Topic 1 - Introduction to strategic Knowledge Management

What is shadowing?

When less experienced staff observe more experienced staff in their activities.

What is joint problem-solving?

When the novice and the expert work together to approach a problem or do work. Less passive than shadowing.

What is a community of practice?

A group of people with a common interest. KM works well within a community of practice.

What is A knowledge repository?

A knowledge repository is usually an intranet or portal of some kind that serves to preserve, manage and leverage an organisational memory

What is a learning organisation ?

A learning organization is the business term given to a company that facilitates the learning of its members and continuously transforms itself. Is simply a type of organisation that has the ability to change and adapt continuously to new environments and circumstances through the aquisition of new knowledge

What is Real Simple Syndication (RSS)(Rich Site Summary; originally RDF Site Summary; often called Really Simple Syndication?

A standard for subscribing to content resources. Mostly used for capturing extra-organisational knowledge. uses a family of standard web feed formats to publish frequently updated information: blog entries, news headlines, audio, video.

What are the economic models behind the KM strategies of codification vs. personalization?

codification: reuse (many users, one to many) personalization: expert (less users, customized, one to one)

What do boundary spanners do in social networks?

connect an informal network with other parts of the company or with similar networks in other firms (external)

How can social (informal) networks boost an organization?

improved effectiveness leads to productivity increase; people with strong personal networks are more satisfied and stay longer at their companies

What is the problem with fixed prices in an internal knowledge market?

info that is more valuable than the price is not shared (experts won't waste their time, but less-expert workers volunteer just to get paid)

Organising knowledge

intellectual capital (intellectual assets) - organised knowledge that has business value to an organisation - organisational memory - centralised technical system where intellectual assets are organised - knowledge repository- intranet or portal of some kind that serves to preserve, manage and leverage an organisational memory

What do information brokers do in social networks?

keep the different sub‐groups in an informal network together (similar to that of boundary spanners, but within the social network) wealth of indirect connections

What do central connectors do in social networks?

link most people in an informal network with one another

Who belongs to community of practice?

members select themselves

What holds a community of practice together?

passion, commitment, and identification with the group's expertise

What are key-role players in social networks?

persons whose performance is critical to the productivity of any organization

How can you overcome shyness in an internal knowledge market?

provide protected environment: - include smaller, specialized markets - allow privacy and anonymity - private answers, visible only to the knowledge seeker

Tacit to tacit knowledge is created through?

socialization: sympathized knowledge - one individual shares tacit knowledge directly with another - learn through observation, imitation, and practice - trainee is "socialized" into the craft - such knowledge never becomes explicit, it cannot easily be leveraged by the organization as a whole

What form can material and social incentives take in an internal knowledge market?

spendable currency, recognition for expertise, positive impact

What is the purpose of a community of practice?

to develop members' capabilities; to build and exchange knowledge

What are key KM objectives?

• identify critical knowledge and knowledge manifestation to enhance organisational performance, • establish a mechanism (process/system/culture/role) to increase, or minimise the loss of, the intellectual capital in the organisational memory, • determine a toolkit to facilitate storing and using the knowledge, and • evaluate effectiveness, efficiency and adaptability of the knowledge.

What is an expert system?

A system that captures human expertise and puts it in a format for use by non-experts. Based on rule based systems i.e. "if.... then...."

What is An organisational memory?

An organisational memory is a centralised technical system where intellectual assets are organised

How to Launch a two‐sided network in an internal knowledge market??

- "seed" critical solutions to leading business problems -> the most important content provided by the platform sponsor, stimulates user adoption, gives critical mass - "long tail" - specialized content -> solutions to unanticipated problems, company has to support and subsidize community to develop them

What are the advantages of the Codification strategy for KM?

- Allows many people to search for and retrieve codified knowledge without having to contact the author - Opens up the possibility of achieving scale in knowledge reuse and thus growing the business

What organisational benefits does knowledge management provide?

- Foster innovation by encouraging free flow of ideas - Improve customer service by increasing response time - Boost revenues by getting products to market quicker - Enhance employee retention by recognising value of employee knowledge - Eliminate redundant processes - Make better decisions by avoiding other's mistakes - New products and services fuelled by innovation

What are the challenges of KM?

- Getting employees on board - Ongoing maintenance - Dealing with a data deluge Overload (quality over quantity)

What Different types of communities of practice exist?

- Helping communities - employees help each other to solve problems - Best‐practice communities - developing, validating and disseminating best practice - Knowledge stewarding communities - organize, upgrade and distribute knowledge - Innovation communities - foster unexpected ideas and practices

What does traditional knowledge management include?

- IT department is central planner - top-down - validation by experts - no rewards

What does an internal knowledge market include?

- IT helps match sources to seekers - Peer-to-peer - validation by peers - material or social incentives

Key KM objectives

- Identify/create critical knowledge to enhance organisational performance - establish a mechanism to maintain the intellectual capital in the organisational memory - determine a toolkit to facilitate storing and using the knowledge - evaluate effectiveness, efficiency and adaptability of the knowledge

What are some examples of ICT tools for KM?

- KNOWLEDGE REPOSITORIES (wiki pages and notes) - e-LEARNING APPLICATIONS (e-learning apps, video) - EXPERTISE ACCESS (searchable SN tool can help find experts or communities of practice) - DISCUSSION AND CHAT TECHNOLOGIES (text or video e.g. Messenger, Skype.... tactic knowledge best delivered using synchronous interactive method) - SEARCH ENGINES (for knowledge capture and knowledge retrieval) - DATA MINING APPLICATIONS (e.g. indexing)

What is the Personalization strategy to KM?

- Knowledge is closely tied to the person who developed it - Focus on dialogue between individuals, not knowledge objects in a database - Knowledge that could not been codified is transferred in brainstorming sessions and one‐on‐one conversations - Computers are used mainly to help people to connect and communicate knowledge, not to store it

What are the major challenges in implementing knowledge management?

- Knowledge is power, employees don't want to share it - Individual work bias (I can do this myself) needs to work toward teamwork/collaboration - Local focus (we know best) needs to be converted to network focus; create community of practice - People fear being penalised for sharing problems, mistakes and failures. - Employees feel they are not paid to share. Incentive programmes can help to combat this. - Lack of time to share knowledge. Knowledge capture process needs to be quick, easy and integrated into other practices. - Lack of appropriate technology/skill sets to implement KM systems

How can I gain support for my KM effort and get people to use the systems and processes we're putting in place to facilitate KM?

- Pilot the project among employees who have the most to gain/key influencers - Make it easy for employees to participate/be involved - Link KM to job performane/recognise contributers - Create incentive programs to motivate employees

What is a good way to approach a new KM?

- Start small (easier to manage, get funding, less risky, build on success) - Define value you want to achieve, design metrics to measure the success - Ensure it is working toward a business goal, purpose

What are the critical success factors (CSFs) for implementing a KM project?

- Start small (one location, one functional area, one community of practice) - Pilot the project with the employees that have the most to gain. - Implement a proven approach. - Make it as easy as possible. - Create incentive programmes (link knowledge sharing/use to job performance, create a safe climate for sharing, recognise those who contribute) - Look for and publicise KM success stories - Implement best practice in project management (someone to be accountable, need a project champion, needs a special team including technologists/HR/process people/change agents, needs budget with not more than one third for technology

What are Critical success factors of communities of practice?

- Voluntary engagement of members - Emergence of internal leadership - A negotiated learning agenda - Clear benefits to members from participation - Norms of collegiality and reciprocity - Cultivation, encouragement and support rather than tight management - Alignment with strategic and business needs

What are Communities of practice?

- a group of people who share a concern, a set of problems, a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise by interacting on an ongoing basis - purpose - learn and share - develop knowledge - organically evolve - require an open, empowered organizational culture In order to develop a community of practice, one needs to combine three elements: - a domain of knowledge: the issue - a community of people who care about the domain - the shared practice that they are developing to be effective in their domain

What are strategies for sharing knowledge?

- codification strategy - Personalization strategy

What are the Drawbacks of the codification strategy?

- companies describe only a fraction of their best practices - only standards or experience, no solutions to (new) problems - is time consuming, very costly, doesn't scale well - people do not wish to share the knowledge - usefulness and relevance declined over time - experts become bottlenecks when the volume of questions exceeds capacity

What benefits can an organization expect from effective KM?

- encourage innovation and free flow of ideas - Improve customer service by streamlining response times - Boost revenues by getting products/services to market faster - Enhance employee retention rates by recognizing employee value - Streamline processes/reduce costs by eliminating ineffective processes

What are the Benefits of internal knowledge markets?

- facilitate information sharing across a distributed organization - capture best practices within a company - generate faster responses to employees' questions just‐in‐time

What are peripheral specialists in social networks?

- who anyone in an informal network can turn to for specialized expertise - possess specific kinds of info / tacit knowledge which they pass on - stay on the edge of a network

How is knowledge classified 5W1H Kipling?

-Declarative knowledge (of 'what')-concepts, categories, definitions, assumptions -Procedural knowledge (of 'how' or know-how)-processes, events, activities, actions, manuals -Causal knowledge (of 'why')-rationale for decisions, cost drivers or factors for cost prediction -Context knowledge (who/where/when) circumstances of decision, community yellow page

Explicit to explicit knowledge is created through..

.. combination: systemic knowledge - combine discrete pieces of explicit knowledge into a new whole - financial report - a new knowledge (it synthesizes information from many different sources) - does not really extend the existing knowledge base

Tacit to explicit knowledge is created through..

.. externalization: conceptual knowledge - when a master is able to articulate the foundations of his tacit knowledge, he converts it into explicit knowledge - thus allowing it to be shared

How to design and launch an internal knowledge market?

1) Use material and social incentives, but let prices float 2) Launch two‐sided network 3) Offer points for improving information quality 4) To overcome shyness, provide protected environment

Which roles exist in social networks?

1) key role-players 2) central connectors 3) boundary spanners 4) information broker 5) peripheral specialist

Which three unique advantages do networks deliver?

1) private information from personal contacts (offer something unique that cannot be found in the public domain) 2) access to diverse skill sets 3) power

How is knowledge created (Nonaka's tacit/explicit model)?

1) tacit to tacit 2) tacit to explicit 3) explicit to tacit 4) explicit to explicit

What are the steps in the Knowledge Management Cycle?

1. Capture knowledge (record experiences, scan documents) 2. Organise knowledge (coding, keyword indexing) 3. Store knowledge (store electronically, most likely in a textual database) 4. Retrieve knowledge (use codes, keywords) 5. Use knowledge (the ultimate goal of knowledge management) REPEAT because USE generates NEW KNOWLEDGE...

How Organisations Learn

1. Reflections on what practices are and why, and what practices are working and why and what practices are not working and why 2. Experimenting with new practices and learning through trial and error 3. Learning from others within and external to the organisation by observing and seeking advice 4. Researching practices of other organisations and academic literature on the topic

How is knowledge created?

1. Sharing Tacit Knowledge 2. Creating Concepts 3. Justifying Concepts 4. Building a prototype 5. Cross-levelling Knowledge

Taxonomy of knowledge

Data - in a tax invoice, there are data such as 'bread', 'milk', 'A4 paper', etc. Information - the invoice organises the data in a systematic way (specific format) to describe a purchase. Knowledge - based on the analysis of a large amount of purchases, an inference may be drawn that '78.5% of the customers who buy bread also buy milk'.

What are the two categories of intellectual and knowledge based assets?

Explicit and tacit.

What do Leonard and Swap suggest in order to make shadowing effective?

Having the "protégé" discuss their observations with the "expert" in order to deepen their dialog and crystallize the knowledge transfer

What are Metrics for measuring the value of new knowledge?

Increased efficiency, lower cost, improved return on investment (hard, quantifiable)

Explicit to tacit knowledge is created through..

Internalization - internalization describes the psychological outcome of a concious mind reasoning about a specific subject operational knowledge - as new explicit knowledge is shared throughout an organization, other employees begin to internalize it - they use it to broaden, extend, and re-frame their own tacit knowledge

Who should lead KM efforts?

It depends... - Enterprise wide it should not be the CIO - Within IT, the CIO is an ok option - Some companies have dedicated KM staff (Chief Knowledgement Officer, a high-profile executive) - An executive sponsor within a functional area

What is the role of information and communication technologies ICT in KM?

KM is not a technology project, but ICTs enable most KM activities. - Communication technologies allow access to knowledge - Collaboration systems allow group work, esp. communities of practice - Storage technologies include databases and document management

What technologies can support KM?

KM is not a technology-based concept. Usually fall into one of the following categories: knowledge repositories, expertise access tools, e-learning applications, discussion and chat technologies, synchronous interaction tools, and search and data mining tools.

What is an explicit asset/knowledge?

As a general rule of thumb, explicit knowledge consists of anything that can be documented, archived and codified, often with the help of IT. Assets such as patents, trademarks, business plans, marketing research and customer lists. - Relatively easy to communicate and transfer - Does not rely on face-to-face contact for transfer - Usually can be reduced to rules or recipes - Stored electronically and transmitted online

How can you motivate employees to improve information quality in an internal knowledge market?

By offering points - for commenting on the usefulness of answers - flagging obsolete content; organizing dispersed content -> collective response provides more that an answer from a single source

What is Culture ?

Culture is the characteristics and knowledge of a particular group of people, defined by everything from language, religion, cuisine, social habits, music and arts. Culture is defined as the shared values, assumptions, beliefs and perceptions that guide the behaviour of organisational members.

What is DIKW model - Data, Information, knowledge wisdom

DIKW modelis data - directly observable content information - organised data to describe an event or situation knowledge - conclusion from analysed information wisdom - understanding of the conclusion towards innovations

What is the idea of the Codification strategy for KM?

Knowledge is codified using a "people‐to‐documents" approach and stored in databases - it is extracted from the person who developed - it made independent of that person and reused for various purposes

What is Knowledge management (KM)?

Knowledge management (KM) a systematic approach to identifying, acquiring, storing, using and disseminating knowledge for organisational objectives - systematic - multi-disciplines - organisational objectives - context - approach - frameworks, methods, techniques The process through which organizations generate value from their intellectual and knowledge-based assets. Codifying what is known. The process of creating value from intellectual capital and sharing that knowledge with others who need it. EMPHASISE A PROCESS THAT CREATES VALUE. The process of developing and controlling the intellectual capital of employees (their work related knowledge)

What is indexing?

Once knowledge is captured from various sources, Alphabetically arranged list of items which enables users to easily access that knowledge.

What is Organisational Learning?

Organizational learning is the process of creating, retaining, and transferring knowledge within an organization. An organization improves over time as it gains experience. From this experience, it is able to create knowledge.

What is Strategic Knowledge Management?

Refers to a long term process that uses both tacit and explicit knowledge to cultivate organisational learning which is then shared amongst organisational members to achieve a strategic goal

What is Kipling method (5W1H)

Rudyard Kipling used a set of questions to help trigger ideas and solve problems Kipling method (5W1H) - who, what, where, when, why, how - declarative (what) - concepts, definitions, etc. - procedural (how) - processes, manuals, etc. - causal (why) - rationale, drivers or factors, etc. - context (who/where/when) - circumstances, yellow page, etc

What are two practices for recreating or transferring tacit knowledge in an organization?

Shadowing and joint problem-solving

Taxonomy of knowledge

Tacit - difficult to articulate (e.g. negotiating skill) Explicit - captured in some tangible form (e.g. business rule)

What is tacit knowledge?

Tacit knowledge is intangible, intuitive and difficult to record, of experience; resides in the head of employees; highly emotional Resides within a person's expertise. Can be technical knowledge or based on beliefs, hunches, emotions, perceptions or mental models. Is generally abstract and embedded in individual experiences and difficult to communicate unless demonstrated through active involvement

What is Knowledge Work?

The behaviour that results in the end product of knowledge being delivered

What is Knowledge?

The holistic combination of experiences and information that provides the insight to make decisions, develop opinions and direct future behaviour.

What is Social Knowledge?

The knowledge we learn from relationships and may result from both individual and group associations

What is Knowledge Transfer?

The movement of information skills and ideas from one entity to another

What is Social Network Analysis (SNA)?

The process of mapping a group's contacts (whether personal or professional) to identify who knows whom and who works with whom. In enterprises, it provides a clear picture of the ways that far flung employees and divisions work together and can help identify key experts in the organization who possess the knowledge needed to, say, solve a complicated programming problem or launch a new product.

What is Structured Knowledge?

This comprises of structured and formalised rules procedures and routines ingrained within an organisational setting

What is Human Knowledge?

This includes what people know or know how to perform, and usually includes both tacit and explicit knowledge.