The Inside Out of knowledge

It is a well-known fact that a decision or opinion maker can take the best
decision only if he or she is well informed. But unfortunately, knowing
something doesn’t always translate into doing it. Therefore, there’s a need
to direct organizational knowledge with the right tools and methods. Time is
critical for companies to gain and retain a competitive advantage–best
achieved by turning "knowledge-intensive". 

One such example is that of Netscape Corporation, eventually acquired by
America Online, whose success in the capital market was highly dependent on
managing knowledge assets. Most companies like Sun and Oracle have had high
market capitalization because of the same reason though they have not been able
to reach the top of Fortune 500 companies in terms of sales, profits and assets.
So there is no denying that knowledge is becoming the most critical asset for
firms. But in India, as organizational knowledge and assets do not yet form an
integral part of an organization they are often not disclosed to stockholders,
and therefore not a factor in determining market capital. But the situation will
soon undergo a change.

The most enduring of tasks for KM managers is therefore capturing knowledge,
translating and transferring it across the entire organization. No two firms can
take a similar approach to managing knowledge– if a KM approach works for one
firm, it wouldn’t necessarily work for another. That’s because knowledge is
subjective in nature and different firms have varied ways of defining knowledge.
Even methods of approaching KM differ. For a software company, efficiency can be
improved if ‘transferring techniques’ are designed in a manner that software
codes can easily shared and re-used.

Managing knowledge is often made analogous to managing water. It cannot be
managed directly, but one can definitely store, refine, re-route and filter it.
Very commonly, a KM project begins by focussing on the technology rather than
laying emphasis on people and processes (of capturing and disseminating
information). In order to gain a competitive advantage, therefore, organizations
must look upon themselves as "knowledge storehouses" and treat
knowledge as a mere component, and at technology as the enabler.

Re-use knowledge components

There’s one characteristic that commonly determines the need for KM–the
re-use of bundles of information or knowledge components. A software development
company, consulting firm, or an oil company needs to reuse the same information
repeatedly in different situations. The simplest and earliest example is of a
software development company that wanted to use KM after it considered a shift
from old programming languages to object-oriented programming (OOP). OOP allows
one to create a bundle of codes that can be re-used across projects. So the
company wanted KM to help them share and re-use codes among all the members of
various teams. This helped them avoid replication of existing codes within the
same organization that saved time, zeroed in on repetitive jobs, and lessened
costs. Another example is of a consulting firm that does a lot of work in terms
of content management, creating new knowledge daily, clubbing containers, and
managing the Intranet. It needed KM to help them re-use and create new
knowledge, as the same knowledge was often needed elsewhere but in different
circumstances.

Reducing the learning curve

For the above mentioned software firm, learning time was reduced by one
third. All teams leveraged on the learning of other teams rather than learning
on their own. Strong teams began to help weaker teams. As a result of this some
teams gained expertise on individual topics creating a knowledge balance. Errors
in software development were significantly reduced and the project was completed
in half the time.

"People in organizations must adopt the culture or habit of gaining
knowledge by ‘learning from others’ rather than ‘learning by doing’.
This significantly reduces the learning curve. As long as knowledge is scarce,
the value of the knowledge is high," claims Edward Swanstrom, Director,
eKnowledge Center. Edward developed an object-oriented change and learning
method for KM that was rated as the most advanced KM method by the Gartner Group
in 1997.

Suppose your company buys a new photocopier with advanced and useful new
features. As part of KM the only person who knows how to operate it, jots down
the operational instructions on a sheet of paper and glues it to be seen by
everyone who come to use it. Likewise, someone who knows to use it (rather than
training) can teach operational functions

like the use of Microsoft Excel and working on DOS operating system. KM managers
however must monitor such processes and integrate these with their KM platform.

Managing knowledge as a business strategy

The underlying purpose of managing knowledge is to turn the existing
knowledge (tacit and explicit) into useful information. But most organizations
haven’t been able to manage knowledge effectively because of the lack in
understanding problems, opportunities, solutions, and strategies. So KM in any
organizations can be considered from three perspectives. Different companies
will employ different methods and for different purposes.

l The business
perspective will focus on why and to what extent one must invest, and exploit
knowledge. All organizational strategies, products and services and alliances
should be centered on knowledge that is available in documents, portals, and
other sources made available.

l The management
must focus on capturing, organizing, mainstreaming and monitoring
knowledge-related practices.

l The operational
perspective must focus on applying the expertise to conduct explicit
knowledge-related work and tasks.

Implementing KM

Step One: Document knowledge components: All possible sources of knowledge
components are identified, leading one to structure a taxonomy of knowledge
types. This also helps to reduce the impact on a company if a person retires or
leaves the organization. Infact this procedure would help retain information
within the organization.

Step Two: Capturing tacit and explicit information and categorizing:
Once the probable sources of information are identified, solutions needed for
capturing them would fall into place. However one of the issues facing KM
managers is transforming tacit information to explicit. This also can be sorted
out by identifying and anticipating probable sources of tacit information. For
an enterprise, the knowledge base could comprise facts, rules, models, and
concepts that define the day-to-day decisions made at every level in an
organization. However not all the available data is categorized as
knowledge-based assets, and so it involves a lot of analysis.

Step Three: Transferring knowledge components: There are several ways of
transferring information in an organization. Tools or technologies act as
enablers to transferring components. Verbal communications tools can also be
deployed and monitored.

Step Four: Monitoring changes: It is essential that the changes made after
implementing KM are continuously monitored. There are tools that will help the
monitoring process while it would be in the capacity of a KM manager, if he or
she would like to add new features or fill in any loop holes in the process.

Transferring knowledge components

There are two ways in which knowledge components are transferred within an
organization. An effective transfer of information will be a hybrid between the
two transfer methods. The hard and the soft method of transferring knowledge
components across an organization can be explained as:

Hard method: Computer systems

Hard knowledge components are taken from one group and used by another group
like in the case of re-usable codes in the above-mentioned example. Most
information or knowledge components can even be used to incorporate into
day-to-day functional procedures. For example, firms can inform employees by
telling them who knows what. In this case knowledge is transferred via
information systems using groupware, Intranet etc.

Soft method: People

Soft knowledge components, on the other hand, are less quantifiable and most
often tacit. In an organization, it can even be a seminar that one had attended,
which could lead to an idea by another who hasn’t attended. Such information
can be tracked by monitoring every employee’s action. Generally, transfer of
information in this case happens face-to-face, or informally chatting over
lunch.

Such information so obtained from the above two methods form repositories for
knowledge within an organization, which must be documented. The information can
be typically categorized as factual or procedural knowledge (like handbooks),
best practices, formal and informal discussions, corporate yellow pages and
directories. They are documented using collaborative systems, and retrieved
using retrieval and search tools.

Investments

It needs to be clarified that one need not make huge investments in IT
infrastructure to adopt KM. The existing infrastructure, with some minor
modifications, can be very well adapted to suit the need. This point is also
illustrated in the case study (Zensar Technologies’). Some investments may
have to be made on the software side but which depends exclusively on the kind
of need and knowledge framework of the organization. Also since methods are
different, different firms would require KM for different purposes. So for one
company it might be to retrieve the chunk of information from older workers and
passing them on to younger workers, while for another it would be the need to
significantly reduce the time to market. KM practices are quantifiable and the
RoI whatever amount is always justifiable.

New culture

Despite the best technology used, KM will fail if it is not supported by a
corporate culture that supports knowledge sharing. A non-supportive culture
exists everywhere in the world. Once knowledge is recognized, captured and
disseminated, the application of knowledge to form an idea or create new
knowledge is brought about by sharing knowledge. For which, the adoptive culture
or mindset must be changed. In most firms the senior management is not very open
to KM, which is common in traditional and governmental firms. So an
organizational culture that promotes knowledge re-use and knowledge sharing must
be created first.

"But I have found that people do want to share their knowledge,
specially when they finish an assignment and move on to other, they like to
share their learnings. This is the time when they are encouraged to contribute
to our KM platform on best practices, methodologies, tools, domain expertise and
technology and architectural solutions," says Utpala Ghosh, project manager
(Kzen), Zensar Technologies.

Like other goods knowledge also faces scarcity in the lack of proper methods
of transferring them to those that need them at the right place and time. Firms
must not overlook the link between KM and strategic planning and must start
making KM an integral part of their business strategy.

Radhika Bhuyan In New Delhi