Knowledge Management

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Knowledge Management

• Groff and Jones, Introduction to Knowledge
  Management KM in Business, Butterworth-Heinemann
  (Elsevier), Burlington, MA, 2003.

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1. Introducing KM

• Knowledge is the INFINITE ASSET. Why? (It is the
  only asset that increases when it is shared.)
  (Leveraging effect.)
• Data, Information, and knowledge
• Tacit and explicit knowledge
• Scope creep (ignore!)

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Knowledge

• is the INFINITE ASSET.
• Why?

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Knowledge

• is the INFINITE ASSET.
• Why?
• It is the only asset that increases when it is
  shared
• Leveraging

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Knowledge Management

• The tools, techniques, and strategies to retain,
  analyze, organize, improve, and share business
  expertise.
• Relate to Best Practices!

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Venn Diagram shows the relationship between
information and knowledge
Figure 1.1, p. 3
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Knowledge

• Tacit knowledge
• Explicit knowledge

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Tacit Knowledge

• Personal knowledge embedded in individual
  experience and involving intangible factors such
  as personal belief, perspective, and values

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Explicit Knowledge

• Refers to tacit knowledge that has been
  documented.
• It has been articulated into formal language and
  can be much more easily transferred among
  individuals.

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• Making tacit knowledge explicit is a key function
  of knowledge management

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Knowledge Repository

• Where the knowledge lives
• Groff and Jones call it a knowledge base

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Dialogue

• What types of tacit knowledge do you think would
  be valuable to capture in a corporate
  (organizational) knowledge base?
• What benefits for the company (organization) do
  you imagine could be gained from making this
  knowledge explicit?

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In-Class Exercise Saving Money

• Describe ways to save money
• Create a list of three money-saving techniques
• Document the exact procedures involved

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In-Class Exercise

• In your opinion, where is knowledge created?
• In your opinion, where is knowledge really stored?

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2. Personal KM

• Introductory story about the Romans
• Steam engine invented
• Julius Caesar never approved it.

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So

• KM needs strong executive support
• Innovation must be allowed to grow within an
  organization, or that organization loses its
  competitive edge
• Freedom to fail is important!

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Learning Objectives

• The presentation of information can either hide
  or highlight the truth consider Kerrys and
  Bushs Vietnam War service records
• Value the path to knowledge as much as the
  knowledge itself proper change management is
  critical
• Know what determines the utility of a network
  technology does matter, though not as much as
  you might think
• Learn the 6 most common tools for personal KM

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Thoughts on KM

• every additional unit of knowledge used
  effectively results in a marginal increase in
  performance (Malhotra)
• All business processes involve creation,
  dissemination, renewal, and application of
  knowledge toward meeting the goals of the
  business
• unfortunately, all business processes also
  involve the hoarding, distorting, and
  dissemination of disinformat5ion to support the
  goals of individual employees.
• Dont rely on technology

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Technology?

• Successful knowledge transfer involves neither
  computers nor documents, but rather interactions
  between people.
• Thomas H. Davenport, Think Tank The Future of
  Knowledge Management, CIO, December 15, 1995.

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Dialogue

• How did Native Americans (Australian Aborigines
  in fact, most major religious and cultural
  groups, tribes, etc.) exchange knowledge before
  their written language?
• How was their knowledge transfer tied to their
  culture?

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Case Study London Cholera Epidemic of 1854

• pp. 14-15
• Lessons of the story
• (p. 15)

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Goal of a Personal KM Strategy

• To increase your productivity, innovation, and
  creative output to outdistance the competition

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The Six Action Elements of Your Info Workflow
Figure 2.2, p. 16
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3. Capture and Corroborate

• Information Overload (Triage)
• Web portals

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Dialogue, p. 33

• How many of the following rumors have you heard?
• Can you pick out the ones that are true? (50)

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4. Organize and Secure

• Skip

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5. Analyze and Collaborate

• Layers (levels) of abstraction in knowledge
• Humans perceive things differently, based on
  their unique abstractions
• Five key requirements for successful collaboration

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Abstraction

• Helps us interpret and expand complex data and
  information patterns.
• Example barter, money, electronic money (whats
  next?)

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Abstraction

• The process of taking away or removing
  characteristics from something in order to reduce
  it to a set of essential characteristics
• The process of abstraction relies on setting a
  goal, defining a data representation, identifying
  relevant features, and categorization

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Abstraction Research Issue

• When contributing knowledge, what level of
  abstraction is appropriate?
• Should multiple levels be stored in a knowledge
  repository?
• The level of understanding (training) of the
  intended recipient may vary

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Five Requirements for Successful Collaboration

• Dialogue
• Trust
• Common goals
• Empathy
• Openness
• Teamwork, common lenses, common frames

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Critical Collaboration Skills

• Effective and well-formatted communications
• Effective listening active listening
• Effective strategies for conflict resolution

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6. Storytelling and Knowledge Transfer

• Stories exist in all organizations and are an
  integral part of defining what that organization
  is and what it means to work for it. Dave
  Snowden, Director of IBMs Institute for
  Knowledge Management
• It seems that the easiest way to get people to
  document their knowledge is to videotape them
  talking about what they know as was done through
  the cases in Gorelick, Milton, and April,
  Performance Through Learning, Butterworth-Heineman
  n (Elsevier), Burlington, MA, 2004. Observation
  by Jay E. Aronson, 2004.

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Learning Objectives

• See what makes explicit knowledge easier to
  capture and share but less valuable than tacit
  knowledge major problem at consulting firms in
  the mid to late 1990s
• Learn to use stories to illustrate extremely
  complicated concepts in brief, memorable, and
  easily repeated ways
• Make your communications more convincing,
  contextual, and compelling through storytelling
• See why well-crafted stories are self-propagating

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Storytelling

• Narrative thinking
• Narrative decision making
• Beach (book published by Sage)
• Courtroom juries and judges have relied on
  storytelling for millennia

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Storytelling The ancient art of KM

• Words convey the mental treasures of one period
  to the generations that follow and laden with
  this, their precious freight, they sail safely
  across gulfs of time in which empires have
  suffered shipwreck and the languages of common
  life have sunk into oblivion (Anonymous)

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Key Advantages of Storytelling

• People tend to hear stories in a receptive mode
  rather than in a defensive mode
• Abstract arguments are often combative in nature
• Stories are usually more memorable than other
  forms of communication
• Stories focus on what instinctively matters to
  people
• Stories are not so bound by logic they thrive on
  conflict, surprises, and change
• Stories can unleash a spirit of heroism
• Stories help workers frame their work in loftier
  and more significant terms

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Strong Uses for Storytelling

• Promoting organizational change
• Delivering communications
• Capturing tacit knowledge
• Transferring tacit knowledge
• Spurring innovation
• Building community

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Two Main Story Types

• Business fables Fictitious narrations
• Business anecdotes True narrations
• Both intentions to reveal some useful value,
  idea, or precept

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The Heros Journey Archetype

• Homer The Iliad, The Odyssey
• (Listen to Mark Grahams Classic Greek on Open
  Houses Second City CD)
• Troubadours

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7. Systems Thinking

• Skip

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8. Harnessing Metcalfes Law Utility Nodes 2

• Skip
• But I like the Just for Fun on p. 95.
• Example 16 O in a P
• What does it mean?
• 16 ounces in a pound

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9. 3D Communication

• Skip
• But Cute Dialogue on p. 111 (story) You are
  driving alone in your car on a wild, stormy
  night. You pass by a bus stop, and you see three
  people waiting for the bus

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10. Building in Knowledge Exchange

• Must be built directly
• into the organizational
• culture with strong
• executive support,
• employee buy in, and definite, measurable payoffs
• Change management must be managed properly and
  well

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Knowledge Exchange Channels

• Case Study The Sad Tale of the Vasa
• (Noone would/could tell the king about the
  problem)
• Similar problem at Greyhound with its reservation
  system

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Cross-Selling (CRM)

• Applebees
• Hard Rock Café
• CRM Customer Relationship (Resource) Management
  great new type of KM manage your customers
  well
• Markets as conversation points touch points

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Maximize Knowledge Exchange

• (Now, we can use technology Web)
• Increase collaboration along the supply chain,
  among team members, etc.
• Communities of Practice (CoP) self-organizing
  groups
• Social events
• Get rid of walls get rid of elevators Chrysler,
  Auburn Hills, MI
• Create better environments of knowledge exchange

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Chrysler HeadquartersAuburn Hills, MI
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11. Developing KM Strategies

• Knowledge is embedded in people, and knowledge
  creation occurs in the process of social
  interaction (Karl Erik Sveiby)
• There is better academic material on KM
  strategies
• There are some interesting ideas here, though

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Learning Objectives

• EVERY project should be considered a KM project
• The four key tools that support organizational
  effectiveness
• The three most common approaches to developing
  organizational KM strategies
• Develop an interest in using metacognitive
  strategies to improve learning
• Understand that thinking styles are situational
  and open to improvement

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Effective knowledge management

• Benefits from a strategic approach, detailed
  planning, and comprehensive support structures.
• Does not necessarily require a massive budget, a
  complete infrastructure change, an army of
  consultants, and a new software vendor

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Every corporate project touches on one or more of

• Coordination Harmonious interaction throughout
  the organization
• Communication Facilitating the exchange of
  information
• Learning Guiding and supporting the development
  of effective behaviors
• Memory Storing, organizing, and recalling
  information

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KM Strategy

• Top Down
• Bottom Up
• Middle-Up-Down

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Organizational Knowledge
Figure 11.2, p. 132
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How Fear Stalls Many KM Initiatives
Figure 11.3, p. 132
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The Four Areas of Knowledge Conversion(Nonakas
SECI Model)
Figure 11.4, p. 133
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Thinking About ThinkingBlooms Taxonomy
Figure 11.5, p. 135
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Metacognition

• Skip

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Inquiry Modes

• Skip unless there is time
• Churchman and Miroff How do people gather and
  process information?
• Five basic types.
• Use the Inquiry Mode Questionnaire (InQ) InQ
  Educational Materials, Inc., www.inq-hpa.com

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Thinking Styles

• Key behavioral cues
• Situational, not functional
• Everyone can expand and improve

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Five Thinking Styles

• Realists
• Analysts
• Idealists
• Synthesists
• Pragmatists

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Realists

• Inductive and task-oriented
• Rely on facts and expert opinion
• Prefer data to theory
• Mental models derived chiefly from observation,
  expert opinion and their own experience
• Style is empirical
• Best for well-defined problem situations for
  which there is strong consensual position on the
  nature of the problem
• Very practical at handling resources and excels
  at setting near-term objectives

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Figure 11.6
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Analysts

• See the world as structured, organized and
  predictable
• Believe that their should be one well-planned
  method for doing anything
• Style is prescriptive and method-oriented,
  operating with models and formulas
• Typically prefer data to theories
• When in doubt, gather more data
• Best for well-structured problems where explicit
  problem-solving formulas exist

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Figure 11.7
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Idealists

• Welcome a broad range of views
• Experience reality as the whole into which new
  data are assimilated, based on similarities to
  things they already know.
• Style is assimilative, receptive, and
  need-oriented, assigning equal value to both data
  and theory
• Often listen to intuition rather than just
  relying on the facts
• Shun conflict and are always trying to be
  accommodating
• Better at handling situations that are value-laden

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Figure 11.8
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Synthesists

• Focus their thinking on ideas and find
  connections among things that other people see as
  having little or no relationship
• Style is challenging, speculative, integrative,
  and process-oriented
• Ask what if and why not, and regard data to be
  meaningless without interpretation
• Skilled at handling controversial issues without
  discouraging debate and creativity

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Figure 11.9
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Pragmatists

• See the world as constantly changing and largely
  unpredictable, requiring a flexible, whatever
  works approach to problem solving
• Style is adaptive, incremental, and
  payoff-oriented
• Not ones for great long-range plans and tend to
  be short-range, practical thinkers
• Tend to employ a piecemeal approach to life
• Well-suited for solving complex issues, but
  somewhat difficult to identify

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Figure 11.10
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12. The Ethics of KM

• Knowledge management is an ongoing evolutionary
  process. Once its part of your business model,
  it will always be part of your business model
  David Keller, Marketing VP at Zoneworx Inc.
• Organizations can use storytelling to give
  examples of ways that people are demonstrating
  positive results while operating within ethical
  boundaries
• Case Study 5 Monkeys in a Cage, p. 150

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13. Metrics and Taming Wicked Problems

• Some problems are so complex that you have to be
  highly intelligent and well informed just to be
  undecided about them Laurence J. Peter
• Cognitive Mapping / Banxia Software Corp., Fran
  Ackermann

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KM Metrics

• Quantitative
• Qualitative

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Taming the Wicked Problem

• Five Taming Technique that dont work (also see
  Chapter 2 of Turban and Aronson, DSSIS, 6th ed.)
• Redefine the problem
• Declare victory
• Rig the metrics
• Stay in your foxhole
• Go shopping (for software, etc.)

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Case Study Taming a Wicked ERP Problem

• Also Hersheys Chocolate ERP case

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14. Careers in KM

• Skip

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END OF PPT PRESENTATION

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