Knowledge management — The need of the hour

Free flow of information both from the individual to the organisation and vice-versa is the key to mining information for quick and timely decision making. To ensure this happens, top management must be convinced about the need for it and allocate adequate funds, resources and a time-bound implementation schedule, says Sudhir P J R

Corporations worldwide are gradually discovering that good management of individual and group knowledge—what has come to be known as knowledge management—is a major component of their strategy. Today, companies must continuously adapt to arrive at effective solutions to unfamiliar and complex situations. To do so, businesses are faced with the need to encourage the collation and exchange of ideas, skills, and know-how to manage their intellectual capital.

Every organisation has a wealth of knowledge. This knowledge may exist as explicit knowledge in the form of a databank, repositories, yellow pages, etc. This explicit knowledge is available to all those who have access within the organisation.

Besides, there is individual knowledge existing in the form of tacit knowledge that may reach full potential only if converted into organisational knowledge. In knowledge management, both explicit and tacit knowledge are harnessed to the maximum for enhancing the overall competitive nature of an organisation. The spirit of KM lies in knowing individually what we know collectively (making available explicit knowledge), knowing collectively what we know individually and making it reusable and knowing what we do not know and learning it.

In order to make use of these capabilities, it requires identification of the knowledge to be captured and reused as a matter of priority, the culture that needs to be built into the system, skills to be developed, and the goals and targets of the process.

This requires a comprehensive knowledge management process that allows access to organisational knowledge, expertise and solutions that are available as a solution; a system that permits cross-pollination of ideas that encompasses an organisation’s core business. The knowledge management system should encourage sharing of best practices, which in turn form communities of excellence. The organisation should ultimately strive to evolve into a ‘learning corporation.’ This can be achieved through a systematic approach towards identifying in-house talent and developing them into a long-term asset.

Once it has been decided that as an organisation you have to implement KM, where do you begin? To start with, a corporation must prepare from four angles: processes, management, technology, and people.

Processes
Let us start by asking a question: Why do we need a process before we embark on defining a KM map for an organisation. The answer is pretty simple, though most of us tend to overlook this factor. We know information available at the right time is knowledge. We also know that information is available in plenty in the organisation. In order to share this information, there should be a clearly defined process that helps employees to not only store information in a common location but also easily locate and retrieve it.

Unless a process is defined, capturing information becomes a very difficult task. Take an example where one of your employees has won a multi-million dollar order after a hard fought battle with many of your competitors in contention. Information such as how the order was won, some of the key players from the client’s side who tilted the balance in your favour and the reason behind this, how the client can be retained for future business and so on need to be captured. If we do not have a well-laid out plan, this information will be totally lost to the organisation.

A good example of what started as an informal practice and then was formally laid down as a process is the experience of Xerox Corporation with ‘Eureka–a medium to share experiential knowledge.’ Eureka, the organisation’s knowledge directory, is based on the assumption that the “best medium for knowledge is the human brain and the best networking protocol is human contact.” Here every Xerox employee who is in contact with a customer as a service representative can post his/her learning. Any one who is in need of a certain kind of information first logs on to this site and gets the information that he/she is looking for. Through this initiative Xerox has been able to save man-hours spent while servicing equipment, thus nullifying the effect of downtime on a client’s business.

Organisations can also initiate actions towards network development by establishing processes that ensure productiveinteraction between employees. These include creating, maintaining and enriching knowledge forums, collecting and formalising best practices, and deploying the best practices across the organisation.

Senior management
Knowledge Management, to succeed, at least during its initial stage, needs a lot of handholding. A lot of commitment is required from people at the top. Unless top management does some pushing, the whole effort may turn out to be a failure. For initiatives such as KM, it will take some time for results to show. So the question that the top management needs to ask before venturing into implementation of KM is how long will it take and would they wait? And are we really serious about this initiative? Such introspection will definitely lead to serious effort being put into cultivating the culture of knowledge sharing. Also, grassroots involvement alone is typically not enough to sustain a knowledge network. If processes are to function smoothly, management must formally allocate adequate and qualified resources to them. Unstinted support and involvement from all levels of management, their full commitment to KM initiative in terms of their continuous effort to break down cultural and behavioural barriers are all key factors of success.

Recently, when a leading automobile component manufacturer ventured into implementing quality practices in its organisation, the maximum resistance to sharing information was not from people who were at the middle or lower level of management but from senior management. This company had to convince many of senior staff and after an initial period of doubt, it was able to win a prestigious quality award for implementing best quality practices on its shop floor.

As Bill Gates pointed out, “Technology itself is available to everyone. So, it’s how you use these tools inside the company that’s going to provide the competitive differentiation.” Some of the technological tools that can help in achieving objectives set out as part of KM initiatives are a knowledge repository that stores all reusable documents, a well laid out intranet with information hubs where people can share knowledge and get credit for doing this and yellow pages for precise identification of talent.

We should also be careful when it comes to technology. Too much stress on technology may not lead to successful KM implementation. Technology is a means for KM to be successful but not an end by itself. The most important factor in the success of any KM initiative is the acceptance of the whole idea by the people.

People
It is well known that about 75-80 percent of all the knowledge in the world is held in people’s mind. The rest could be found in repositories or libraries. Thus, all form of knowledge begins and ends with people. The key to success of any KM initiative, therefore, lies in getting the entire organisation to adopt a culture of sharing knowledge and expertise and to instil the practice of a learning corporation. Convincing people to share knowledge is a herculean task considering that it involves changing the whole way one looks at under present circumstances. It involves change in the way one thinks, an attitudinal change about sharing knowledge and most importantly the enlightening required to make one understand that hoarding knowledge does more harm to you than any good.

Under present day circumstances, management of intellectual capital is still in its initial stage. Any efforts that attempt towards achieving the goal of a learning corporation needs a climate of trust and patience from management side. It is always better to consider the processes in place with management commitment before embarking on a KM initiative but it is always a must to put people first because any success or failure is finely balanced based on the level of acceptance by the people within the organisation.

It is always better to know that knowledge management initiatives that begin with management directives often end there; and grass root level networks that start without management support may not go far. It is the combination of intellectual capital and management support from all levels within an organisation that will ultimately make an organisation a true knowledge company.

The author is Consultant, Knowledge Management, i-flex consulting, i-flex solutions. E-mail: pjr.sudhir@iflexsolutions.com