Knowledge Management – Defies definition

"There are many words and definitions I have never lost. But some I am only just beginning to truly understand"

~Mary E Pearson

How often have we used words fully comprehending the context in which we are using it, yet when asked the meaning of the word we would be stumped to give an accurate definition? Knowledge is apparently one such word; and when that becomes "Knowledge Management" you could actually end up writing a book of definitions.

This is how the Oxford English Dictionary defines knowledge. If so, how can knowledge be managed? Peter Drucker is credited with the quote "You can't manage knowledge. Knowledge is between two ears and only between two ears." And quite rightly so. If you were to manage the acquisition of skills through education, then that would be termed training and what is gained through experience can hardly be managed. An ancient Sanskrit text describes the process of how people acquire knowledge:

"Achaaryaath paadam aadatthe

paadam sishya swamedhayaa

paadam sa brahmachaaribhya

sesham kaala kramena
cha"

It explains:

From the teacher you receive a quarter of your knowledge
A quarter the disciple learns by his own efforts (practice)
A quarter he gains through interactions with his peers (fellow students)
The remaining comes only as time passes by (from experience)

I found this quite insightful, because it delineates the knowledge acquisition process and therefore gives us access to managing the acquisition process. It also appears that this could be equally effectively applied in the context of the organization. The organization, like the individual also learns in a similar manner; the only difference being that the teacher here might actually be the market place (in the case of organization's learning) and in some cases the market regulator.

Given this definition, I was trying to fit it into the current context of organizational knowledge and definitions by different leading knowledge management experts. Every organization which engages in some form of learning intervention, be it formal training and development programs or more unstructured learn-on-the-job forms, is providing employees with a "teacher" who imparts some learning. Similarly, as employees use their skills on a regular basis and learn from their experiences, they begin to know more than what they knew previously; the third kind of learning happens when employees engage in social interactions with other colleagues, customers, partners, suppliers etc. Every interaction will leave the employee enriched with a new learning and experience. The question then is, how can the organization manage these individual experiences and learning such that the sum total of this far exceeds the individual knowledge of each employee. And when this is put to use effectively, the organization benefits many fold than would be possible if each individual or group were to work in silos.

So, Knowledge Management then is the process by which an organization taps into the education and experience of individuals and makes it available in a manner that it can be used for the productivity and growth of the organization. This becomes possible by creating an ecosystem that fosters the creation, acquisition, collation and dissemination of knowledge. And we will know that such initiatives have been successful when we can measure the impact of this process on the ability of the organization to grow and profit from such knowledge.

With the advent of social collaboration and knowledge repositories, technology will also play a big role in enabling knowledge management by:

1. Making it possible to have social interactions and capture such tacit knowledge
   
2. Providing a structured and collaborative learning environment
   
3. A mechanism to capture insights and share it with other employees
   
4. And allowing people to benefit from the experience of others
   

While, seemingly it may not be possible to hasten the knowledge acquisition process, in an organizational context, what is important is how individual experiences can be collectively employed by the organization such that the organization's knowledge far exceeds its experience. Knowledge Management, then becomes a process of enabling individual skills and experiences to be gathered, collated and used contextually for enabling the organization progress in a sustainable manner.

A good knowledge management system would therefore have elements of collaboration and learning in order to be effective. By being able to integrate this to the performance of the organization it would enable the organization drive strategy and innovation.

When viewed from this perspective, we are able to appreciate the reason for Knowledge Management to exist as a strategic tool in organizations. We also realize the complexity of being able to gather such knowledge, process it in a meaningful manner, and share it with the entire organization such that it is available for use when needed. The challenges in enabling such a mechanism are multi-dimensional and involve people, processes, technology, organization structure, human behaviour and culture. When we look at the magnitude of activities that this will then encompass, it is quite easy to understand why a single definition eludes this subject.

Here are some definitions that are commonly used to define this subject:

• Knowledge Management is a concept in which enterprises consciously and comprehensively gathers, organizes, shares and analyses its knowledge in terms of resources, documents and people skills
  
• Knowledge Management is the process of applying a systematic approach to the capture, structuring, management and dissemination of knowledge throughout an organization to work faster, reuse best practices, and reduce costly rework.
  
• Knowledge Management is the deliberate and systematic coordination of an organization's people, process, technology, and organizational structure in order to add value through reuse and innovation.
  
• Strategies and processes designed to identify, capture, structure, leverage, value and share an organization's intellectual assets to enhance its performance and competitiveness
  
• Knowledge Management is a collaborative and integrated approach to the creation, capture, organization, access and use of an enterprise's intellectual assets
  
• Knowledge Management is understanding the organization's information flows and implementing learning practices which makes key aspects of its knowledge base available to the organization when required….
  

And so on it goes…

What is your definition of Knowledge Management? How would you go about explaining it?

 

 

 

 

Knowledge Management - The hydra-headed jargon

“Knowledge is as old as the rocks and as changing as the sea, enmeshed inextricably in its ways. And you want a clear definition of Knowledge Management? You must be daft!”

                                                                                         ~Paraphrasing Bedford in “The Quality of Travel”

One of the biggest challenges I have faced, especially facing people from a non-IT background is to explain what I do! “Knowledge Management? What exactly does that mean?” is a question I frequently encounter.  This post is a result of my quest to come up with an answer that will get me past a response that I hear “That’s very interesting”…but which I know really means “ I haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about”!!! J

The reason for this ambiguity is not very hard to understand; Knowledge Management as a term entered the lexicons only about thirty years ago.  And even when it did, it came as an offshoot of an attempt to explain other terms like “knowledge acquisition”, “knowledge-base systems”, artificial intelligence, expert systems and computer-based ontologies – sort of a “basket-term” for all of these and much more.  Early management theorists like Peter Drucker, Paul Strassman and Peter Senge contributed to the growing understanding of knowledge as a key organizational resource with Senge contributing the cultural dimension with his seminal work “The Fifth Discipline” where he introduced the concept of “the learning organization”.  By the mid-1990s the word had become pretty much part of organization strategy with important contributions from researchers like Christopher Bartlett, Dorothy Leonard-Barton, Chris Agyris, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi…to name a few.

Knowledge Management became the new mantra for consulting companies; organizations that had not had much success with TQM and other business process re-engineering initiatives now embraced KM as the panacea for all their previous management blunders.  Along the way, the term came to acquire attributes of performance management, Quality management, Business Intelligence (the new Decision Support Systems), and what have you.

The rise of the digital age has added new flavours to knowledge management; Web 2.0 introduced social collaboration to the list of things that KM already stood for.  And with the number of social tools available in the market, and their attempts at capturing a slice of the enterprise space, Knowledge Management has never had it so good…in terms of popularity.  Never mind that people still are unable to define what it really means! J

Cloudy with a chance of knowledge nuggets

“Have you ever felt like you were a little bit different? Like you had something unique to offer the world, if you could just get people to see it. Then you know exactly how it felt to be me.”

 ~ Flint Lockwood (from the film: Cloudy with a chance of meatballs)

Knowledge Management has come to mean different things to different people.  Starting with a document management system to a social intranet, knowledge takes on various hues and shades depending on what organizations expect out of such a system.  There is no single definition of Knowledge Management.  However, what everyone does agree on is the fact that Knowledge Management is the process through which organizations generate value from intellectual and knowledge-based assets.  With “social” acquiring a new dimension in the digital world, the ability to transform tacit knowledge, which usually exists in conversations, into explicit knowledge has increased the value that KM systems are able to deliver to enterprises.

This has been further enhanced by making such knowledge available on the cloud.  Is knowledge on the cloud likely to be different? Different, that is, from what you might get served if you had it in your enterprise knowledge repository?

In common usage, the term “cloud” is essentially a metaphor for the internet.  This has further popularized the phrase “in the cloud” to refer to software platforms and infrastructure, that are sold as a service, i.e. remotely through the internet. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing)

What this essentially facilitates is the ability for end-users to simply log on to the network and start using an application without requiring them to install anything; it also enables device-independent access to the application. The core functionality will continue to remain the same.  However, with a lot of preference being given to mobile-only users, we now have a new jargon to contend with – mobile-first design.  Historically, most designs have started out with a web interface and then been down-sized for smaller viewports.  However, with an increasing number of mobile-only users, there is a growing need to design interfaces with these users primarily in mind.  This therefore calls for a progressive and responsive design – one that keeps the limited screen space and concomitant constraints in the forefront.  It also means that the way the users interact with the application cannot change drastically from one device to another.   

Irrespective of how the application is accessed the core functionality will essentially remain the same.  The user interface design will however, give priority to those interactions with the application that happen primarily through a mobile device; the interface will need to be device agnostic, nevertheless.  The features and functionalities which are more likely to be accessed from a desktop or laptop (read, larger viewport, lesser frequency, more analytical and less transactional) may or may not be available across all interface devices; some features – for example complex admin configurations, or large text manipulations are probably best left to devices with larger user interfaces, namely laptops or desktops.

What is significantly important, and cannot be compromised irrespective of the device is the actual value of content being delivered to the end user.  A cloud-based deployment, because of its ubiquitous nature, lends itself well to fulfil this important criteria.  It is therefore, more important to be able to deliver knowledge to the end user in an intuitive manner – one that will make knowledge itself omnipresent.  When these knowledge nuggets manifest themselves to users in a manner that makes it easy to apply them in day-to-day work, it is only then that a KM system, irrespective of where or how they are available, will actually transform the way an organization works.

NEPHILA™ (www.kriostechnologies.com) is uniquely positioned to access such knowledge nuggets from the corporate enterprise repository and deliver them to end users at the point of action.  Where a large field force is involved, the ability to deliver this at their workplace – which is usually outdoors, provides the critical leverage for successful usage of enterprise knowledge.

How does your KM deliver knowledge nuggets to your users?