KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

MEANING & DEFINITION

• Knowledge is a blend of experience, values, information in context, and insight that forms a basis on which to build new experiences and information.

• It is the value added by people that transforms information into knowledge. • According to Peter Drucker,

“INFORMATION ONLY BECOMES KNOWLEDGE IN THE HANDS OF SOMEONE WHO KNOW

WHAT TO DO WIT H IT”

“Knowledge is information that changes something to

somebody-either by becoming grounds of actions, or by making an individual (or

institution) capable of different or more effective action”

KNOWLEGDE MANAGEMENT

• Knowledge Management (KM) is “the development of tools, processes, systems, structures and cultures explicitly to improve the creation, sharing, and use of knowledge critical for decision making”

• “The capabilities by which communities within an organization capture the knowledge that is critical to them, constantly improve it and make it available in the most effective manner to those who need it, so that they can exploit it creatively to add value as normal part of their work.”

- Glaxo Smith Kline.

• According to e-zest, “KM is the process by which information is used to create something actionable.”

• Knowledge Management is a collective concept for a variety of management tasks and embraces different management functions.

• The term KM covers strategic as well as operational activities that are dedicated to the:

Management, i.e., analyzing, planning, control, and leadership of the knowledge base of a company.

Personal management of knowledge workers.

Organization of knowledge work.Management of information systems supporting knowledge work.

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES

• A KM strategy sits at the top of any successful Knowledge Management implementation.

• The success of any KM exercise heavily depends on the basic visioning and strategy.

• Based on the framework, three main knowledge management strategies could be suggested while developing a knowledge management system in any organization.

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT STRATEGY

PEOPLE – ORGANIZATION STRATEGY

PEOPLE-IT STRATEGY

IT-ORGANIZATION STRATEGY

PEOPLE – ORGANIZATION STRATEGY

• This strategy is most suitable for the organization’s whose products are rich in tactic knowledge, such as advertising organization or research organizations.

• The organizations involved in creating knowledge through the internal resources need shared concepts and beliefs, which are of tactic nature.

• Team-building, free and open discussions, good interpersonal relationship, close associations, on-the-job training, etc are some of the processes for these organizations.

• Human skills are of utmost importance in such organizations.

• Proactive management methods are required to implement such strategy.

PEOPLE-IT STRATEGY

• Information and communication technologies has broken all boundaries of organizations and has made available to individuals enormous explicit knowledge spread across the world at a very low cost, resulting in multifold knowledge interactions.

• These changes have made the technology to grow at a very fast pace.

• Designing a customer-based, user-friendly knowledge management system is a challenge while implementing this strategy.

• This strategy is most suitable if the organization is the user of external knowledge such as manufacturing organizations.

• Since technology is the explicit portion of the scientific knowledge this strategy is highly useful in acquisition, absorption and dissemination of high-technology information in very large manufacturing and marketing organizations.

IT-ORGANIZATION STRATEGY

• Any information can become knowledge only when processed in the human mind.

• This strategy does not involve people directly. It is amore an information strategy, or a higher form of automation strategy for the organization than that of a knowledge strategy.

• This is more suitable for the organizations where information provides the competitive advantage of the organization such as service organization or software industry.

• Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Management Information Systems (MIS) can be put under this category.

• This strategy may provide the organization with the ability to improve the time cycle performance for any activity.

ARCHITECTURE/FRAMEWORK OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

• A knowledge management system in an organization identifies the knowledge requirement of the organization for its business objectives, prioritize it in terms of business relevance, establishes knowledge creation process and practices, establishes knowledge capture, exploitation and knowledge protection mechanism and also the required infrastructure for the same.

KM

KNOWLEDGE INTERACTIO

N

INFORMATION

TECHNOLOGY

ORGANIZATION (Process, Policies and Structure)

KNOWLEDGE WITHIN INDIVIDUAL

People- IT Strategy

Org-People Strategy

IT-Org Strategy

Organization knowledge

• The knowledge in an organization resides mainly in three forms at three different entities.

• The natural place for knowledge to reside is within individuals because only individuals can create knowledge.

• Organization can support the creative individuals and provide context for them to create knowledge.

• Knowledge also resides in the organization in the form of the organization structure, policies and practices.

• The third place where knowledge can reside is the IT infrastructure where knowledge is stores in the form of either information to explicit knowledge.

• A knowledge Management system in an organization should be developed around these three basic dimensions.

• Knowledge encourages high level interactivity between employees and helps in the creation of a favorable knowledge sharing environment.

• The KM framework proposes that high interactivity between employees makes them responsive.

INNOVATION

PRODUCTIVITY

RESPONSIVENESS

COMPETENCE

High Interactivity

Low Interactivity

Individuals

Group

Collaboration

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK

• Experience and expertise lies with an individual in the form of tactic knowledge.

• In the absence of high social interactivity that knowledge is limited to the individual in the form of competence.

“Competence, in Areas of Low Interaction and Individual

Knowledge”:

“Innovation, in Area of High Interaction and Individual Knowledge”:

• Sharing of ideas, experience and knowledge across the organization could lead to innovation, i.e., idea generation of new offerings or improvement in processes.

“Productivity, in Areas of Low Interaction and Group Knowledge”:

• Similarly if low or no interactivity takes place among groups, then it is likely that productivity (efficiency) is limited to just meeting work expectation.

“Responsiveness, in Areas of High Interaction and Group Knowledge”:

• On the other hand, high interactivity between the groups would instill a sense of responsiveness in employees.

• This knowledge sharing among groups will help in quick and accurate decision-making

TOOLS OF KM

TOOLS OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

CAPTURINF AND STORING KNOWLEDGE

STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT

COLLABORATION DEVELOPMENT

KNOWLEDGE SHARING AND LEARNING TOOLS

STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT

KNOWLEDGE AUDIT

SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS (SNA)

PROCESS-BASED KNOWLEDGE

MAPPING

REFRAMING MATRIX

OUTCOME MAPPING

KNOWLEDGE AUDITS

• Knowledge audit is a systematic procedure to identify knowledge needs, resources or flows as a basis for understanding where and how better knowledge management can add value.

• It reveals KM needs, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats and risks.

• Typically this process is carried out through face-to-face interviews, workshops, focus groups and e-discussions.

SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS

• Social Network Analysis is about mapping the relationships between people, groups and organizations to understand how these relationships facilitate or impede knowledge flows.

• It is about whom people seek information and knowledge from, whom they share their information and knowledge with.

• In contrast to organizational chart, which shows formal relationships, an SNA chart shows informal relationships-who knows whom and who shares information and knowledge with whom.

• It therefore allows visualizing and understanding the relationships that can either facilitate or impede knowledge creation and sharing.

• SNA shows the real networks that operate underneath the surface of a formal structure.

OUTCOME MAPPING• Development is essentially about people

relating to each other and their environment.

• The focus of outcome mapping is on people.

• Outcome mapping establishes a vision of the human, social and environmental improvement to which the programme hopes to contribute and then focuses monitoring and evaluation on factors and actors within that programme’s direct sphere of influence.

• The programme’s contribution to development are planned and assessed based on its influence on the partners with whom it is working to effect change.

• The central concept of outcome mapping is that development is accomplished by, and for, people.

PROCESS BASES KNOWLEDGE MAPPING

• A process based knowledge map is a map or diagram that visually displays knowledge within the context of a business process.

• The map shows how knowledge should be used within the process and sources of this knowledge.

• The overview of the business process is prepared before the knowledge and the sources are mapped to this process.

REFRAMING MATRIX

• Reframing matrix is a simple technique that helps look at the organizational problems from a number of different viewpoints.

• It expands the range of creative solutions that can be generated.

• The approach relies on the fact that different people with different experiences approach the problem in different ways.

• In this technique one put oneself in the mind of different people and imagine the solutions they would come up with.

COLLABORATION DEVELOPMENT

• When working together with others often there is not enough attention paid to facilitating effective collaborative practices.

• The tools in this section aim to help strengthen relationship and develop shared thinking:

COLLABORATION DEVELOPMENT

Communities of Practice (COP)

Social Technologies

Action Learning Set

Six Thinking Caps

• A Communities of Practice (COP) is a network of people who share a common interest in a specific area of knowledge or competence and are willing to work and learn together over a period of time to develop and share that knowledge.

Communities of Practice (COP)

Action Learning Set

• Action learning is a structured mechanism for working in small groups to address complicated issues.

• Action learning sets are made up of between six and eight people who meet together regularly over a reasonable time period and ‘present’ and collectively work on problems faced in ongoing practice.

• The group will the help the ‘presenter’ to work on that problem through supportive but challenging questioning: encouraging a deeper understanding of the issues involved a reflective re-assessment of the ‘problem’, and exploration of the way forward.

Social Technologies

• There are ever increasing number of tools that are described by the term social technologies.

• All of these have one thing in common: the use of technology to try and build collaboration and sharing of tacit knowledge.

• The term is often used to describe new tools based on the internet; however one should not forget other equally important tools which do not require web-platform : mobile telephone communications, radio services and other face-to-face socializing methods.

Six Thinking Caps

• This tools enable groups to look at decisions from a number of important perspectives.

• This forces groups and individuals to move outside their habitual thinking style, and helps to get a more holistic view of the situation.

• Each ‘Thinking Hat’ is a different style of thinking. These are discussed as follows:

WHITE HAT

WHITE HAT With this thinking hat one

focuses on the data available.

Look at the information one have, and see what one can learn from it.

Look for gaps in the knowledge, and either try to fill them or take account of them.

This is where one analysis past trends, and tries to extrapolate from historical data.

RED HAT

RED HAT ‘Wearing’ the red hat, one

looks at the problems using intuition, gut reaction, and emotion.

Also try to think hoe other people will react emotionally.

Try to understand the responses of the people who do not fully know ones reasoning.

BLACK HAT

• Using black hat one looks at all the bad points of the decision, cautiously and defensively.

• Try to see why it might not work.

• This is important because it highlights the weak points in a plan.

• It helps to eliminate them, alter them, or prepare contingency plans to counter them.

BLACK HAT

YELLOW HAT

YELLOW HAT The yellow hat helps to think

positively.

It is the optimistic viewpoint that helps to see all the benefits of the decision and the value in it.

Yellow hat thinking helps to keep going when everything looks gloomy and difficult.

GREEN HAT

GREEN HAT The green hat stands

for creativity.

This is here one can develop creative solutions to a problem.

It is a freewheeling way of thinking, in which there is little criticism of ideas.

BLUE HAT

BLUE HAT The blue thinker’s role is to

keep an overview of what thinking is necessary to scout the subject.

The blue thinker is responsible to give summaries, surveys and conclusions.

The blue hat stands for process control.

This is the hat worn by people chairing the meetings.

When running into difficulties because ideas are running dry, they may direct activity into green hat thinking.

When contingency plans are needed, they will ask for black hat thinking etc.

BLUE HAT

• Effective knowledge and learning is about simple and effective two-way communication building on past experiences in order to improve activities in the future.

COLLABORATION DEVELOPMENT

KNOWLEDGE SHARING & LEARNING TOOLS

Stories

Challenge Sessions

After Action Reviews and

retrospect (AAR)

Peer Assists

• Storytelling is simply using stories in organizations as a communication tool to share knowledge.

• Storytelling has existed for thousands for years as a means of exchanging information and generating understanding.

Stories

• A Peer assist is simply a process where a team of people who are working on a project or activity call a meeting or workshop to seek knowledge and insights from people in other teams.

• Peer assist is a tool which supports ‘learning before doing’ processes.

Peer Assists

• It is well established that groups and individuals think by recognizing and reacting to patterns, with most reactions emerging as a result of building on past experiences in a logical and linear fashion.

• In other words, the underlying assumption is that the future will correlate with the past.

Challenge Sessions

• Although such thinking is a necessity in certain situations, individuals and groups often get stuck in such modes of thinking , and do not attempt to think beyond them.

• When a different or new challenge is posed, the manner in which people are conditioned to think means it is difficult to adjust.

• As with others lateral thinking techniques, use of challenge sessions helps generate new ideas and concepts.

• The key is effective facilitation of the group through creative thinking process.

• An After Action Review (AAR) is a discussion of a project or an activity that enables the individuals involved to learn for themselves what happened, why it happened, what went well, hat needs improvement and what lessons can be learned from the experience

After Action Reviews and retrospect (AAR)

• The spirit of an AAR is one of openness and learning- it is not about the problem fixing or allocating blame.

• Lessons learned are not only tacitly shared on the spot by the individuals involved, but can be explicitly documented and shared with the wider audience

CAPTURING AND STORING KNOWLEDGE

Knowledge Harvesting

Integrated approaches to

capture learning

Identifying and sharing Best

practices

Exit Interviews

Blogs

• Knowledge Harvesting is an approach that allows the tacit knowledge or know-how to be captured and documented.

• This know-how can then be made available to others in various ways such as through training programmes, manuals, beasty practices and websites.

Knowledge Harvesting

• Knowledge Harvesting is about trying to make some of the tacit knowledge more explicit.

• Its aim is to help to make better and wider use of their existing knowledge by extracting it from the heads of a few key people and making it available to much wider range of people.

• When an organization actively records and shares its success stories and failures, everyone learns and benefits.

• One way to do this is by using variety of media to capture, document and archive learning that occurs during the life of a development initiative in ways that are through and meaningful.

Integrated approaches to capture learning

• The learning is subsequently fed back into the project cycle and stored in the organization’s learning and sharing repository, thus making it available both internally and externally.

• Exit Interviews are usually thought of as a rather formal interview between a manager and staff member leaving an organization. Focusing on the latter’s reasons for leaving.

• However, exit interviews are a learning process emphasizing the importance of capturing and storing know-how.

Exit Interviews

• Obviously it is impossible to capture all the knowledge of any individual, but exit interviews are designed to minimize the loss of useful knowledge through staff turnover and ease the learning curve of new staff.

• If conducted appropriately, they can benefit both the organization and the leaving staff.

• A weblog (also known as a web log or ‘blog’) is a web application on which dated entries are posted on a webpage on a particular topic.

• Weblogs enable users to publish short comments and ideas instantly for other people to read

Blogs

• Blogging can be effective communications tool for small groups of people to keep in touch with each other.

• Web logs can vary in forms from sites maintained by one individual to multiple contributor weblogs where information is posted by approved contributors after editor approval: many weblogs allow the creation of community of interest based on the particular topic of the blog.

• A ‘blog storm’ or ‘blog swarm’ happens where there is an explosion of interest, or posting of opinions and information around a particular subject.

KM PRACTICES

• Knowledge Management is a continuous process; knowledge creation, sharing and use are not one-shot action.

• However for making organization knowledge intensive and imbibing it in its day-to-day practices require a specific programme.

• Once this programme becomes operational and maintained, creation, sharing and use of knowledge may become continuous process.

• A knowledge management programme has the following elements:

DEFINING KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT STRATEGY

ORGANIZING KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT PROGRAMME

REINFORCEMENT FOR KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

• Before the knowledge management programme is put into action, it is desirable to define the knowledge management strategy so that a systematic approach is followed.

• It is better that such a strategy is defined with the active involvement of top management so that its commitment and support are ensured.

• Knowledge Management strategy contains why, what, whom, and how of knowledge sharing.

I:DEFINING KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT STRATEGY

• After defining knowledge management strategy, steps should be taken to organize KM programme.

• For organizing KM programme a KM unit should be established.

• This unit may be located either as independent or may function as a part of any other department of the organization, preferably with information systems department.

II:ORGANIZING KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT PROGRAMME

Besides constituting knowledge management unit, the organization should undertake the following steps to implement the KM programme:

• KM programme involves cost in the form of outlay of physical facilities, information technology, personnel involved, etc.

• Therefore a budget should be prepared in advance of launching the KM programme.

• It is better that this budget has the approval of the top management of the organization.

PROVIDING BUDGET FOR KNOWLEDGE SHARING

• Knowledge can be shared by using channels which is provided by the technology chosen for this purpose.

• Generally information technology consisting of computer hardware, computer software, database and telecommunications, is the most suitable for knowledge sharing throughout the organization and its constituents.

• The technology chosen, should match the requirements of knowledge management among the organization.

CHOOSING TECHNOLOGY FOR KNOWLEDGE SHARING

• At this stage various methods of knowledge sharing should be adopted. Knowledge in an organization can be shared in following forms:

COMMUNICATING THE VALUE OF KNOWLEDGE SHRING

• a) SERIAL TRANSFER: This happens when a team that performs a task repeats it in a new context.

• b) NEAR TRANSFER: This takes place when a knowledge is moved from a source team to a receiving team doing a similar task but at a different location.

• c) FAR TRANSFER: This happens when tacit knowledge about a non-routine task is moved from a source team to a receiving team.

• d) STRATEGIC TRANSFER: This takes place when very complex knowledge is moved from one team to another especially when both the teams are separated by time and distance.

• e) EXPERT TRANSFER: It takes place when a tacit knowledge about a task that is done very infrequently is moved from one team to another team.

• When knowledge sharing methods are put into practice, their impact should be measured continuously to ascertain whether they are effective in knowledge sharing.

• If yes, these methods can be applied repeatedly; if not, suitable corrective actions should be taken to bring them on desired level.

MEASURING PERFORMANCE

• However, measuring performance of knowledge sharing is not an easy task because of lack of precise criteria.

• Therefore, various criteria should be used to measure performance at successive levels which are follows:

• a) At the initial; level performance measurement may be conducted in terms of utilization of budget, recruitment of knowledge management staff, and activities undertaken like number of help desk for knowledge sharing, knowledge collections on-line etc.

• b) At the second level, outputs of knowledge sharing may be taken as basis of performance measurement. Such outputs are in the form of no. of questions answered satisfactorily by help desks, the no. of knowledge database created and used etc.

• c) At the third level, performance measurement may be undertaken in terms of outcome relevant for organization. These outcomes may be in the form of production cycle time, quality of products/services, customer satisfaction, employee attitude etc.

• Reinforcement for knowledge management is necessary to make it a part of organization processes and practices.

• Reinforcement is anything that increases the strength of a new behavior and tends to induce the repetition of that behavior.

• Sharing knowledge is a kind of new behavior. If it is reinforced, it tends to continue. If it is not reinforces, it tends to become extinct.

III. REINFORCEMENT FOR KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

• Therefore reinforcement should be provided so long as knowledge sharing does not get imbibed in to personnel.

• To provide reinforcement into knowledge management, the organization can do following things:

• Introducing New Incentives: For practicing Knowledge Management organization-wide, it is necessary that new incentives are introduced.

• Incentives are those objects that are perceived by people as being important to satisfy their needs.

• Incentives may be in financial and non-financial forms.

• Both these incentives can be applied at the same time.

• When knowledge sharing is introduced in an organization, employees tend to question as to how they are going to be benefited by this process.

• If they feel that they will derive benefits, they will accept it willingly otherwise not. Therefore, there is a need to provide incentives to employees.

• Providing Support for Knowledge Sharing: An organization should provide support to employees for knowledge sharing.

• This support not only facilitates knowledge sharing but employees also feels that top management cares for them.

• Such a feeling works as a strong motivator for employees to engage in knowledge sharing.

• Support for knowledge sharing does not mean mere providing physical facilities but providing psychological support which is much more important for employees.