measured as something distinct from good business management. The act of detailed measurement imprisons us in the "conscious competence" quadrant (although that's good news if you're an accountant). How much time do you want to spend arguing the toss over whether it was KM, Six Sigma, Lean, Appreciative Inquiry, Systems Thinking, NLP or the corporate values program which helped a team achieve a remarkable outcome? I'd rather be out there working with the next team, helping them achieve their own remarkable outcome!

I can remember the second year of BP's KM program some years ago, when we were asked to demonstrate $100m of business value through the application of KM approaches and tools. We did this by asking senior managers, directors and VPs who had been applying KM tools (mostly with some support from our team) for anecdotes and stories with $ value attached. Many of them did and when we passed the $250m barrier we stopped counting. Was it scientific? No. Did it comply with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles? No. Did they have credibility as stories? Absolutely yes – because of who was telling them. Did the stories inspire others and give momentum to what was going on? Definitely.

However, one senior VP in Mergers and Acquisitions refused to be drawn on the specific contribution that KM had made to a recent acquisition. "It's a big number" he said, "but it's in there with the spaghetti..." (meaning, the other approaches that had also been brought to bear on this acquisition). I have a lot of sympathy with that view. Whilst I recognize that we need to be able to illustrate the value that knowledge sharing brings, with compelling examples and stories, my preference would be to commit the minimum time necessary to the activity of measurement. Like that manager – I'd rather than get on with eating the spaghetti than don a white coat and spectrophotometrically analyze the bolognaise source.

Chris Collison is a KM Review Editorial Board member www.knowledgeableltd.com

Creating a knowledge-sharing system

2006-03-15T19:10:00.000-08:00

Creating a knowledge-sharing system

By Nancy Settle-Murphy, Chrysalis International and, Stan Garfield, Hewlett-Packard

In an increasingly competitive and volatile world, the ability to share knowledge is a prerequisite for successful growth, especially for organizations that prize intellectual capital as one of their most valuable assets.

Here are 10 top tips on how team leaders can create a knowledge-sharing system in their own virtual backyard. Who knows - one relatively modest knowledge-sharing system may be the springboard by which an enterprise-wide system is born.

1. Sell the benefits
Senior management needs to be persuaded of the value, given that they may have to lay out additional funding and resources to set up even a modest knowledge management program. Tip: try to estimate the cost of not reusing knowledge. For example, how many people have to spend how many hours generating how many proposals throughout how many organizations each year? How many prospects choose other vendors when proposals are delayed? Chances are, with some pretty simple math, you can make the case for some initial investments.

2. Appoint a KM leader who can dedicate meaningful time to building the right infrastructure
While this need not be a full-time job in many cases, you will need a sharp person who is conversant in the field of KM to spend dedicated time for the design and launch of any KM program.

3. Set up a community of practice (CoP) to start
This community should include people of a certain function, discipline, area of expertise, or field of interest that all share. Make it easy to join and participate. You can start with something as simple as a newsgroup or an email list. Convey the benefits of membership clearly to give people a reason to join. Find venues by which you can promote the available communities of practice to those most likely to be interested.

4. Create a formal repository in which knowledge can be dropped off
Using a web collaboration technology or a shared messaging system, such a repository needn't take a lot of time or money to set up. Ask participants to help brainstorm a logical construct, to make loading and accessing relevant knowledge more intuitive for all. Start with a few categories and be prepared to refine after an initial period. Plant a few examples in each category so people will see what type of documents best belong where. Focus efforts on the type of content that has the greatest potential for reuse by others.

5. Think globally
When setting up a CoP, be sensitive to cultural differences and local requirements. Make sure that local leadership is in place to tailor the knowledge management program to each region or country as needed. For example, local language may be required in some cases, or a different web portal may be used as the gateway for knowledge in some locations. Strive for a universal look and feel when possible, to make searching and retrieving information easier across all locations.

6. Encourage the sharing of knowledge by embedding related activities within existing work processes
For example, make it a requirement that post-mortem documents following a consistent format are submitted at the close of a project, or make it mandatory to store proposals in a shared space.

7. Reward those who show special initiative in sharing knowledge.
Whether through formal recognition, financial remuneration, or promotion, consider including KM leadership as part of performance reviews or as a basis for bonus plans, from senior management down.

8. Cultivate senior management as champions
Help them promote the benefits of KM in their lines of business. Provide them with actual case studies and examples they can showcase for others to aspire to. Encourage them to model knowledge-sharing in visible, meaningful ways.

9. Create a network of knowledge advisors
These people are subject matter experts who help others to leverage available tools and methods so they can help create self-sufficiency among members of the knowledge community. Depending on what percentage of time these people have to devote to their roles, knowledge advisors can also be instrumental in helping to set up new CoPs and guiding participants in the creation of principles and norms.

10. Open the lines of communications among KM subject matter experts, regardless of their exact titles, roles and locations
Encourage them to communicate frequently using multiple channels, sharing what works, what doesn't, and working to connect different communities of practice. Suggest that they model their own knowledge-sharing techniques for others to learn from.

Laying the foundation for a worthwhile KM program takes careful thought, focused resources, and visible commitment by senior management. You can start with a few straightforward steps within a single organization, and then expand the program as other organizations realize the value.

KM Review

TOP TIPS: Establishing public communities of practice

2006-02-10T16:00:00.000-08:00

TOP TIPS: Establishing public communities of practice

From humble beginnings to a membership of over 10,000 KM practitioners, academics and students, the European Commission-funded KnowledgeBoard is now Europe's most diverse, developed and dynamic, public online knowledge community. How can you ensure your own online community is successful? Here are three top tips to consider when developing a public community of practice.

Motivated leaders are key to sustaining participationLike communities of practice in private enterprise, motivated leaders of subject groups (SGs) within a public community are vital to maintaining and developing interest. Successful leaders are often those who volunteer because there's a specific angle they are interested in. They're happy to take the time and communicate with as many people as are interested. SG leaders who contribute little or cannot afford the time will soon lose interest.

Interest, not practice drives a public communityUnlike corporate CoPs, public communities are not driven by the need to resolve specific issues or develop specific projects. Public communities are driven by individuals needing and sharing insight and information about practical, everyday problems. Such a community will more likely - especially in its early stages - to be a source of information and ideas than advice on practice.

Balance freedom and moderation Because community members post what they think are interesting articles and comments, a public community can reflect a broader interest than just the original subject matter. Left unchecked, this freedom can result in a dilution of quality information. However, too much moderation and control from community owners can result in members backing off and the development of the community stalling.

Adapted from The public voice: Managing a pan-European community in the current issue of KM Review.

METRIC MATTERS: Designing key performance indicators

2006-02-10T15:58:00.000-08:00

METRIC MATTERS: Designing key performance indicators

Here are three top tips on designing relevant key performance indicators:
Understand your audienceGaining an understanding of the needs of a range of stakeholders, both internal and external is critical to the design of good KPIs. Ask yourself what’s critical to your key stakeholders and use this information as a starting point for designing your KPIs. Once you know what you need to do to get it right, you can start to worry about how you measure it. Once you know what’s critical to the various stakeholders, then you can start to ask what’s preventing you from delivering on these critical things, which provides a good basis for the KPIs you’re developing. Measure the few critical things, not everything.

It will often be the case that at the end of this exercise, a KPI will cut across two or more departments. This presents an opportunity for some "creative tension," where two departments rely on each other to meet a KPI. This means that department managers have to co-operate with each other to achieve a common goal, which is something that doesn’t always come naturally.

Because managers sometimes develop their KPIs in isolation, the measures they chose related only to their own needs and not to the needs of the business as a whole, or its clients. For example, in meeting supply chain’s requirements, a manufacturing department is left short of critical components, which delays their despatch, in turn impacting on the ability of project management to complete their projects on time.

Does this sound familiar Outcomes vs. activities
Do you measure activities or outcomes? There’s an important difference between the two. Outcomes describe what will be different as a result of an activity; they do not describe the activity itself. For example, on a recent assignment I discussed an audit manager’s 2006 plan. He proudly stated that they would do 50 audits, which is laudable, but hardly describes what the outcome is to the business (reduced costs, increased margin, regulatory compliance etc).
Focus on outcomes. Don’t base your performance management system completely on what you do (activities), focus on why you do it (outcomes).

Lack of focusKPIs need to be focused. Having a dozen measurements on equipment inspections does not make for a good performance management system. Well-designed KPIs are focused and few in number. They are detailed enough to be able to spot trouble ahead (you can then do more investigation) but no so detailed that you spend more time collecting stats than doing work. Remember the ‘K’ in KPI stands for Key. Make sure that your KPIs measure the key things that tell you if your organization is performing.

By John Davidson, Facilitators UK

KM Review.

RESOURCES: Linking KM with other organizational functions

2006-02-10T15:54:00.000-08:00

RESOURCES: Linking KM with other organizational functions

A new report has been released by the British Standards Institution. "Linking Knowledge Management with other Organizational Functions and Disciplines: A Guide to Good Practice," was put together by a team of KM experts from the Knowledge and Innovation Network, which is associated with UK’s Warwick University.

The authors assert that "one of the main reasons that many KM projects have failed is precisely because they did not make a strong linkage with other functions and management trends and therefore did not engage the ‘hearts and minds’ of all key stakeholders." The key to making these linkages, according to the report’s Executive Summary, is to make those linkages according to the organization’s particular overall strategy, and not rely on "one or two champions or enthusiasts" to make the necessary connections within the organization.

They offer three critical factors for KM teams to increase their impact in the organization:
1. Act as an innovation agent
2. Customer focus
3. Collaboration

As for particular skills necessary to make linkages, KM teams must focus on the correct point of entry – what department, given the organization’s strategy, has the most importance; credibility to overcome scepticism; sustainability and skills development.

The report leads with a list of definitions that will be familiar to knowledge managers, but useful to beginners in the field. Likewise the second part, a review of approaches to KM. What is new is the heart of the report, which is a series of sections called KM and..., pairing the function with disciplines such as HR, IT, marketing and communications; virtually every conceivable major division in a large organization. The next section links KM to new ideas, rather than functions, such as "attention management," blogging, corporate social responsibility and measurement.

For each section the report gives good practice examples from (usually anonymous) heads of KM in private industry. For example, under KM and HR the authors advise making links through recruitment practices such as tracking recruiting data, integrating technology and assessment tools to make hiring more efficient and helping to develop a diverse culture. Another area of intersection is succession planning, and helping to create "a pool of leaders rather than a queue for each job."

In the KM and IT chapter, refreshingly, the authors report that the longstanding association of KM purely with IT is beginning to fade, based on several interviews with KM practitioners.

KM Review.

Harvesting staff knowledge

2006-01-17T17:15:00.000-08:00

Harvesting staff knowledge

It's easy to think of KM as providing staff with product or service information and carrying out the occasional customer satisfaction survey. But you could be missing a great opportunity. Here are five top tips for getting the best ROI from the wealth of knowledge held by your people.

1. Breakout sessions
Call breakout sessions as often as you can and in a fun, engaging way so staff feel relaxed and happy to pass on the valuable information they hold about your customers. Liven it up, be creative, make a plan of different themes to keep them interesting.

2. Create knowledge gurus
Create knowledge gurus who can "champion" customer feedback, interface directly with their teams, product development, marketing and HR and mentor new staff. Utilize them externally too, e.g. to present at industry events or presenting at corporate pitches.

3. Senior management sponsorship
Senior managers should brief customer advisors in person, passing on their passion for the brand, product or service. Spend time in the contact centre listening to calls, hearing what customers are saying and how the advisors interact with them. You get a far better feel for the market and the advisors feel more valued.

Do it regularly, as one of the UK's biggest financial institutions does, so that advisors feel comfortable with senior managers around. You'll reap the rewards in just a couple of months and it will "humanize" senior management.

4. Reward and recognition
Create an R&R scheme that focuses on business benefits gained from customer services' feedback. Create the right feedback channels to get their suggestions and clearly demonstrate the financial impact of successful ideas.

5. The company intranet site
An effective intranet underpins all the above suggestions and is a great meeting point for all sorts of information. However, you need to easily navigate information and give feedback, robust systems, non-paper backup (otherwise they'll never use the intranet) and it needs to be "sticky" i.e. fun, to bring them back.

A virtual magazine, with competitions, photos of team nights celebrating employee and company successes and maybe a regular SMT profile e.g. favorite holiday/celebrity can make them come back regularly. Make it personal and fun and make sure it is a two-way communication tool.
Harvesting staff knowledge is a crucial exercise and it really is vital to use that knowledge to drive your business. So, have fun and act on the information you get.

Adapted from Harvesting knowledge from frontline staff by Matthew Taylor, Calcom, in the current issue of KM Review.

METRIC MATTERS: Ensuring data quality

2006-01-17T17:12:00.000-08:00

METRIC MATTERS: Ensuring data quality

Data quality management is critical to a successful business, but it doesn't have to be difficult. In general there are three main steps organizations can follow in order to ensure data quality:
1. The first step is to gain a clear understanding of the data, including how it is captured, its intended uses, its structure and content quality. By carrying out an in-depth audit, the organization is able to identify common data defects such as missing, incomplete, inconsistent or inaccurate data.
2. The second step is to improve the data by filtering it to eliminate errors and resolve inconsistencies. Once this has taken place, there is a need to protect the data quality. It's vital that new data defects are prevented from infiltrating the system. Real-time defect prevention is the most pro-active way of protecting the standard of the data, and eliminating defects when new data is entered.
3. The final step is control. Data quality management cannot be just a one-off quick-fix solution. In order to achieve optimum results, data quality management needs to become a controlled and integral part of day-to-day business processes. Clear performance measurements need to be devised to ensure visibility, as well as compliance with regulatory standards.

Excerpted from "Ensuring the quality of information" by Laurie Mascott, in the current issue of KM Review.

Knowledge Transfer

2006-01-03T04:11:00.000-08:00

Apakah Anda berencana membuat program pemindahan pengetahuan dari karyawan senior ke yunior ? atau karyawan spesialist ke karyawan non spesialist ?

Coba terapkan metode mentoring yang mengedepankan knowledge transfer alias pemindahan kompetensi, baik itu pengetahuan teknis maupun konseptual. Kegiatan ini melibatkan si senior (atau si spesialist) sebagai mentor dan karyawan yang ingin dibina (mentee).

Ada beberapa perangkat yang sangat bermanfaat dalam kesuksesan program ini, antara lain:

1. Sasaran : sebelum memulai program, masing-masing pihak harus memahami sasaran dari kegiatan ini. Isi kepala tiap orang mustilah sama dan dibekali ketrampilan berkomunikasi diantara kedua belah pihak sehingga tidak terjadi hambatan dalam penyampaian pengetahuan.

2. Kontrak : Kontrak knowledge transfer harus dibuat sejelas mungkin. Isinya antara lain target yang akan dicapai antara mentor dan mentee. Kegiatan apa yang akan dilakukan, jenis kompetensi apa yang harus ditransfer, sejauh apa kegiatan itu dilaksanakan, tujuan pelaksanaan, lama waktu pelaksanaan, dan sebagainya.

3. Mentoring Action Plan, berisikan rencana yang harus dicapai dalam periode tertentu serta lembari check list.

4. Scenario Mentoring Session, yaitu langkah pelaksanaan perencanaan dan uji situasi (SWOT analysis) dan rencana-rencana alihan jika program yang dijalankan tidak sesuai sasaran atau kurang sukses terlaksana.

5. Learning Journal, berisikan hasil yang telah dicapai oleh si mentee berikut bukti-bukti pencapaian. Tiap formulir ini harus ditandatangani bersama hingga ke manajemen puncak yang membawahi kegiatan ini.

Setiap langkah dan formulir yang ada sebaiknya menekankan pada prinsip GROW: Goals, Reality, Option dan Will. Jangan lupa untuk melakukan evaluasi setiap kegiatan telah berjalan dan ukur dampaknya pada produktivitas karyawan, baik itu mentor maupun sang mentee.

Improving the function of lessons databases

2005-12-15T00:16:00.000-08:00

Improving the function of lessons databases

Organizations need to gather and utilize past "lessons learned" but too often, critical information is lost or simply not used. Here, Alan Thompson of KBR Production Services gives five top tips for improving lessons databases.

1. Ensure your lessons database has a balance of successful and unsuccessful lessons. A narrow "blunder avoidance" database full of, "don't go there - we did and it failed" examples, affects the way personnel perceive lessons and also affects the organization's clients' perception of processes.

2. Make the context, categorization and specific details of lessons clear if you want them to be used appropriately. Improve the categorization of a lesson by asking a lesson user to check if the lesson is valid, current, in the correct context and available and for use.

3. Develop an expert or skill finder system for your database to give users a choice of knowledgeable contacts. Include relevant information on experts so the user can make a specific choice and quickly get the information they need. Make experts "duty bound" to answer callers to maintain the function of the system.

4. For organizations with knowledge repositories spread across several countries consider the use of a "loose federation" database model, where each business unit "owns" their own data and the processes from which it was derived. In this model, users primarily look for lessons from their own business unit, then spread the search out across the company to other business units who in turn, decide if they can help with their own knowledge and "broker" the information they have.

5. Ensure your database remains fresh and useable by using it yourself with your own projects.

Adapted from "Getting real value from lessons databases" by Alan Thompson in the current issue of Knowledge Management review.

Closing the loop on knowledge re-use

2005-12-15T00:10:00.000-08:00

Closing the loop on knowledge re-use

Putting a knowledge sharing process in place is only half the challenge to improving knowledge sharing across an organization. You must also ensure that published knowledge is used and replication processes are acknowledged and implemented by business units (BUs) that need them most.

In order for replication and knowledge to be implemented on poor performing BU's it might be necessary to make mandatory requirements of implementation.

For example, if a top performing BU submits a knowledge document, a best practice process for example, it can be mandatory, not optional, for BUs that were not in the top performing band for the relevant business measure to complete replication and report the results.

In a small minority of cases, BUs may report after studying published knowledge submissions that they either have similar practices or cannot replicate due to specific local reasons. Such genuine exceptions should be accepted, but it's should be mandatory for the BU to close-loop (respond to) every single published knowledge submission.

The status of replications and results can be made part of the agenda for the president's review with CEOs and each CEO's review with their functional heads. Particular attention should be paid to BUs in the bottom performing bands for each business measure (over 25 percent variation from the best performing BU) to ensure that they complete replication of best practices in those areas where their current performance is weak.

The knowledge replication process should not end with a BU completing replication of a knowledge submission relevant to them. Make it mandatory to measure the quantified impact of the replication on the relevant business measure.

Adapted from "Establishing KM Processes Part Two" by Arun Hariharan in the current issue of KM Review.

Communication Measurement: QA

2005-11-28T00:11:00.000-08:00

Q: How do you start developing a communication measurement strategy?

A: Start with a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats). Consider such elements as how well your current communication program will:
Support business strategy;
Reach and meet the needs of various stakeholder groups;
Have an appropriate mix of channels (type of channel, direction of flow, timeliness, etc.);
communicate the right messages;
have the right organizational staffing, reporting relationship and financial resources to do all the above effectively.

As you brainstorm with others on your SWOT analysis, you will discover that on many aspects of your program, you don't know enough to categorize something as a strength or a weakness. You may not be sure of the distribution of many channels, you may not know what your stakeholders are interested in knowing about or how well they understand subjects that senior leadership might want them to know about. All of these will suggest content areas that should be included in your measurement process.

A typical communication measurement process starts with some objective assessments of what you are communicating. Objective analysis tools include inventories, content analysis and reading grade level tests. Once you are clear on what communication you are sending out, it's time to ask your audience for their input, using some qualitative research first (executive interviews and focus groups) to identify areas for quantitative analysis (typically surveys).

Q: Besides readership surveys and focus groups, how else can a company effectively measure its customer communication?

A: The ultimate measure is sales, but the trick is to find ways of tracking your communications against sales in a way that eliminates the effect of other factors. One way is to pre-test various approaches to communication with different, demographically identical segments of your customer audience.

For example, a California utility company had been sending out a brochure to encourage customers to call for a free home energy audit. (California energy utilities are required to reduce the per capita consumption of energy, so the audit finds ways for a customer to use less energy.) Response rates from the current brochure had started decreasing. The marketing communication manager pre-tested mock-ups of several different new brochures with focus groups. He then printed small quantities of the two most preferred versions and mailed them to different random samples of his audience. He mass-produced the brochure that resulted in significantly more customer calls.

Another approach is to measure the effectiveness of different types of communications in generating sales leads. A very simple way is to list a different phone number or post office box for potential customers to reach you in each different communication piece, news release, advertising, direct mail, Web site, etc. Your computerized phone system can track how many calls come through on different phone lines, even if all the lines are answered by the same group of people. You can then calculate the average number of leads divided by the cost of each channel of communication. If your tracking system is a little more elaborate, you could go a step further and also track what percentage of leads from each communication results in sales. You could then calculate the revenue generated from each type of communication divided by its cost. If your company has a system for tracking customer questions or concerns, you could monitor the number of customer calls on various topics, change your communications to better address those issues, and then track whether the number of questions on those issues goes down.

Q: How often should you measure communication?

A: The answer depends on what you're measuring, if you've had time to make any changes since the last measurement and how large your audience is. Typically, surveys are conducted no more than once every 12 to 24 months. However, if there are aspects of your culture or a publication you are actively trying to change, you may want to supplement the large surveys with mini-surveys on key measures administered to small samples of your audience more frequently, perhaps quarterly or even monthly. During a time of massive change, you might even survey more frequently to measure the impact of specific changes or announcements.

On the other hand, if you have a relatively small audience of only several thousand, conducting frequent surveys with a large enough sample to be statistically reliable would mean surveying the same people several times a year, which is not recommended.

Q: How can I measure how well supervisors are communicating with their employees?

A: First, be clear on whether you need "soft," qualitative findings or "hard," quantitative data. For example, if you want to track improvement or compare different supervisors, you will need the kind of statistically reliable results available from a survey. Even if you need hard numbers, initial focus groups with supervisors and employees will help you ask the right questions and pick the right measurement method. Focus groups might discover that the problem isn't communication skills at all, but that supervisors haven't been given the content to communicate. This information can be found by asking the supervisors themselves how well-informed they feel. Another thing to measure is the frequency of staff meetings. It's possible to have supervisors who know how to conduct meetings, but who rarely do. Track this by asking employees how frequently they have staff meetings and how often they should be conducted.

Second, determine the purpose of your information gathering. If the goal is to assess the general level of supervisory communication, you can include questions on an employee survey administered to a random sample of employees and use that information to prioritize communication training content. If you want to assess the communication effectiveness of individual supervisors, you would instead need to conduct a survey of all employees to obtain enough responses to tell how well supervisors in different organizational units are doing. Better yet, surveys can be administered in work groups to assess the skills of the group's own manager. 360-degree feedback on each supervisor from peers, subordinates and bosses is often used as part of the performance appraisal process. When conducting a 360-degree appraisal, it is important to ask managers to evaluate themselves as well. Comparing the results of how well they think they communicate with how their subordinates rate them often highlights very interesting and surprising discrepancies.

You can also ask employees and supervisors their perceptions of the relative importance of various supervisor communication skills for doing their jobs well. Different skills may be more important in some parts of your organization or for different types of jobs. The priorities for training will then be the skills that are rated as very important, yet are not frequently or well demonstrated. In addition, a statistical technique called regression analysis can help determine the relative importance of various communication behaviors.

Q: How will the results be fed back to employees and supervisors?

A: Typically, the results of a broad survey will be fed back to all managers at once, and then to all employees. However, if part of the purpose of the measurement is to improve communication within work groups, it can be even more useful to fee back results in a "cascade" from top management to individual work groups. First the president would share his or her results in a meeting with the vice presidents. They would also discuss what actions will be taken to improve weaknesses and make more use of the strengths. These vice presidents' direct reports feed back the results to their staffs. When the assessment cascades downward, each new group of evaluators feels safe in being candid because they have already experienced the benefits of providing this type of information to their own bosses in a safe environment.

This article was taken from Strategic Communication Management.

How usage analytics can improve company portals

2005-11-13T18:48:00.000-08:00

How usage analytics can improve company portals

Implementing usage analytics is a key to making a portal valid to everyone and engaging staff in using it. Yet it's surprising how infrequently this is undertaken, even among companies where the portal is an essential tool for sharing and managing information.

Without monitoring and understanding what parts of the portal are used and how, the IT department, as well as those driving the business's strategic direction, will be unable to maximize the value of the portal or make accurate, informed decisions as to how it can be improved. Usage analytics give the IT department a clear view of what is needed from the portal, what is not needed, and how to prioritize future changes and investments.

Usage analytics provide a way to fairly measure the needs and relative investment priorities for each area of a business. By adding analytics software to your portal, you can gather objective measurements of who needs specific types of information, or whose work is suffering due to inadequate applications. For a growing company, usage analytics could be vital. For a company with thousands of employees across numerous locations it should be essential for the monitoring and allocation of resources.

Analytics will also help the IT team build a strong business case for senior management if applications are no longer meeting the needs of the organization. By tracking community traffic, portlet traffic, response times and usage behavior, a company gains improved visibility for its portal development and deployment planning, and can more effectively prioritize administrative resources. This can be a very important tool for monitoring purposes.

Overall, usage analytics will bring increased portal ROI, reduced infrastructure costs and improved employee, customer and partner satisfaction.

Adapted from The critical role of usage analytics at Applebee's in the current issue of KM Review.

Knowledge Sharing: between companies

2005-11-13T18:40:00.000-08:00

Sharing knowledge between companies.

Increasingly, organizations are entering into collaborative partnerships to buy knowledge instead of holding it in house, access knowledge that could extend the reach of the firm's capabilities or generate new intellectual capital.

Here are five top tips to consider when looking to develop a relationship with an external company.

1. Consider that inter-organizational relationships can usually be categorized as one of the following;

A Supplier/buyer partnership: Whereby a firm buys in knowledge packaged as a product of service, in areas where they can't add value.

An Alliance: Where two complementing organizations combine and develop knowledge the aspects of which would be too expensive to own in house. Alliances are particularly common in fast moving technical industries.

A Consortium: Where a group of organizations combine to share various aspects of knowledge to complete one project. Consortia are frequently formed in the construction and aerospace industries, where the end product requires relies on a variety of deep technical knowledge.
An Inter-organizational community: Where a number of organizations come together to generate ideas and learn.

2. Examine which of the four types of relationship you will be entering and understand fully its needs and idiosyncrasies. For example, in an inter-organization community its critical to know how to handle shared confidential information: as well as ideas generated through the discussions. In an alliance, its critical to know how to network and build relationships and who knows what and who has influence and in a Consortium, it's vital to know when to collaborate and when to compete and understand who has the influence to cut through obstructions.

3. When developing a relationship team, it's important to select people who naturally enjoy networking and relationship building.

4. In the initial stages of an inter-organization relationship, it's worth encouraging and facilitating communication “overkill” in order to avoid any misinterpretation of language and term and ensure a message gets through.

5. “Intense” communication is important throughout the relationship.

Adapted from Sharing knowledge between companies by Jane McKenzie in the current issue of KM Review.

A four-step process - evaluating submissions to intranets

2005-10-22T03:53:00.000-07:00

A four-step process - evaluating submissions to intranets

Here is a four-step process one company uses to measure whether a submission is worthy of posting:

1. Through the portal's automated workflow, knowledge submissions are first screened by a member of the KM team. The objectives of this screening are to ensure the submission is relevant to at least one critical business process or measure and to confirm adherence to the standard KM document format.

2. After this screening, the knowledge submission goes to the community of experts for that repository. The knowledge champion or any of the other subject-matter experts checks the submission for relevance to their particular repository. As a general rule, the question they ask before approving a submission is whether the submission has the potential to help one or more units improve performance on the business measure relevant to their repository.

3. Approved submissions are “published” on the portal. In some cases, the expert may send the submission back to the submitting employee with suggested changes. Even those submissions that cannot be published are close-looped by sending an explanatory response.

4. The system automatically generates a report showing submissions pending approval beyond seven days. This report is reviewed by the president and CEOs as part of regular business reviews.

Adapted from “Establishing KM processes” by Arun Hariharan in the current issue of KM Review.

Creating need-to-have portals

2005-10-22T03:52:00.000-07:00

Creating need-to-have portals

So many portals are created with great fanfare, only to fall short of expectations when employees realize they don't need them to do their jobs. How can you make a portal work for your staff?

Here are three top tips from Alan Thompson of KBR Production Services - a business unit of the Energy and Chemicals Division of KBR, part of the Halliburton Company - on creating a need-to-have portal in an organization:

1. Create a fast and efficient portal: In recent times, the expectations of users have increased. Users now demand a speedy response, rather like an online shopping experience. That means the organizational processes and supporting systems need to integrate more readily, and must also be very intuitive and responsive.

2. Identify what users need: At KBR, great importance has been given to helping users make efficient use of collaboration portal technology, particularly in terms of what users would determine as information they need to have to carry out their daily business in an age of information overload. To identify these items of really useful information, allow the KM team to work with users to understand their work processes and in particular the interaction with each other.

3. Engage the global population: At KBR, it was fruitful to use KM program fact-finding activities to engage the global population. In seeking out what they thought would be useful to their community, the feeling of inclusion increased. This change in expectations on the part of users has also driven KBR from being a document-centric organization towards being a data-centric one.

Source: Adapted from “Creating need-to-have portals at Halliburton” by Alan Thompson in the current issue of KM Review.

Hopes for KM technologies

2005-09-28T10:24:00.000-07:00

Hopes for KM technologies

Realizing the vast potential of the knowledge they hold but often can't harness, firms are placing knowledge management and business intelligence solutions at the top of their list of technologies for achieving their strategic goals over the next three years, according to a new survey by the EIU, sponsored by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS).

When asked what were the main benefits that their companies hoped to obtain over the next three years through the more efficient generation and flow of knowledge (selecting up to three options), those surveyed responded:

- Improved customer relationships/loyalty: 65%.
- Better visibility of internal business processes and performance: 46%.
- Faster, sounder management decision-making: 44%.
- More effective product/service development: 41%.
- Smoother collaboration across teams and departments: 31%.
- Greater customization of products and services: 23%.
- Improved compliance: 16%.
- Improved corporate governance: 10%.
- Better corporate security: 7%.
- Improved employee loyalty and retention: 6%.
- Other: 1%.

Source: Adapted from “Execs recognize growing importance of KM” in the current issue of KM Review.

TOP TIPS: Using “anti-patterns” to define KM processes

2005-09-28T10:21:00.000-07:00

TOP TIPS: Using “anti-patterns” to define KM processes

Studying best practices is an accepted way to improve KM, but best practices are difficult to implement - what worked in one organization's culture may not work in another. Here, Keshavamurthy Rajgopal explains how “worst practices” or “anti-patterns” can help in developing processes for KM programs.

Problem: Unless a KM program is defined with specific objectives, it cannot be planned, tracked or managed. In essence, the program needs to be treated as a project.

Context: The KM initiative's roadmap is defined and the deliverables from the initiative are grouped into one or more projects or phases of a project.

Solution: Since the specifications, deliverables, and resource requirements look similar to that of an IT project, treat the KM project as an IT project and manage as per established IT project management criteria. Issues surrounding short-listing, evaluating, selecting and deploying tools and technologies to accomplish KM goals weigh heavily in favor of approaching the initiative in this way.

Resulting context: Typical measurements of an IT project are schedule, cost adherence (or deviation) and defects. However, experience suggests that the measures of a KM program's success are difficult to establish and evaluate. Usual measurements of a KM project include factors that involve changes in user behavior and contributing towards improved business performance or customer satisfaction. There is a significant loss of focus while translating these objectives into technical specifications. Even if the IT project succeeds, it does not mean that the KM program has succeeded.

Refactored solution: The IT project perspective is certainly one important parameter of KM programs that helps in planning, management, and measurement of success. However, it alone cannot guarantee the success of the KM project. Treating the KM program as a combination of organizational change management, IT program (under the umbrella of IT projects) and people management will provide a comprehensive view of the initiative.

Source: Excerpted from “There's no success like failure” by Keshavamurthy Rajgopal in the current issue of KM Review.

Utilizing external sources of knowledge

2005-09-26T22:04:00.000-07:00

Opening organizational channels for effective knowledge capture

By Kevin Desouza and Yukika Awazu, The Engaged Enterprise, and Sajjad M. Jasimuddin, University of Dhaka

An organization not utilizing knowledge outside the company can’t effectively compete in the marketplace, especially when there is so much to gain – even from competitors. Here, Kevin Desouza, Yukika Awazu and Sajjad M. Jasimuddin detail many valuable sources to tap into in order to maximize knowledge potential and organizational productivity.

Organizations that fail to listen, link and leverage their external sources of knowledge make themselves vulnerable to crises attributed to poor appreciation of signals beyond the company boundaries. Here, we shed light on how organizations can better tap into external sources of knowledge and better prepare themselves for increased competition in the future.

Know your knowledge source
Most organizations need to concern themselves with external sources of knowledge from suppliers, business partners, customers, government and regulatory bodies, academia and competitors. Depending on the industry in which the organization operates, some sources of external knowledge may carry more weight than others. For example, a supplier of automobile parts to Honda has to pay close attention to the customer, Honda. In other cases, such as an R&D lab, paying attention to emerging research might be of more interest. While some organizations may emphasize one source over others, all organizations must be cognizant of each kind of source.

The right people in place
Suppliers are an important ingredient to an organization’s operations. They represent the provider of raw-materials, work-in-progress or finished goods that an organization consumes to attain its goals. Suppliers normally have focused and narrow niches, i.e. they know their slice of the work the best. For example, a supplier of automobile parts is an expert in the calibration of that part. The suppliers can be said to possess deep knowledge in their domains. The organization must then turn to these knowledge sources in their specialized areas.

For a car manufacturer, this will involve listening to suppliers about inventions and innovations in automobile parts such as the brakes or the gear box. Suppliers of products and services are seldom exclusive to one organization; in most cases they serve multiple organizations. In the automobile industry, it’s not uncommon to find a supplier of one product serve two or more organizations who may be competitors. In this case, the organization has an opportunity to gain knowledge about one’s competitors through the supplier. This is not an endorsement for unscrupulous behavior, like industrial espionage. Rather, we’re asserting that organizations must use their suppliers as an avenue to interact with other members of the value chain and competitors.

Suppliers can be valuable interaction spaces. For example, suppliers normally host conferences to showcase their products and services. These are well attended by all clients of the suppliers, are rich avenues for discussion among competitors and are positive forums for seeking ideas about innovations.

Business partners
In addition to suppliers, an organization must interact with other business partners like office equipment manufacturers, technology providers, legal firms, logistics and distribution centers and advertising houses. Each provides goods or service that enables the organization to be more effective in meeting objectives. Like suppliers, business partners have deep knowledge in their areas of focus, as this represents their bread and butter. The organization must look to these partners for knowledge about their better internal operations.
For a hospital, for instance, business partners may have cutting-edge insight on new sanitary products and disinfectants. A manufacturing firm can turn to FedEx or UPS to help them chart out effective distribution and logistic mechanisms. In the same vein, the manufacturing firm can contact Dentsu, Inc., a marketing house, to help with product promotion and advertising materials.

No organization can possibly be self-sufficient in the various activities needed to deliver on customer value. If an organization thinks it is, they’re using their resources sub-optimally due to losses in terms of opportunity costs. An organization must forge the right type of agreement with a business partner depending on the type of knowledge sought.

Remember your base
Businesses exist to serve their customers and unless an organization can understand its customer needs, transform those needs into products and services, and manage the relationship, they won’t survive in the marketplace. Knowledge about the customer is processed demographic, psychographic and behavioral information. Knowledge to support the customer is concerned with improving the user-experience through products and services. Knowledge from customers is the collective insights, ideas, thoughts and information received from them. But knowledge from the customer is not the same as just receiving complaints or queries. As such, an organization must actively seek out knowledge in order to be better prepared to conduct product changes. Customers know the products better than the organizations that produce them, so they’re an invaluable source of knowledge.

Government and regulatory bodies
Most organizations resist interacting with the government and various regulatory bodies like the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or Internal Revenue Services (IRS). Yet such agencies have knowledge that’s rare and protected due to the nature of their work. For example, if an organization faces issues of electronic fraud or online theft, working with the Electronic Crimes Taskforce of the FBI or other agencies will provide the organization with access to valuable knowledge.

Most organizations make the mistake of working with the government and regulatory agencies after an incident takes place. For example, after a theft occurs or a fire breaks out, the organization may be willing to embrace inspections by the Police department and Fire marshals. But before the incident, these inspections may be viewed as a burden and an unnecessary chore. Rather than being reactive, we suggest being proactive. An organization must have the ability to tap into these external sources for knowledge on the environment, changes in laws, and effects of political conditions on businesses.

Foreign asset
One major Asian organization we know had an excellent relation with the tax authorities and they leveraged this relationship to help them plan for expansions in South America by learning about various taxation rules and regulations. They wanted to know how best to mobilize assets to capture a market share in South America. Lacking knowledge about issues such as currency regulations, culture and trade rules, the organization sought help from the Commerce and Revenue Departments. Surprisingly, all the organization had to do was sign-up on a list for routine lectures and seminars on how to expand to foreign locations given by the two government units. By attending these talks, government officials helped them bridge barriers and make local connections in the foreign countries.

Government organizations routinely conduct research projects on topics of interest. For example, in the US, the Government Accounting Office routinely publishes reports on topical issues. These represent viable knowledge resources; an organization can use these reports to benchmark their practices with that of the industry. It’s also common for a government organization to host forums, where private-sector enterprises are invited to participate. An organization must embrace such opportunities and actively participate in them to tap into a rich knowledge discussion. For example, it’s common to have debates hosted by various law enforcement agencies and topics addressed can help organizations bolster their own disaster and security management practices.

Back to school
Academia, especially business schools and engineering sciences, represents a viable external source of knowledge for business organizations. A computer manufacturer has vested interest in keeping abreast of developments in premier computer engineering departments, in order to get access to new knowledge and discoveries (or failures). Academic researchers generate new knowledge on a constant basis and are sometimes better at knowledge generation than the private sector. Many studies take global perspectives of the problem, and hence knowledge generated is widely applicable to any business belonging to a given industry or facing a similar problem. Some of the classical management texts have been embraced by organizations in a wide assortment of industries.

Academics have the advantage of being neutral in their analyses and can get access to normally private data, by promising non-disclosure of sensitive materials. By getting access to a wide range of data, knowledge generated can be put through greater rigor in calibration, and hopefully be of higher value. Academic knowledge must be tapped by seeking explicit and tacit sources.

Main findings: knowledge management and knowledge transfer in CEE

2005-09-26T05:44:00.000-07:00

Main findings: knowledge management and knowledge transfer in CEE

The new EU member states have already performed a large part of the transformation process and can therefore be better understood using this logic. Organisations in the west, as in the east, are structured, ie hierarchical and work very strongly with the component of power. For knowledge management this means to face the same problems in several cultures.

Parallel to establishing knowledge management, organisations need to build up mutual trust if there are retentions which result from the political system or from a tense relationships. The most important aspect concerning knowledge management is the correct interpretation and understanding of these cultural differences.

Today's understanding of management transfer has to be understood as a learning process, in which concepts and practices in East European transformation countries are analysed, interpreted and modelled newly, not as simple adoptions of approved western solutions, structures, concepts, instruments and practices. Management concepts often consider implementation to be a purely technical topic. However, knowledge management implementation becomes more complex if knowledge management is understood as an intervention in the depths of the organisation, its habits and routines and as a change of communication for and in complex learning processes. A balance must be found between people, processes and technology.

Knowledge management will be successfully implemented if it is adapted to the organisational culture instead of trying to change it. Visible and invisible dimensions of organisational culture must be reconciled with knowledge management by building on visible corporate values. But this is only one task for knowledge management. Knowledge is designed socially and if the social competence of an organisation is not developed sufficiently, there is no other possibility other than adapting the instruments of knowledge management to the organisation or culture. Knowledge management needs to be tailored to an organisation's condition and stage of development and, if necessary, its complexity has to be reduced in order to do so.

Organisations in East European transformation countries tend to build up a facade that makes them appear western and modern while simultaneously they make use of their old local practices. Patterns of the old culture are confronted with patterns newly institutionalised and continue to work hidden under the surface. Two perspectives, the concept of knowledge management and the East European corporate culture, clash. Knowledge transfer is more effective if the operating organisations are integrated in national contexts with the same cultural patterns. The obstacles that can arise from communication and translation should not be under-estimated. The differing perspectives (of west and east) that have led to different KM contexts have to be understood and learned in order to act adequately. Historical and/or political backgrounds can provide an indication of why certain rules arose.

This organizational knowledge has to be acquired before knowledge can be transferred from one system to another. History and infrastructure which were built up over years cannot simply be changed. These are challenges and tasks that a knowledge management strategy has to deal with. The eastern as well as the western perspective have to be understood; only then it is sensible to select knowledge management instruments according to the context, the complexity and the social competence of the East European organizational cultures.

Only seldomly are knowledge management initiatives started by East European enterprises. But transfer from the east to the west does happen, so the question remains: what can the west learn from the East European transformation states?

Firstly, there is significant knowledge between transformation countries about dealing with transformation processes and neighbour countries and their economies. So companies that want to start businesses (e.g. in Russia) can search for specialists of the Russian market in its neighbouring countries.

Secondly, East European organisations are able to transfer implicit and systemic knowledge very effectively. Likewise, Russian companies are very flexible, with a distinctive intuition for the turbulent and unpredictable environment in which they work. In this region, companies are able to achieve a great effect with simplest means and without high demands.

Modern companies operate in a very unstable environment. In order to be successful and survive, they need to observe their environment and react to changes and information in a fast and flexible way. Within the last five to ten years, Russia has made a big step from collectivism towards a more individualistic culture. However, a national culture does not change fully in such a short time frame.

Thus, even in today's Russia, Western European companies have to be aware of former business routines that still influence business context and behaviour.

taken from Knowledgeboard editors ~

How can knowledge management act as a catalyst for innovation?

2005-09-09T02:48:00.000-07:00

How can knowledge management act as a catalyst for innovation?

Over the past few years a number of surveys have consistently placed the ability to be innovative in the top ten list of priorities for executives. That's not surprising when you read statistics such as those in a 1996 study of 150 major U.S. firms which found that innovative companies experienced profit growth at four times the rate of non-innovative organizations.

Knowledge management does not only act as a catalyst for innovation and creativity but also provides the means by which 'innovative ideas' can be captured, shared and leveraged, leading to more new ideas. According to Tom Peters, "Innovation comes only from readily and seamlessly sharing information rather than hoarding it.

A recent PricewaterhouseCoopers study on innovation and creativity identified "an effective ideas management process" to be an essential element of innovation within organizations. Also research by top business schools in North America and Europe suggests that creativity around the world is fostered or inhibited by a number of factors. In addition to tolerating risk-taking and rewarding creativity, the free flow of information is one of the crucial "promoters" of innovation/creativity.

This "flow of information" is at its most effective when people work in teams - the more diverse their experience, the better the creativity/innovation that ensues. A study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology suggests that 80 percent of ideas that have led to breakthrough products and services originate from routine discussions. At MCI Communications, in addition to the technology used to capture and share ideas, the company has set up a "Hearth"-a family room setting with meeting tables, a fireplace, and 31 inch television monitors. There are also numerous whiteboards and modular furniture that can be configured to any given need. In fact there are four types of office space: offices for individual work; team rooms for collaborative work; offices for privacy; and the "Hearth."

Of course coming up with a new idea is just the start of the journey. Some ideas need to be put into practice but they also need to be captured and shared for new knowledge to be created. The people at Buckman Laboratories realize that not all innovative ideas are "right" at first. By capturing these ideas and "bouncing" them off other people the idea can be developed and perhaps used as a catalyst for new ones.

In today's global business environment, bringing people together (physically or virtually) is still the best means of knowledge-sharing. Innovation becomes less pressing when you can bring the harvested knowledge of the same people together. This is one of the ways in which some of the most successful global/virtual organizations, such as 3M, are using knowledge management practices to keep creativity alive despite the huge distances that separate their employees.

Ikujiro Nonaka and Noboru Konno touch on this issue in their latest work on the concept of "Ba" which they consider to be: "A shared space that serves as a foundation for knowledge creation."

This space can be physical (e.g. office), virtual (e.g. e-mail), mental (e.g. shared experiences), or a combination of all three - as long as it provides a platform for advancing knowledge. Of course, the new ideas or the flow of information do not necessarily have to come from within the organization.

Some companies are using KM practices to take advantage of the creativity of their customers and suppliers. At Chrysler the "SCORE" (Supplier Cost-ReductionEffort) program is such an initiative. The notion is simple - suppliers are responsible for sharing ideas with Chrysler which help them get cheaper parts. The goal for each supplier is cost-cutting opportunities that equate to five percent of its annual billings to Chrysler. The program has been a great success, with ideas flooding in at a rate of more than 100 a week, with estimated savings of over $2.5 billion to Chrysler. With these corporate innovations all being enabled by knowledge management practices, the next question to consider might be: "How can innovation be used to improve knowledge management practices?"

References

Business Horizons, March/April 1996
The Circle of Innovation: You Can't Shrink Your Way to Greatness, by Tom Peters
Creativity Promoters and Inhibitors, Asian Business, Feb 1996
The Concept of Ba, Californian Management Review, Spring 1998

Biography
Paul O. Pederson led Global Core Competencies and best practice knowledge sharing for PricewaterhouseCoopers Management Consulting. He was responsible for knowledge-sharing methods for the management consulting practice of over 11,000 people globally. The co-author of Better Change and Paradox Principles he has also written several white papers on benchmarking and is a charter member of the International Benchmarking Clearinghouse.

This article was taken from Knowledge Management Review.

Knowledge-based Communities of Practice at AMS

2005-09-09T01:15:00.000-07:00

Knowledge-based Communities of Practice at AMS
by Rowan Wilson

Motivating people to contribute their knowledge is a challenge for anyone responsible for knowledge management. How do you get people who are already working 10 to 12 hour days to spend "just a little more time" writing something down to help someone else? American Management Systems (AMS) has capitalized on a culture in which sharing what people know has long been the key measure of success.

Through its Associate Program, the business and IT consulting firm, ranked 13th largest worldwide, has formalized previously informal communities, provided incentives for participation, and leveraged collaborative technology to provide an infrastructure for knowledge-sharing across the organization's 55 offices worldwide. With close to 8,000 workers, AMS found it increasingly challenging to leverage know-how across the company. Capturing collective intellectual capital and making it accessible to client engagement teams, no matter where or when it's needed, is vital to AMS's ability to deliver business success for clients. In short, knowledge management is a strategic imperative.

Recognizing this challenge, the company began a series of initiatives in 1993 designed to ensure that each engagement team had access to the best of knowledge. The most recent of these initiatives, the AMS Knowledge Centers, added to the existing infrastructure the concept of knowledge-based communities of practice.

Each Knowledge Center is a worldwide "virtual community" of people throughout AMS, connected by interest and expertise in a specific discipline. Members of the communities are called Knowledge Center Associates. Each community is led by a team of coordinators whom the company recognizes as leaders in their respective disciplines. AMS expert practitioners are selected as Associates for their specific expertise. Knowledge Center Associates make a formal commitment to share their knowledge in a tangible way through an annual Associates Program. This can be a research paper, a written insight into a new technology or project management technique, or a sample deliverable. Completed programs are added to a Lotus Notes-based knowledge repository and are catalogued and indexed with the help of a team of professional reference librarians. This knowledge base is accessible to all AMS employees.

Not everyone is invited or selected to become an Associate. Individuals are recognized at the level in the organization where there is a person who has direct responsibility for their performance evaluation and promotion path.

Knowledge Center Associates are also committed to solving problems "in the moment" by responding to directed e-mail and voicemail messages. All AMS personnel, not just Associates, have access to the corporate groupware system and intranet links to the Knowledge Center communities. The highly committed Associates, however, form the heart of AMS's KM program. In addition to "virtual" communication, Associates also participate in face-to-face conferences which focus on sharing best practices and lessons learned. Through these communities, AMS can leverage every bit of expertise that its employees generate every day all over the world.

Since 1996, when AMS formalized its Knowledge Centers, a lot has been learned about supporting and sustaining knowledge-based communities. These lessons-learned fall into the following basic themes: recognizing individual achievement; building group identity; motivating and rewarding participation; celebrating successes; and delivering value.

It's essential to create a strong identity and sense of community: "We're trying to create the environment that would have self-formed in the coffee room twenty years ago." Community members receive special business cards and are invited to attend meetings and workshops around topics of interest to them. A technology infrastructure facilitates communication among the members of each community: voicemail and e-mail distribution lists and a home page database for each community. These databases, which have grown in usage over time, provide a place where people can "request help" or post good ideas.

Individual successes are measured in terms of leverage - a term which is used internally to recognize the value of contributions. Promotion nomination forms use this word to describe how important leveraging knowledge is to being recognized as a company leader. The most re-used contributions from the on-line collection are publicized by acknowledging both the author and contributor (if they're not the same person). A list of the "top ten" most requested items from our deliverables collection is published in the quarterly K-News from the Knowledge Center's on-line newsletter. The re-use of individuals' contributions is also being reported, and an award is given to the Knowledge Center Associate whose example is re-used the most times.

The result for AMS is highly leveraged engagement teams who have AMS's collective knowledge at their fingertips. Through the effective use of a collaborative work environment and fundamentally, and most importantly, through people and the processes in place designed to support knowledge-sharing, AMS is able to deliver on its commitment to connect engagement teams with all global expertise - to deliver the right person or the right experience at the right time. This is knowledge management: people, processes, and technology working together to deliver value.

Keypoints
The Communities of Practice at AMS promote knowledge-sharing by:

Recognizing individual achievement: associates must be nominated to join the program; nomination criteria recognize both interest and experience.
Building group identity: branding through business cards and "community" events; virtual "coffee room" created for each community.
Motivating and rewarding participation: top contributors recognized; performance appraisal system rewards knowledge-sharing.
Celebrating successes: conferences and awards; reporting the top ten re-used contributions.
Delivering value for individual: examples libraries; AMS 'Know' Hotline; instant peer group - especially important for new hires; networking/growth opportunity.
Delivering value for the company: enhanced knowledge-sharing; improved client relationships; faster, more effective proposals.
Delivering value for AMS clients: each client engagement team leverages the collective knowledge and experience of all of AMS.

taken from Knowledge Management Review

The impact of national culture on KM metrics

2005-08-15T05:55:00.000-07:00

Measuring the impact of KM is tricky on its own but it becomes an even bigger challenge to measure in an international organization with highly diverse national cultures. Here, Ingo Forstenlechner shows how to take the diversity of national culture into account when making decisions.

"Among the benefits of KM is the global flow of knowledge between offices. But when measuring KM for the purpose of having a basis to help make decisions about global initiatives, it's crucial not to lose sight of local specifics. Therefore, KM performance management needs to come with a 'health warning,' reminding the practitioner to take national culture into account before making decisions based on indicators.

"For instance, if one of your measures in a performance management framework in a law firm is the buy-in to KM of fee earners, and you measure this by the percentage of fee earners submitting know-how to a know-how system, you will most likely find different levels of
buy-in across countries even if you have provided them with exactly the same system and level of support. Sometimes small differences in basic technology can significantly change the picture, or the extent to which authority works in terms of simply telling people to
share knowledge."

Source: Adapted from "The impact of national culture on KM metrics" by Ingo Forstenlechner

The four lessons of how MCOs survive in a Crises

2005-08-15T05:45:00.000-07:00

The four lessons of how MCOs survive in a Crises

Unfortunately, most organizations repeat mistakes when faced with crises. But there's one type that seems to be above this - mission critical organizations (MCOs). Here, Kevin Desouza highlights four important characteristics of MCOs and explains how they use KM to
rise above potentially detrimental mistakes.

Lesson 1: Simulate often and imaginatively - MCOs engage their tacit knowledge by conducting routine simulations, which allow people to get acquainted with distant realities and provide them a way to test their reflexes to the new environment. These simulations have three purposes: to keep everyone alert and focused; to help internalize knowledge and generate automated responses; and to test the fragility of the organization by pushing extremes or pressure points.

Lesson 2: Create flexible knowledge architecture with flexibility. MCOs can organize, dismantle, and reorganize their assets quickly with minimal disruption to overall operations. This ability is valuable in terms of managing crises, as resources can be
immediately diverted to areas of concern. There are two factors to create a Flexible Knowledge Architecture: having knowledge redundancies - essential to mobilize knowledge quickly and fill knowledge gaps during a crisis - and a mentality of constant
disruptions to put everyone on their toes.

Lesson 3: Root-cause analysis, not Band-Aid fixtures - MCOs take great care to conduct postmortems after a crisis, which are used to study how and why the overall system failed, what the root causes of the failure were, and how to fix them. Writing postmortems should
be ingrained in the organizational fabric and written upon completion of projects. Organizations should implement incentives to encourage project managers, directors, managers, etc. to review prior engagement reports before embarking on new projects. In this
way, the chance of repeating past failures is avoided.

Lesson 4: Harp on the organizational mission - Unless employees have an intrinsic understanding of the mission, the essence of organization will be lost. Too often, mission statements are Someone's glorified words of what the purpose of the organization should be. So they can be outmoded and distinct from the everyday realities of the organization. Mission statements need to be brought down to reality. Then measure and evaluate employees
against how well they contribute to the organization's mission.

Source: Excerpted from "Vital dimensions of Mission-critical organizations" published in KM Review, 2005.

TOP TIPS: Implement seven KM enablers for more value

2005-08-12T05:48:00.000-07:00

KM can empower each employee to leverage the entire organization's collective knowledge to service customers. Here, Arun Hariharan details seven categories of KM enablers.

1. Strategic focus - The biggest enabler is the focus and seriousness of top management and high expectations from KM. Performance appraisals at all levels include KM-specific measures. For example, "president and CEO" awards for KM.

2. Alignment with objectives - KM and its results form a permanent agenda item on the president's business reviews with CEOs of each business unit and the CEOs' reviews within their units. Top-priority business measures should be defined and mapped with at least one of the president's three strategic imperatives. All KMinitiatives, including knowledge repositories, sharing, replication and communities of experts, are structured around each of these top-priority business measures.

3. KM organization and roles - Dedicate KM coordinators centrally and at each business unit. These people act as catalysts in the KM process - change agents who bring in and spread the culture of knowledge sharing. They influence other employees and facilitate the process of sharing and replicating knowledge and measuring results.

4. Standard KM processes - Define standardized, close-looped processes for knowledge sharing, replication and measurement. Knowledge sharing and replication to improve performance on critical business measures won't be a matter of chance or choice, but a mandatory activity like any other business process.

5. Culture and people engagement - For creating an organization wide culture of knowledge sharing and replication, and to institutionalize KM, it's critical that employees engage in KM activities, not just a fraction. Put in place a measurement of"employee engagement in KM." Each month, the percentage of employees in every business unit and critical business process who have been part of at least one knowledge submission, knowledge replication initiative or knowledge-sharing session to the company knowledge base will be measured and reported. This will be included in regular business reviews.

6. Content under scrutiny - Ensure quality of content in two steps. First, all content submitted should be scanned by a KM team member to ensure relevance to the business, quality of documentation and adherence to standard formats. It then goes to the knowledge champion and community of experts who "own" the concerned knowledge repository. They review and approve, edit or reject content as required.

7. Technology enablement - Deploy technology as a powerful enabler for KM. An effective KM portal is a common virtual platform for all employees to share knowledge and replication.

Source: Excerpted from "Implementing seven KM enablers at Bharti" by Arun Hariharan

COPs/Teams

2005-08-08T09:36:00.000-07:00

Why Teams and COPs are different kinds of groups.

Teams weave the organization together in one direction, while communities weave it together in the other (see grid below). A community of practice is a group that shares knowledge, learns together and creates common practices. COPs share information, insight, experience and tools about an area of common interest.

This could be a professional discipline (such as reservoir engineering or biology), a skill (like machine repair), a topic (such as technology), an industry or a segment of a production process. Consulting companies usually organize COPs around both disciplines, such as organizational change, and industries like banking, petroleum or insurance. Community members frequently help each other to solve problems and develop new approaches or tools for their field. This makes it easier for community members to show their weak spots and learn together in the "public space" of the community.As they share ideas and experiences, people develop a set of common practices.

Sometimes they formalize these in guidelines and standards, but often they simply remain "what everybody knows" about good practice. Since COPs focus on topics that people often feel passionately interested in, they can become important sources of individual identity. Teams and COPs are different kinds of groups. Teams are tightly integrated units driven by deliverables, defined by managed tasks and bound together by members' collective commitment to results. COPs are loosely knit groups driven by the value they provide to members – defined by the opportunities to learn and share what they discover and bound by the sense of collective identity that the members form.

Unlike teams, COPs rarely have a specific result to deliver to the organization. Instead, they are typically driven by the value they provide to individual members. Individuals share information and insights and discover ideas which will save them money, time, energy and effort. The value that individuals derive from the community is typically what keeps community members involved. While a team delivers value in the result it produces, a community discovers value in many day-to-day exchanges of knowledge and information.

The heart of a team is a set of interdependent tasks that lead to an objective. The heart of a community of practice, on the other hand, is the knowledge members share and develop. Since community members apply their knowledge on teams outside the community, it is not possible to predict exactly what knowledge will be important to the community.

COPs therefore follow opportunities for sharing knowledge as they arise, and as a result the "hot topics" in a community shift over time. As topics shift new people join the community, adding their perspective and shaping its direction. While teams often have clear boundaries and membership, COPs have many partial, part-time, and marginal members. Like a double-knit fabric, they can stretch as topics and needs evolve.

This article was taken from Knowledge Management Review.

Do Incentive Schemes Promote Knowledge-Sharing?

2005-08-08T09:29:00.000-07:00

Do Incentive Schemes Promote Knowledge-Sharing?

By Paul Wright Robert Buckman, former chairman and CEO of Bulab Holdings, Inc., a specialty chemicals company in Memphis, Tenn.

Talks about the movement toward knowledge-sharing as a journey of cultural change. Like most such journeys, it has its pioneers and its laggards. "As the train begins to move down the track," says Buckman, "you need to let everyone know where it's going and help them get on board.

Those that board early and do well, you reward." Buckman thus frames in a nutshell a key issue in the knowledge revolution: what kinds of reward systems stimulate knowledge-sharing? Bandy that question around and, while you're likely to find a range of answers, you'll also get fair agreement that the subject looms large on corporate radar screens.

Reward systems, of course, can cover many bases, from the economic to the symbolic. Among companies pondering the problem, purely economic incentives rank well down on the list of solutions, but probably not for long. And when the time comes, we're likely to see some novel alternatives. William E. Halal, professor of management at George Washington University and author of The Infinite Resource (Jossey-Bass, 1998) looks to the Internet for inspiration.

Pointing out that the Internet proves the feasibility of using information as a saleable commodity, Halal proposes creating internal markets for knowledge within organizations. He envisions that authors of information posted on a corporate intranet would charge micropayments each time a particular posting is accessed for use. Conceding that such an approach might seem artificial, Halal notes that many support services increasingly offer themselves for sale within organizations (and further suggests that his approach could at a stroke address both the problem of information overload and the quest for appropriate forms of personnel evaluation).

This approach may not sit comfortably with everyone, but no one disagrees that it's deep-seated attitudes towards knowledge that are up for challenge. Knowledge, long regarded as power, has naturally been viewed as ripe for hoarding. In a competitively individualistic environment, sharing it has looked abnormal. Now that organizations are discovering that sharing knowledge makes sound business sense, changing that behavior suddenly looks profoundly connected to their bottom-line fortunes.

Jessica Lipnack, president of the Networking Institute in West Newton, Mass. and most recently co-author with Jeffrey Stamps of Virtual Teams (Wiley, 1997), maintains that the trick to encouraging knowledge-sharing lies in designing reward and recognition systems that stimulate sharing of all kinds: goals, tasks, vision, and, of course, knowledge.

This thinking suggests the benefit of demonstrating at the highest levels how sharing knowledge affects a company's overall performance. Dan Cochran, manager of progress services at Chicago-based Amoco Corp., reports that knowledge-sharing counts as a major criterion in determining the winner of the annually conferred Chairman's Award. Judged by indicators that not only consider what learnings get shared and how, but carefully measure results, this aspect of the award, says Cochran, serves to show the growing ripple effect that knowledge-sharing has on the company's performance. He adds that each business unit stages a similar event to make the same point throughout Amoco.

Recognition by means of rewards, in fact, is a commonly used carrot to motivate this behavior. Robert Buckman tells of recently convening a meeting of 150 employees (out of some 1200) in Scottsdale, Ariz. The group represented those, he said, who had done the best job of knowledge-sharing the previous year. While the trip to Scottsdale was a welcome reward for those selected to go, it also brought the group together with Buckman's planning team to consider ways to improve the company's performance-a clear signal about the critical role of knowledge-sharing in the corporation. Providing those who attended with new laptops, he adds, emphasized that message.

Prof. Halal is not alone in looking to the Internet for ideas. William Woods, principal scientist at Sun Microsystems Laboratories (Chelmsford, Mass.) notes that "It's an observed phenomenon that if you have a corporate intranet with Web technology allowing people to create their own home pages, this encourages knowledge-sharing." In high tech environments like Sun, making available the capacity to set up their own Web sites as a way for them to advertise their ideas and accomplishments comes as a distinct benefit. Indeed, the power of recognition should not go unnoticed.

Companies are now developing internal directories promoting the skill sets of employees willing to share their expertise in return for recognition as prime organizational knowledge assets. Arthur Andersen LLP has adapted this principle in its internal version of KnowledgeSpace (SM) (a subscriber-accessed Web site complete with links to the service lines and industry areas in which Andersen specializes).

Thomas Hoglund, general manager for KnowledgeSpace (SM), describes the internal version as an opportunity for anyone in the firm to contribute client engagement experiences and advertise various personal skills; the network also offers a space for designated experts in the firm to elucidate firmwide technologies in an effort to embed knowledge-sharing practices. Some thinkers foresee as the ultimate incentive for knowledge-sharing creating ownership stakes via, say, stock options, at lower and lower levels in today's organizations, as a way to demonstrate the interdependent networks that cross-organizational sharing brings about. But whatever the reward systems likely to appear, it's a good bet that innovation will be their hallmark.

This article was taken from Knowledge Management Review.

Ten ways to embed knowledge management

2005-08-08T09:25:00.000-07:00

Ten ways to embed knowledge management

By Rowan Wilson

KM needs to be embedded in everyday business processes for it to really deliver. Here are some guidelines.

Build a KM strategy.
This is your plan based on what knowledge and systems will give your organization competitive advantage. KM expert Chuck Seeley identifies six key components: governance, culture, content management, technology, application and measurement.

Define and communicate knowledge performance.
Knowledge performance can be defined as valuing and using the knowledge of the organization on the job. Do employees know how they create value and make money for the company? What knowledge do they need to do this?

Identify key knowledge positions.
In some positions, the way employees deal with knowledge can mean the difference between company success and failure. These jobs will need knowledge performance targets to match.
Develop knowledge-sharing proficiencies. People across the organization need to know what it means to share and use knowledge. A dedicated team will need a special skill set to act as knowledge "brokers."

Reward knowledge-sharing behaviors.
Rewarding can be planned, explicit, and purposeful. If knowledge performance objectives are not part of a manager's job, the company will have little success in spreading the word.
Don't get obsessed with tacit knowledge. You can't capture everything, and plug people's heads into a mainframe (yet). Focus on the connections (whether people, process, or technological) which allow knowledge to be shared.

Encourage networking and respect communities.
Face-to-face or team meetings have a natural dynamic which transfers tacit knowledge. While KM needs to be incentivized and strongly embedded, be careful not to stifle Communities of Practice (COPs), which are often spontaneous hubs for knowledge transfer and a fertile seedbed for new ideas.

Capture best-practice.
From customer service to technical problems, most scenarios have already occurred. A little knowledge will go a long way.

Map knowledge.
"Content management" is often overlooked as part of a KM strategy. Mapping pulls together all sources of knowledge and creates a "virtual roadmap" so people can easily find the information they need, and helps lock KM into a course aimed at meeting business objectives.

Make it policy.
Consider formal agreements on knowledge performance for key positions. Make performance expectations clear to every new employee during any orientation program, and enshrine the organization's commitment to KM in its literature and handbooks.

This article was taken from Knowledge Management Review.

My Library

2005-08-08T09:12:00.000-07:00

My Library

This website I made to share my knowledge in library and information world. Being a practitioner in knowledge center area, I realize that knowledge sharing is the most important works for betterment in learning environment.

The collections
I collect, re-write, write articles specifically in library, information, knowledge management and learning subjects. Whole articles arranged in pdf format, mostly in my mother tongue language: Bahasa Indonesia, but often in English. I wish I could make them in order and structured, but sometimes things come up without preparation, so then I owe readers apologies. May you have advises and critiques, don’t be hesitate to knock my door and let me notice. Let have fun sharing!

The Other Links
You may be interested in my other activities in sharing what I have had to the world. From imagination world such as poets, fictions until popular scientific and academic materials. I hope it could do some benefit for all readers and help us cultivate our knowledge in good way.

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