Knowledge Management Review

Social Network Analysis Methods

2011-09-19T22:39:00.000-07:00

Social Network Analysis (SNA) Method plays very important roles in Business. The basic idea of a social network is very simple. A social network is a set of actors (or points, or nodes, or agents) that may have relationships (or edges, or ties) with one another.

Networks can have few or many actors, and one or more kinds of relations between pairs of actors. To build a useful understanding of a social network, a complete and rigorous description of a pattern of social relationships is a necessary starting point for analysis. That is, ideally we will know about all of the relationships between each pair of actors in the population.

The amount of information that we need to describe even small social networks can be quite great. Managing these data, and manipulating them so that we can see patterns of social structure can be tedious and complicated. All of the tasks of social network methods are made easier by using tools from mathematics. For the manipulation of network data, and the calculation of indexes describing networks, it is most useful to record information as matrices. For visualizing patterns, graphs are often useful.

Resource:
http://faculty.ucr.edu/~hanneman/nettext/C2_Formal_Methods.html

Knowledge Management and Community of Practice

2011-02-11T03:56:00.000-08:00

Lave and Wenger first introduced the concept of a Community of Practice (CoP) in 1991. Lave and Wenger saw the acquisition of knowledge as a social process where people can participate in communal learning at different levels depending on their level of authority or seniority in the group, i.e. whether they are a newcomer or have been a member for a long time.

Central to their notion of a CoP as a means of acquiring knowledge is the process by which a newcomer moves from peripheral to full participation in the community as they learn from others; they termed this process Legitimate Peripheral Participation (LPP). Since then, the notion of a CoP has now been expanded to encompass a far wider range of groups.

The term Communities of Practice (CoPs) has now been applied to a range of different groups, from project teams to functional departments. There have also been several attempts to redefine CoPs in such a way that they are relevant to the needs of commercial organizations and attempts by some management consultancies to formalize methods to create them.

Article Source:
http://www.chris-kimble.com/Courses/Sogn_og_Fjordane/KM_and_CoPs.html

The 3Cs of Knowledge Sharing: Culture, Co-opetition and Commitment

2011-02-08T05:49:00.000-08:00

One of the challenges of knowledge management is that of getting people to share their knowledge. Why should people give up their hard-won knowledge, when it is one of their key sources of personal advantage? In some organizations, sharing is natural. In others the old dictum "knowledge is power" reigns. In this article we explore some of the barriers and offers some pointers to overcoming them.

Why Don't People Share?

Some of the common reasons given by those I meet and in helpful articles and books (see, for example, the section on psychological obstacles in reference 1 or "the impediments" in reference 2) are:

"Knowledge is power" - but how true is this really? My own view is that citing this reason is often a cop out by managers or change agents who are not adequately addressing the human factors or motivational aspects. In today's enterprise, where so much depends on teamwork and collective knowledge, it is only a handful of people who have knowledge for which they can hold their peers (and bosses) to ransom. It might be the owner-manager of a small company not wanting to lose trade secrets; it may be a particular specialist who has been in the organization many years and built up his or her own unique way of achieving success without perhaps even understanding the deep tacit knowledge of how they do it. Don't get me wrong - knowledge IS power, but is typically not the primary reason for lack of knowledge sharing.
"not invented here" syndrome - this is more common. People have pride in not having to seek advice from others and in wanting to discover new ways for themselves.
Not realizing how useful particular knowledge is to others - an individual may have knowledge used in one situation but be unaware that other people at other times and places might face similar situations. Additionally, knowledge derived for one need may be helpful in totally different contexts; or it may be a trigger for innovation - many innovative developments come from making knowledge connections across different disciplines and organizational boundaries.
Lack of trust - if I share some of my knowledge, will you use it out of context, mis-apply it (and then blame me!), or pass it off as your own without giving any acknowledgement or recognition to me as the source?
Lack of time - this, I suspect, is the major reason given in many organizations. There is pressure on productivity, on deadlines, and it's a general rule that the more knowledgeable you are, the more there are people waiting to collar you for the next task. How can you possibly find time to add your lessons learnt to the knowledge database or have a knowledge sharing session with your colleagues?

Other barriers cited by experts include functional silos, individualism, poor means of knowledge capture, inadequate technology, internal competition and top-down decision making. Generally, a mix of structural and infrastructure barriers is exacerbated by the predominance of human ones - social, behavioural and psychological.
How can we overcome such barriers? Certainly address the issues of organizational structure and inadequate technology. But give your focus to the three Cs of Culture, Co-opetition (a blend of co-ooperation and competition), and Commitment.

Changing Culture

Culture change is never easy and takes time. But cultures can be changed. Culture is defined in many ways, such as "commonly held beliefs, attitudes and values" (Institute of Personnel Development), "the collective programming of the mind that distinguished one group from another" (Geert Hofstede), and in many other ways that also embrace rituals, artifacts and other trappings of the work environment. I like the simple but effective definition "the way we do things around here". There is no one place to start, but most interventions are based on a simple layered model that portrays how people's observable actions and behaviours are influenced by reportable attitudes and values based on more deep-rooted beliefs. Therefore to change people's actions you have to address the more fundamental underlying layers. This can be done as an organization-wide programme or in small groups or even individually. Here are some activities that might be used to plan and induce change:

A culture audit - conducting questionnaires, interviews and team sessions with a cross-section of the organization. This is especially helpful in finding out the difference between what is articulated as the desired culture and what is done (e.g. "we put quality first" but at the same time the organization ships out less than perfect products at the end of a financial quarter to "make the numbers"). It is also common to find several sub-cultures that conflict with overarching goals. Can you clearly identify which values and behaviours conflict with better knowledge sharing and perhaps (more importantly) which people should be the target for change?
Challenge 'improper' behaviour - if you identify people hoarding knowledge unnecessarily: challenge them, though avoid "knowledge rage".
Involvement - some of the best knowledge sharing cultures are where everybody (even novices and newcomers) believes that their knowledge is respected, valued and used to inform decisions.
Use of role models - identify those people whose behaviours are an example to others. Celebrate and publicize them. Involve them with other groups.
Team-building / organization development sessions - at regular team meetings, allocate time to understand and improve internal processes; too many meetings are task and output focussed, but fail to address the means of achieving successful outcomes.
Align rewards and recognition to support appropriate behaviours - too many schemes are based on seniority or individual expertise, rather than team effectiveness.
Change people - move the knowledge sharers around; get industrial psychologists and behavioural experts on board; perhaps fire some bosses (seriously!) - after all, it is quality of leadership that will enable all the other culture change techniques to achieve their aims.

Finally, remember that culture goes hand in hand with structure (roles and responsibilities). At every level within the organization, there must be congruence between objectives, structures, processes, people and supporting infrastructure. A good example of changing culture alongside an evolving knowledge management programme is that of Siemens (see reference 3 and Knowledge Digest).

Challenging Through Co-opetition

Human beings are at the same time social cooperative beings and have a competitive streak. We all like to do better than our peers and excel in something. Yet, in today's complex world, we need help from them to achieve our aims. In an organization, lack of competition - both for individuals and teams - leads to complacency. But competition must be done in a healthy manner. Some things to consider:

In early stages of product development, don't simply approve one line of approach. Have several "competing" projects under way but make sure there are mechanisms to exchange knowledge and challenge / encourage each "runner" e.g. through people sharing, peer reviews etc.
Continually benchmark internal processes and functions with other organizations and potential suppliers. Encourage them to strive for improvement through learning from each other.
Introduce 'competitions', such as the "knowledge champion of the year", the "innovators team award", but invite everybody to the award ceremonies.
Compete, not against other people or teams, but set goals vs. challenging targets or external competitors.

Above all, let the apparent losers of such competitions share in success, celebrate what they have achieved, and make them feel part of the winning team (the wider organization). In one organization I know, whenever a competing development project was wound up, the best people were almost universally attracted to the winning teams (since the healthy competition meant that each had good knowledge of the other).

Commitment

This builds on the other two Cs. Organizations need to create a commitment to culture, to change, to challenge, to compete and cooperate. If, as is often the case, time pressure leads to poor knowledge sharing, then there must be a commitment to allow time for it to happen. Budget 5 per cent of a project's resources to distilling lessons and sharing. Include time to contribute to knowledge development and sharing in people's job goals (and in the accompanying reward system). Build commitment into team processes.
Commitment to knowledge sharing must be demonstrated throughout the organization. It is apparent through what the leaders of the organization say and do. It is shown by commitment in the organizations' processes, reward systems, development programmes etc. It is, above all, shown by individual throughout the organization being committed to share their knowledge with others even if it is not formally part of their 'day job'.

Summary: Seven Incentives for $$haring

My own experience is that knowledgeable people do like to share their expertise - just listen to them in the bar after work. It's just something about their work environment that discourages this natural inclination. Understanding these barriers and individual motivations is the first step towards implementing changes in the work setting. I've offered some suggestions in the 3Cs above. Different approaches will be appropriate in different situations. But one thing is clear: you can change organizational culture and individual behaviours such that knowledge sharing, rather than knowledge hoarding, is the norm. You only have to look at companies like BP and Siemens to see this in practice. One article which also illustrates some successful examples was written by Larry Stevens, in the now defunct (at least in its hard-copy form) of Knowledge Management Magazine (the one published by CurtCo Freedom Press) in October 2000. He cited seven incentives for sharing with examples:

Hire people who will share - at Collective Technologies of Texas, the process starts with recruiting people through an intensive few days of interactive interviews;
Develop trust - Buckman Laboratories nurtures trust through its ten point code of ethics in which employees are steeped;
Vary motivations - CAP-Gemini Ernst & Young applies incentives at three levels: a solid business case for senior executives, relevant benefits for departments, and incentivizing positive behaviours with employees;
Show public recognition - Harris has its "wall of fame" a gallery of pictures of employees who have excelled at knowledge sharing;
Reorganize for sharing - Northrop Grumman uses integrated product teams, backed up by appropriate mentoring programmes;
Create communities - The World Bank uses electronic bulletin boards focussed around relevant topics, but which cut across organizational boundaries;
Develop leaders - Capital One formed a group from natural knowledge champions to promote knowledge sharing and develop training.

Article Source:
http://www.skyrme.com/updates/u64_f1.htm

Business Knowledge Repository

2011-02-03T20:17:00.000-08:00

There are things every businessman in the world looks for, and out of all those that exist, one of them is finding a repository for various business knowledge. There are sites that cater to trading only, while some serve Internet marketers exclusively, but are there resources that combine several disciplines for the multitasking businessman?

Of course there are, and they are easily accessible if you know how. But out of all the sites that seem helpful, which among them are truly legitimate? Well, though I can't answer that, surely you can. How can you know? There are ways on how to find the best resource for business matters, and most of them are rooted out of common sense. Let me give you a few pointers on how to discover the best business resource.

First off, do a search. A simple search using Google or Yahoo should do the trick. And once you have access to several of these sites, try to browse around them one by one. The first thing you should take note is the ease of use. If during the course of your browsing you get bored, move on to the next. Something that bores you shouldn't last longer than a couple of minutes. When you find a site that seems okay, take a look at the content. Make sure that they address the issues that you want addressed and they offer knowledge that you'd otherwise not know about. Take for example, if you are a trader, you find comprehensive explanations on how trading risk management is done, or how trading money management should be accomplished. If you are an Internet marketer, does that same site offer tips and tricks about Internet marketing for you? Like how to build a site in the first place, and basically how to make a profit using Internet marketing as your medium? Or maybe how to do SEO campaigns on your site, or as a business in and of itself?

Those are just two examples of course, but the bottom line is, as you look closer at whatever site you choose, you get to learn various stuff about various disciplines in marketing. Much like a smorgasbord of business knowledge, that are not only useful, but effective as well.

So to recap, what you should do is find a good site that is easily navigated, does not make you bored, offer you knowledge about the business you want and the business you might get into, and give proof of the success of their word. A handful I know, but well worth the effort.

Article Source:
http://www.bestmanagementarticles.com
http://knowledge-management.bestmanagementarticles.com

Knowledge Management Study

2011-01-29T02:07:00.000-08:00

It should Focus on Leadership and Culture, Not Technology, to Gain the Edge?

The purpose of the article, study and website is to encourage the reader to take a step back from the technology component of knowledge management and widen his or her field of vision to include performance drivers around leadership, culture, organization and process.

The study is based on in-depth interviews with key executives in some of the most admired knowledge enterprises in the world. Study participants include BP, Buckaman Laboratories, PeopleSoft, Sainsbury's, Simens and the World Bank. Some participating enterprises have chosen not to be directly named.

What is knowledge management?

Knowledge management is capturing, structuring, enhancing and disseminating the knowledge of an organization. Knowledge management involves:

* Getting the right information, to the right person, at the right time and cost
* Organizing, distilling and presenting information in a timely, relevant, accurate and simple manner
* Leveraging both tacit and explicit knowledge in a systematic way
* Using the information delivered to enable informed decision making

Knowledge management helps problem solving, dynamic learning, collaboration, strategic planning and decision making, and also protects intellectual assets from decay. With this in mind we have developed a knowledge management framework to establish how enterprises achieved great success.

What does knowledge management best practice look like?

Leadership and culture are the critical success factors in building world-class knowledge management - enabled by good process and technology practice. We looked at knowledge management best practice against a number of performance dimensions: strategy, leadership, culture, process and technology.

KM Strategy

Alignment of knowledge management with the business strategy is a clear benchmark of success. We identified the following best practices: The development of an enterprise-wide knowledge strategy which links all knowledge management initiatives:

* It is important to identify organizational and knowledge priorities
* Promote full organizational participation
* Knowledge strategy clearly aligns with a core component of business strategy - for instance:
* A customer centric approach: KCS (annual efficiency saving of US$ 1.5 million)
* A drive towards operational excellence: BP (US$ 2billion over 4 years)
* The knowledge value chain is managed at an enterprise level:
* Determine knowledge needed
* Determine knowledge available
* Assess knowledge gap
* Developing or buy relevant knowledge

KM Leadership

Leadership is an important dimension in driving the success of any organizational initiative. The impact of leadership is even more pronounced given the cultural implications and low maturity of knowledge management within most organizations

Enterprise knowledge strategy is deployed under the guidance of a 'Chief Knowledge Officer':

* Each of the world-class companies have mandated a senior leader to oversee and steer the enterprise knowledge strategy
* The CKO need not be a permanent role yet has proved to be instrumental in the establishment of world class knowledge management within enterprises:

In Buckman Laboratories, knowledge sharing and collaboration have evolved from a top down prescriptive approach towards knowledge sharing into a pan organization imperative. The company highlights that they do not have just one Chief Knowledge Officer, but rather all workers are knowledge leader

Similarly, a global software company points to its leadership programme, in which knowledge-sharing and collaboration are emphasized, and is a key reason the have no Chief Knowledge Officer. A programme is developed to identify and foster knowledge leaders throughout the enterprise:

* In addition to a Chief Knowledge Officer, leading knowledge management enterprises built another tier of knowledge leaders - in the form of 'knowledge champions', 'knowledge mentors' - at different levels across the enterprise
* The enterprise leadership itself must be seen to act as knowledge mentors and collaborators:
* This is leadership by example: - they are seen to model the behaviours they are trying to promote within their employees:
* Software Company, CEO, is known to contribute to the company's many discussion forums
* Buckman Laboratories: Bob Buckman, ex-CEO now Chairman of the Executive Committee, would contact employees that have not been active on the company's knowledge sharing system and asks what assistance the leadership can provide to help them contribute more

KM Culture

Cultural change within an organization is highlighted by all world-class KM enterprises as the most important success factor in of a KM programme. The development of a common language and understanding of KM based around key business needs:

* Even the naming of KM projects can prove to be problematic and their success influenced by predetermined attitudes to KM; some companies participating in this study chose to abandon the term 'KM' altogether because of a negative association with the term
* Knowledge sharing becomes culturally embedded more quickly when knowledge objectives are articulated in the language of an organization's business objectives. Examples include:
* 'Operational Excellence Programme'
* 'Knowledge Centred Approach'
* 'New Ways of Working'

Understanding what compels knowledge sharing behaviour within the organization:

* The use of financial rewards only is not necessarily the right answer; internal and external recognition for knowledge sharing (e.g., published metrics, Company Knowledge Award) motivates some people to contribute (but not all)
* Ensure contributors and sharers of knowledge are aware that their efforts are visible to senior executives
* Design appraisal, performance and promotion with knowledge sharing behaviors in mind
* Explore innovative approaches promoting knowledge sharing behaviors - e.g. Global software company uses oral histories or organizational storytelling
* KM Process
* World class KM enterprises have focused on developing consistent and robust processes to support best practice KM.
* Build a robust Content Management process:
* Facilitates adding content onto the system and gives guidance for the 'Collection, Creation and Validation' of content
* Have a clear idea on the content life cycle for maintaining and retiring content
* Ensures relevance and accuracy of content and increased user confidence

Ensure content flows from a standard central control point:

* Both distributed and centralized content management models have been identified within this sample group however centralized content management is used throughout
* Creates a common understanding of employee and customer requirements
* Makes sharing and disseminating content simple and consistent
* Ensures reduced duplication of data

Understand the process by which users retrieve information:

* Content must be readily accessible - the 'three clicks rule' is applied
* Structured content based on a developed taxonomy enables content search through full text search or browsing
* Critical content is pushed out to users, information they require may be pulled as and when needed
* Ensures effective use of the system, reduced search times

KM Technology

In best practice KM organizations, technology is an enabler of KM behaviors and should be tailored to the needs of users.

From the beginning focus on the business and user requirements:

* Prevent too much emphasis on what the tools can do and increases emphasis on the needs of the people who use the tools
* "If there is no need for what you are doing in the organization (technology), then it will not be successful" - Bob Buckman, ex CEO, Buckman Laboratories, Chairman of the Executive Committee

Develop and leverage custom built KM solutions to meet business and user requirements:

* Easy to use applications developed built on strong understanding of user requirements
* Tailored to the requirements of each user community

Exploit and leverage existing tools on current architecture:

* Focus on tools that employees currently use and make them more efficient - e.g. MS Outlook used for discussion groups functionality

Integrate KM tools into key applications where appropriate:

* CRM System
* Extranet
* Intranet
* Marketing systems
* Product development

Article Source:
[1]http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Edmund_Blake

successful knowledge management initiative

2011-01-18T19:56:00.000-08:00

An organization that implements an effective knowledge management (KM) program should see a substantial payoff: Reducing duplicated work increases productivity; leveraging past experience improves quality; and tracking customer behaviors enhances customer service.
In practice, this has not always happened. Many companies have invested millions, even billions, of dollars on KM technology and received little in return. Why?

After researching and reviewing numerous KM initiatives, comparing those that succeeded with those that failed, the answer becomes clear: KM isn't simply about technology. It's about people.

Consider this real-world example of a global financial services company that invested a sizable dollar amount in a system for capturing, organizing, and retrieving project methodology information. It seemed like a good idea -- high-powered software that promised to improve staff efficiency. The system was expensive, however, and hard to learn. The implementation did not include a pilot to test user adoption, and many of the key personnel never used the software. It was, in short, a waste of money. "Cool" technology was implemented, rather than something that met business needs.

All too often, KM initiatives that are driven by technology fail. In many cases, KM is the brainchild of an IT person who envisions a grand repository of all the company's information in the form of a database with a search engine that can find all documents matching a certain keyword. Again, it sounds like a great idea. But does it meet the company's business needs and, in particular, does it take the organization's people into account?

Knowledge management is not only about information; it is also about the people you have recruited, trained, developed, and promoted within your organization. KM involves not only the implementation of a software system; it involves understanding your business needs, your organization's culture, and your personnel. To succeed, any KM initiative requires that you know your people and clearly define the behaviors that need to be changed or reinforced.

Following are five steps that are crucial to the success of a KM initiative:

1. Understand key business drivers. To be worth the investment, a KM initiative must improve the bottom line by either increasing revenue or reducing cost. You need to develop a business case for the initiative based on metrics that can be measured on an ongoing basis to demonstrate the value added.

Some will argue that KM is too subjective -- it's too hard, at the outset, to define the metrics for determining value added. It's an argument worth refuting. If the value of the initiative can't be defined before it is implemented, what chance is there that it will be adopted by your organization's people and deliver value once it has started?

Article Source, and Further Reading:
http://www.itworld.com/060131km

Choosing Knowledge Management Strategy

2011-01-13T16:37:00.000-08:00

Knowledge Management (KM) has been the subject of much discussion over the past decade. Organisations are told that they will not survive in the modern Knowledge Era unless they have a strategy for managing and leveraging value from their intellectual assets, and many KM lifecycles and strategies have been proposed. However, it has become clear that the term "Knowledge Management" has been applied to a very broad spectrum of activities designed to manage, exchange and create or enhance intellectual assets within an organisation, and that there is no widespread agreement on what KM actually is. IT applications that are termed "knowledge management applications" range from the development of highly codified help desk systems to the provision of video conferencing to facilitate the exchange of ideas between people.

One fact that does seem to be agreed on is that different situations require different knowledge management strategies. But the range of different "Knowledge Management Strategies" on offer can be bewildering and it is often unclear where to begin in choosing a strategy for a particular situation. We will start by examining a number of published KM strategies and consider how these can be classified. We go on to consider a range of driving forces behind the strategies, and then propose a strategy and a number of heuristics for the selection of a suitable KM strategy.

First, though, we need a working definition of what KM is. Many different definitions of KM have been published, and several will be discussed in this paper. To avoid pre-empting the discussion on the best definition of knowledge management in a given situation, a very broad definition of KM is used for current purposes:

Knowledge Management can be thought of as the deliberate design of processes, tools, structures, etc. with the intent to increase, renew, share, or improve the use of knowledge represented in any of the three elements [Structural, Human and Social] of intellectual capital.

Article Source:
http://www.tlainc.com/articl51.htm

Critical Success Factors When Building a Knowledge Management System

2011-01-11T22:00:00.000-08:00

[Article Source: http://sharepointmagazine.net/articles/critical-success-factors-when-building-a-knowledge-management-system ]
Overview

In today’s business climate, competitive pressures are greater than ever. Organizations must leverage any competitive advantage to gain or maintain an edge. Or, in the midst of a shrinking economy, there is always a need to do more with less. Recently, many organizations have turned to knowledge management (KM) systems like SharePoint to create new knowledge. Some experts consider knowledge to be perhaps the only sustainable competitive advantage. With knowledge come better decisions, more efficient teams, and a commitment to learning. However, the high risk of failure is well documented which compels us to study why and then define critical success factors that are found within successful implementations.

Working in the researcher’s favor is the overwhelming consistency found when researching these critical success factors (CSF). Furthermore, in a study of thirty-one KM projects1 across twenty-four companies, researchers found that successful projects “had virtually the same indicators.” Additionally, the study concluded that “the unsuccessful or not yet successful projects had few or none of the characteristics.” These findings give us a high degree of confidence in the factors that are provided here. These factors have been selected based on the frequency found in journal articles, various case studies and experience in deploying SharePoint solutions.

Not Just Information Technology

When asking most business or technical people what Information Technology (IT) means, very likely one will get an answer that only involves technology. Somehow, the information element gets lost or subjugated. While technology is an important element, and arguably a CSF outright, the CSF more emphasized in research is recognizing that there is more to the solution than a technology component. Some of the first KM efforts have learned this lesson the hard way, and it is now widely published that a KM implementation must involve people and processes. The KM system is a multidisciplinary effort that depends on organizational learning, sharing habits, and changes to culture; in other words, it is not just IT. As quoted by a KM consultancy firm in New York City, “The biggest misconception that IT leaders make is that knowledge management is about technology”2

Culture

In some sources it is reported that having a healthy corporate culture that is conducive to knowledge sharing is perhaps the most important success factor. Unfortunately, changing culture is also one of the single-most difficult things to do. This dangerous mix helps explain why most KM efforts fail. There are many barriers to why staff are reluctant to share. These include lack of trust, lack of perceived value, or simple knowledge hoarding. Even without these barriers, there is the inertia of instituting any type of change. Companies must have individuals, teams and the organization as a whole believing that sharing knowledge is a healthy and normal way to do business. Having a compatible culture is not optional: either this KM initiative fits “into their organizational culture, or else they should be prepared to change it.”3 If the culture is not KM friendly, “no amount of technology, knowledge content or good project management will make the effort successful”1. Having the right culture can also work in your favor. If employees really believe that sharing knowledge is essential to the organization, they will use every available process or technology to share and learn.

Building a Foundation

In addition to culture, there are other important ingredients that go into the foundation, or infrastructure, for KM. This foundation consists of the establishment of roles and teams that will help build a learning environment. Management should develop effective policies, procedures and guidelines for the organization. This structure, commonly called governance, cannot be understated in importance. Without this, the garden of knowledge can become starved, turn into a jungle, or become overrun with weeds. Some organizations even form a new executive-level role in that of a Chief Knowledge Officer, or CKO, to formalize this in the organization.

Motivating Staff

While motivational incentives alone do not guarantee success, they are still critical to becoming a learning organization. Rewarding employees helps reinforce positive behavior and is one element in changing an organization’s sharing culture. Recommendations include moving away from individual performance incentives and towards group- or team-based compensation. The goal is to create a sense of shared work and purpose which stimulates collaboration and fosters teamwork. These should be tied into job or project performance reviews as well as annual evaluations. The approach should, in general, be long term and be visible across the organization. Keep in mind that not all incentives need to be—or should be—financial in nature. Recognition, expectation, as well as peer pressure can all act as motivational carrots.

Training

Training is also a critical success factor in the deployment of a KM system. In fact, in one study employee training had the strongest correlation with a successful KM implementation4. Training ensures employees understand a new software system and the processes associated with it. While not itemized as a single CSF in this paper, it is clear that user adoption is essential for success, and training is the primary way to prevent refusal or apathy by the staff. This component is not just having everyone sit in a class; often times, it is just getting the word out to the organization. The message can be through seminars, bulletins, announcements or just evangelism to get employees and managers familiar with what KM is.

Making Resources Available

While the goal of KM is to make organizations smarter and more efficient, this will not happen overnight. KM is an investment in the future of the organization, and it takes time, money and effort to get there. Time is needed for training, process re-engineering, occupying new KM roles, and performing knowledge-sharing activities. Money may be needed to purchase new hardware, software and services for a new KM system. Effort is needed in changing culture and convincing staff of the merits of sharing knowledge. Human resource availability is already a common problem with staff already feeling over burdened with tasks. Nothing positive comes from a KM effort that is just dropped into the organization with the belief that staff will either make or find the time. As a result, planning the scope and iterations of a KM effort with realistic timelines and outputs is essential for success.

Executive Support

While there is always the hope that a grass-roots effort will instill KM within an organization, executive support is still necessary. If knowledge is of such strategic importance to the organization, executive and board support is crucial. Beyond a passive leadership role, executives must be KM champions in both actions and words. They establish a clear vision for KM and also ensure alignment between KM strategy and corporate strategy exists. They amplify the importance of knowledge and clarify which types of knowledge are most important. They help ensure the culture changes take effect as well as play a pivotal role in the creation of a solid foundation. Executive sponsors make resources and other funding available to the KM cause. In short, they make it clear that the organization is focused on KM and steer the organization in that direction.

Conclusion

The effective implementation of KM is controlled by certain factors. Understanding up front what these factors are enable proactive management and mitigates a project’s largest risk areas. Keep in mind each organization is different, and while these factors apply to some degree to most all types of companies, the ranking of each will vary. In some organizations, there will certainly be other factors not spelled out. Hopefully with careful analysis of these areas specific to your organization, building a successful KM implementation is well within reach and will also yield a strong return on investment.

References

1 Davenport, T., De Long, D., & Beers, M. (1998, Winter98). Successful knowledge management projects. Sloan Management Review, 39(2), 43-57.

2 Kulkarni, U. Ravindran, S., & Freeze, R. (2006, Winter2006/2007). A knowledge management success model: Theoretical development and empirical validation. Journal of Management Information Systems, 23(3), 309-347.

3 Wong, K. (2005, May). Critical success factors for implementing knowledge management in small and medium enterprises. Industrial Management & Data Systems, 105(3), 261-279.

4 Hung, Y., Huang, S., Lin, Q., & Mei-Ling-Tsai, M. (2005, March). Critical factors in adopting a knowledge management system for the pharmaceutical industry. Industrial Management & Data Systems, 105(2), 164-183.

Knowledge Sharing Critical Success Factor

2011-01-10T01:10:00.000-08:00

Purpose – This research aims at investigating the role of certain factors in organizational culture in the success of knowledge sharing. Such factors as interpersonal trust, communication between staff, information systems, rewards and organization structure play an important role in defining the relationships between staff and in turn, providing possibilities to break obstacles to knowledge sharing. This research is intended to contribute in helping businesses understand the essential role of organizational culture in nourishing knowledge and spreading it in order to become leaders in utilizing their know-how and enjoying prosperity thereafter.

Design/methodology/approach – The conclusions of this study are based on interpreting the results of a survey and a number of interviews with staff from various organizations in Bahrain from the public and private sectors.

Findings – The research findings indicate that trust, communication, information systems, rewards and organization structure are positively related to knowledge sharing in organizations.

Research limitations/implications – The authors believe that further research is required to address governmental sector institutions, where organizational politics dominate a role in hoarding knowledge, through such methods as case studies and observation.

Originality/value – Previous research indicated that the Bahraini society is influenced by traditions of household, tribe, and especially religion of the Arab and Islamic world. These factors define people's beliefs and behaviours, and thus exercise strong influence in the performance of business organizations. This study is motivated by the desire to explore the role of the national organizational culture on knowledge sharing, which may be different from previous studies conducted abroad.

Reference:
[1]http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1599327&show=html

Why Should your Organization Organize Information and Knowledge

2011-01-07T01:46:00.000-08:00

There seems to be no end to the amount of information and knowledge you've acquired through interesting articles or blog posts you've read, courses or e-courses you've taken, and all the other types of information research you've done.

You've stored all of this somewhere... but where? Can you easily find it when you need it? You may be wondering why it really matters if you can find this or not.

Well... what you'll find in this article is the top 5 reasons why you really DO need to organize all your information and knowledge:

5) How Do I...?

You're stuck... and you know you have the answer somewhere in the information you've gathered... but where? Make your organizational system searchable so you can find the exact info you need, when you need it.

4) Content Creation

You've got blog posts and articles to write. What about that e-course you planned on releasing? Researching all the information you have is a great source for content. It's right under your nose. Again, organize it and make it searchable.

3) Customer Support

Your customer or client has a question. It may be something that will make or break your relationship with them. Customer service is, after all, of utmost importance to your business success. By organizing your information, the answer to that question is readily available.

2) Answering Questions

You're connecting on Facebook, Twitter, on your blog, or... you have a Q&A session for your e-course... and someone asks a very good question. To be seen as the expert, you need to be able to have an answer. If your information is organized in a way that makes sense to you and is easily retrievable, you can have the answer in front of you in a matter of seconds.

1) Repurposing

You have content from a few previous courses you did and bits and pieces here and there from your blog and articles you've written. If you have all that content and information organized, you can mix and match it to repurpose it into an entirely new course, post, article, or whatever you wish. If you can't find it or retrieve it, you may have extremely valuable information that will remain dormant... not helping anyone at all.

Having your information and knowledge organized and managed to be easily found and retrieved is important to you, the people you connect with and your customers and clients.

Reference:
http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Pat_Shanks

Knowledge Society and Web 2.0

2011-01-05T07:28:00.000-08:00

Introduction

In today's nascent knowledge-society, individual knowledge-workers need to create a body-of-work. This body-of-work can serve as the basis for personal branding. Web 2.0 paradigms provide an ideal platform for creating mind-share for this body-of-work, helping an individual to connect and integrate with a community.

Background

One enters existence as a nameless bundle-of-life. Soon one gets a name, and with it, one's own personal brand. Thereafter this name serves as one's identity and brand. The rest of one's life is devoted to management of this personal brand in a half-conscious, half-sub-conscious and sometimes even in an unconscious manner. The scope of this management necessarily covers all aspects of living. However this discussion will focus on the socio-professional aspects.

Knowledge-society - imminent and inevitable

The transition to a knowledge-society is underway. Let us consider some examples:

* Google was founded on a search algorithm - it has a market-cap of 150+ Billion USD. In comparison, the market-cap of Toyota, the world's leading car-maker, is 100+ Billion USD. (all figures as of 22-Jul-2010)
* iFart - an iPhone App with self-suggesting if indelicate theme - developed with minimal effort,non-functional and trivial and yet has earned over a million USD
* Alex Tew's Million Dollar Homepage - Alex funded his college education by selling pixel ads on his website
* Microsoft is paying - yes paying - developers to port iPhone Apps/Games for Windows Phone 7

This diverse set of examples is meant to suggest how knowledge in the information age is emerging as an equivalent to capital and labour in the industrial age. It demonstrates the potential of knowledge, expressed through innovation and ideation, as a wealth-creation tool, both for an individual and a group. Therefore, in a completely-commercialized world of the 21st century, creation of a knowledge-society appears to be imminent and inevitable.

Knowledge-worker

A knowledge-society is built from and by knowledge-workers. A healthy society needs each knowledge-worker to assume his rightful station. Such an optimal arrangement depends greatly on an individual's ability to effectively communicate his personal knowledge. However it is a challenge to communicate something as nebulous and intangible as human knowledge. A mere listing of facts and figures, academic qualifications, professional achievements, awards et cetera in conventional forms like CV or resume may not be sufficient. The requirement in the present context is a body-of-work to cover the entire spectrum of an individual's capabilities - present and potential.

Body-of-work

A human being is an extremely complex creature. He cannot always be defined by what he does or thinks. But these are good starting points for creating a body-of-work. And he must make a beginning as early as possible. For it takes substantial time and effort to build a critical mass.

Self-expression

The first step of this creative process is expression - self-expression needs to be made a central goal of existence and not its by-product. Such an expression could be in the form of written word, images, audio, video or multi-media. The form is not important and neither is the valuation of the expression - as self-expression leads to a process of discovery - self-discovery,the necessary first-step towards personal-branding

The topic and content of expression must derive from an individual personality - an artist may express himself through paintings, poems, prose, photography; a professional may demonstrate his expertise in a domain through knowledge-sharing, answers to other's questions, queries to the community; a thinker may express his beliefs and thoughts; a social person may build or join communities sharing likes and dislikes; a political person may express opinions and visions and so on... The list will be as varied as the diversity in human race and as unique as each individual.

Organizing via the Web

The second step is organizing this self-expression into a body-of-work. One need look no further than the web and the tools it offers:

* Articles, blogs - WordPress, BlogSpot
* Community-building via wikis - Wikispaces,Wikidot
* Audio-casts, Pod-casts
* Videos or screen-casts - YouTube
* Slides - SlideShare
* Documents,Spreadsheets - Google Docs, Windows Live
* Personal websites - Google Sites
* Images - flickr, picasa

Ongoing-effort

The third step is continual nurturing. A body-of-work, by definition, demands an ongoing effort. As an individual evolves, the body-of-work should be updated to reflect this.

Brand-value - Community Mind-share

The existence of brand-value pre-supposes an audience. In a socio-professional context, the target audience is assumed to be a vertical community or a Community of Practice. Personal brand-value in a knowledge-society is closely co-related with mind-share - the awareness in the community - of one's body-of-work. This is where Web 2.0 comes in.

Personal Branding using Web 2.0

The term Web 2.0 has been coined to denote a real-time, interactive, collaborative, community-driven platform the web has been transformed into. Web 2.0 paradigms provide an ideal platform for creating mind-share for one's body-of-work.

Benefits of established Personal Brand-Value

Liberation from CV/Resume

A CV or Resume in the traditional form is uni-dimensional. The body-of-work as conceived here is something that is rich and living. It can be used to create a living, breathing digital projection of one's physical self, for the community to experience and appreciate. The effectiveness of projection is limited only by one's imagination and creativity.

Liberation from Employer-lock-in

Previously, a professional had a limited audience derived from the employer's organizational-space - colleagues and clients. His personal brand-value existed in a restricted sphere and was therefore mostly immobile. Once investment, in terms of time and effort, exceeded a threshold value in the same organizational-space, it became increasingly difficult for a professional to discard the resultant brand-value and start building his personal brand from scratch with a new employer. This created an employer-lock-in which became more pronounced with the passage of time, eventually resulting in a death-grip that suffocated personal growth and aspirations.

The lock-in scenario described above is not applicable to an individual with an established personal brand-value in a vertical community.

Liberation from earthly nature of Supervisors/Leaders

Supervisors/Leaders, being human-beings, are susceptible to the failings of earthly nature. So a supervisor's/leader's perception and mindset is not always impartial or unbiased. This has a direct impact on individual careers. And there appears to be no systemic remedy for such a scenario.

It is seen that Supervisors become self-conscious whilst dealing with individuals who have established personal brands, especially when the reach of the brand extends to the Supervisor's own Supervisor and the entire community. In such cases Supervisors make a special effort to be transparent and open in their professional relationship with the individual.

Liberation from mortality

We are mortals and will perish one day. Yet we strive to leave behind a legacy, for succeeding generations, in general and one's progeny, in particular. A body-of-work, preserved for-ever in digital space, appears to be the best way to leave behind lasting footprints in the shifting sands of time.

Summary

Personal branding is no longer a choice. In a nascent knowledge-society, it is an imperative for any individual. As a first step an individual needs to create an online, living, discoverable body-of-work that covers the entire spectrum of an individual's capabilities - present and potential. Thereafter Web 2.0 serves as a potent platform for him to connect with a global audience and create mind-share. Based on resonance to his body-of-work, he can integrate and collaborate with the community and eventually create or discover his true place in it.

Yet there is a larger aspect to this. Man is a social creature and is born with a need to connect. The first effort for personal-branding may derive from the need for professional survival in a knowledge-society. Yet, it may end up fulfilling the secret need within each of us to escape the narrow bounds of separative existence and feel part of a collective whole.

Reference:
[1]http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Shwetav_Agarwal

Knowledge Mapping

2011-01-03T21:35:00.000-08:00

This module focuses on the basics of Knowledge Mapping, its importance, principles, and methodologies.

Key Questions

* What is K-map?
* What does the K-map show, and what do we map?
* Why is K-mapping so important?
* What are some of the key principles, methodologies, and questions for K-mapping?
* How do we create K-map?

Background

Each of the past centuries has been dominated by single technology. The eighteenth century was the time of the great mechanical systems accompanying the Industrial Revolution. The nineteenth century was the age of steam engine. After these, the key technology has been information gathering, processing and distribution. Among other developments, the installation of world wide telephone networks, the invention of radio and television, the birth and unprecedented growth of the computer industry and the launching of communication satellites are significant. Now people started to think that only information is not enough, what matters is Knowledge. So there has been seen shift from Information to Knowledge.

A bit of information without context and interpretation is data such as numbers, symbols.

Information is a set of data with context and interpretation. Information is the basis for knowledge.

Knowledge is a set of data and information, to which is added expert opinion and experience, to result in a valuable asset which can be used or applied to aid decision making. Knowledge may be explicit and/or tacit, individual and/or collective.

The term -Knowledge Mapping- seems to be relatively new, but it is not. We have been practising this in our everyday life, just what we are not doing is - we are not documenting it, and we are not doing it in a systematic way. Knowledge Mapping is all about keeping a record of information and knowledge you need such as where you can get it from, who holds it, whose expertise is it, and so on. Say, you need to find something at your home or in your room, you can find it in no time because you have almost all the information/knowledge about -what is where- and -who knows what- at your home. It is a sort of map set in your mind about your home. But, to set such a map about your organisation and organisational knowledge in your mind is almost impossible. This is where K-map becomes handy and shows details of every bit of knowledge that exists within the organisation including location, quality, and accessibility; and knowledge required to run the organisation smoothly - hence making you able to find out your required knowledge easily and efficiently.

Below are some of the definitions:

It's an ongoing quest within an organization (including its supply and customer chain) to help discover the location, ownership, value and use of knowledge artifacts, to learn the roles and expertise of people, to identify constraints to the flow of knowledge, and to highlight opportunities to leverage existing knowledge.

Knowledge mapping is an important practice consisting of survey, audit, and synthesis. It aims to track the acquisition and loss of information and knowledge. It explores personal and group competencies and proficiencies. It illustrates or "maps" how knowledge flows throughout an organization. Knowledge mapping helps an organization to appreciate how the loss of staff influences intellectual capital, to assist with the selection of teams, and to match technology to knowledge needs and processes.

- Denham Grey

Knowledge mapping is about making knowledge that is available within an organisation transparent, and is about providing the insights into its quality.

- Willem-Olaf Huijsen, Samuel J. Driessen, Jan W. M. Jacobs

Knowledge mapping is a process by which organisations can identify and categorise knowledge assets within their organisation - people, processes, content, and technology. It allows an organisation to fully leverage the existing expertise resident in the organisation, as well as identify barriers and constraints to fulfilling strategic goals and objectives. It is constructing a roadmap to locate the information needed to make the best use of resourses, independent of source or form.

-W. Vestal, APQC, 2002

(American Productivity & Quality Center)

Knowledge Map describes what knowledge is used in a process, and how it flows around the process. It is the basis for determining knowledge commonality, or areas where similar knowledge is used across multiple process. Fundamentally, a process knowledge map cntains information about the organisation?s knowledge. It describes who has what knowledge (tacit), where the knowledge resides (infrastructure), and how the knowledge is transferred or disseminated (social).

-IBM Global Services

How are the Knowledge Maps created?

Knowledge maps are created by transferring tacit and explicit knowledge into graphical formats that are easy to understand and interpret by the end users, who may be managers, experts, system developers, or anybody.

Basic steps in creating K-maps:

Basic steps - creating K-maps for specific task

* The outcomes of the entire process, and their contributions to the key organisational activities
* Logical sequences of all the activities needed to achieve the goal
* Knowledge required for each activity {gives the knowledge gap}
* Human resource required to undertake each activity {shows if recruitment is needed}

What do we map?

The followings are the objects we map:

* Explicit knowledge
o subject
o purpose
o location
o format
o ownership
o users
o access right

* Tacit knowledge

o expertise
o skill
o experience
o location
o accessibility
o contact address
o relationships/networks

* Tacit organisational process knowledge

o the people with the internal processing knowledge

* Explicit organisational process knowledge

o codified organisational process knowledge

What do the knowledge maps show?

Knowledge map shows the sources, flows, constraints, and sinks of knowledge within an organisation. It is a navigational aid to both explicit information and tacit knowledge, showing the importance and the relationships between knowledge stores and the dynamics. The following list will be more illustrative in this regard:

* Available knowledge resources
* Knowledge clusters and communities
* Who uses what knowledge resources
* The paths of knowledge exchange
* The knowledge lifecycle
* What we know we don?t know (knowledge gap)

Activity: 1

>> Can you create your personal knowledge map which shows the types and location of knowledge resources you use, the channels you use to access knowledge?

Where does knowledge reside?

Knowledge can be found in

* Correspondents, internal documents
* Library
* Archives (past project documents, proposals)
* Meetings
* Best practices
* Experience
* Corporate memory

Activity: 2

>> What are the other places where you can find knowledge?

What are the other things to be mapped?

Benefits of K-mapping

In many organisations there is a lack of transparency of organisation wide knowledge. Valuable knowledge is often not used because people do not know it exists, even if they know the knowledge exists, they may not know where. These issues lead to the knowledge mapping. Followings are some of the key reasons for doing the knowledge mapping:

* to find key sources of knowledge creation
* to encourage reuse and prevent reinvention
* to find critical information quickly
* to highlight islands of expertise
* to provide an inventory and evaluation of intellectual and intangible assets
* to improve decision making and problem solving by providing applicable information
* to provide insights into corporate knowledge

The map also serves as the continuously evolving organisational memory, capturing and integrating the key knowledge of an organisation. It enables employees learning through intuitive navigation and interrogation of the information in the map, and through the creation of new knowledge through the discovery of new relationships. Simply speaking, K-map gives employees not only -know what-, but also -know how-.

Key principles of Knowledge Mapping

* Because of their power, scope, and impact, the creation of organisational-level knowledge map requires senior management support as well as careful planning
* Share your knowledge about identifying, finding, and tracking knowledge in all forms
* Recognise and locate knowledge in a wide variety of forms: tacit, explicit, formal, informal, codified, personalised, internal, external, and permanent
* Knowledge is found in processes, relationships, policies, people, documents, conversations, links and context, and even with partners
* It should be up-to-date and accurate

K-mapping - key questions

Knowledge map provides an assessment of existing and required knowledge and information in the following categories:

* What knowledge is needed for work?
* Who needs what?
* Who has it?
* Where does it reside?
* Is the knowledge tacit or explicit?
* What issues does it address?
* How to make sure that the K-mapping will be used in an organisation?

Note:

* K-maps should be easily accessible to all in the organisation
* It should be easy to understand, update and evolve
* It should be updated regularly
* It should be an ongoing process since knowledge landscapes are continuously shifting and evolving

Offline Readings:

* K-mapping tools
* K-mapping tool selection
* Creating knowledge maps by exploiting dependent relationships
* Creating knowledge structure map?
* White pages
* KM jargon and glossary

Online Resource: http://www..voght.com/cgi-bin/pywiki?KnowledgeMapping

K-mapping Tools:

* MindMapping
* Inspiration
* IHMC (cmap.ihmc.us/) (need to have.NET Framework and JavaRunTime installed in your computer)

(Learn more about KM tool selection at http://www.voght.com/cgi-bin/pywiki?KmToolSelection )
________________________________________

Categorised K-mapping

Social Network Mapping:

This shows networks of knowledge and patterns of interaction among members, groups, organisations, and other social entities who knows who, who goes to whom for help and advice, where the information enters and leaves the groups or organisation, which forums and communities of practice are operational and generating new knowledge.

Competency Mapping:

With this kind of mapping, one can create a competency profile with skill, positions, and even career path of an individual. And, this can also be converted into the?organisational yellow pages? which enables employees to find needed expertise in people within the organisation.

Process-based Knowledge Mapping:

This shows knowledge and sources of knowledge for internal as well as external organisational processes and procedures. This includes tacit knowledge (knowledge in people such as know-how, and experience) and explicit knowledge (codified knowledge such as that in document).

Conceptual Knowledge Mapping:

Also sometimes called -taxonomy-, it is a method of hierarchically organising and classifying content. This involves in labelling pieces of knowledge and relationships between them. A concept can be defined as any unit of thought, any idea that forms in our mind [Gertner, 1978]. Often, nouns are used to refer to concepts [Roche, 2002]. Relations form a special class of concepts [Sowa, 1984]: they describe connections between other concepts. One of the most important relations between concepts is the hierarchical relation (subsumption), in which one concept (superconcept) is more general than another concept (subconcept) like Natural Resource Management and Watershed Management. This mapping should be able to relate similar kind of projects and workshops conducting/conducted by two different departments, making them more integrated.

Knowledge is power, broadly accessible, understandable, and shared knowledge is even more powerful!

Reference:
[1] http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Deependra_Tandukar

Knowledge Intensive Collaboration Online In Business 2.0

2011-01-03T07:34:00.000-08:00

The business world is similar to the gadget world. As soon as new gadget appears, all previous become outdated. The only things to be sure about - there is no assurance scheme. There is no silver bullet that makes business run 37% more effective.

Same about project management. Combining processes, people and technology is an art, not craft. But there is one phase of the subject. management possibilities Those who failed once because of lack of communication, is now open. It is no more an issue but trouble.

Let us look at what's called future business. What are its features. How to succeed in the world of constant speed-ups. In a world where market transparency and complexity continues to grow.

Members «2.0 2008 Enterprise» conference said this way of Business 2.0 features:

1. Flat organization: the existing minimum layer between management and worker-top general
2. Ease of flow organization
3. Agility: minimum bureaucracy
4. Flexibility: how fast your company adapt to external changes
5. User-driven technology
6. Bottom up: The control and information flows are often derived from any layer
7. Distributed: The distributed both geographically and in time. Teams are global.
8. Fuzzy boundaries, open borders: there is no specific department within the company
9. Transparency: the state of your company is always visible from the outside
10. System information that appears, and not forced from the top-management
11. Folksonomies replace taxonomies. There is no point in making people think you are doing the same.
12. Simple. Nothing to add here.
13. Open: The best description given by Jonathan Nolen, hope this helps
14. Works on demand: for each new request, the company created a new solution. I recommend to check out an interesting article about business-on-demand.
15. Short time to-market cycles

Looks real simplicity of the new organization is based on the complexity of people and technology. When 'man' said I mean, the new business is only possible when those characteristics are very high. Responsibility, creativity, communication skills, inner mobility. People are becoming more demanding of themselves and the business creates new people. Technological aspects of new business is: all the innovation made possible by new communication and knowledge management techniques.

But this is still not difficult. The difficulty lies in combining people and technology growth. He came that ideally technology should be one step ahead of people. Technology as a way to send the achievement of more advanced for the other participants. It's like two end points the same spring. In such a way as to develop business systems.

OK, what we have in the market system of intellectual

1. Complete automation of project management tasks
2. Empower managers' flexibility in building teams and processes
3. Create an environment to share knowledge within a team

Let me note that these three things are connected with each other and support each other. There are systems that each solve the problem completely. But only one. Company Wiki to store and share knowledge, methodologies and standards development management, ERP and «professional» project management tools like Microsoft Project. GTD programs are good for short-term teams that come together for one project (management communication system look like it was some GTD for the team, yes).

The balance between the complexity of all these three tasks and usability is a challenge for many software companies: Salesforce, Basecamp, Zoho.

You can review the comparison of well-known system, I do not want to stop at this problem now.

Balanced solution that covers all the needs of 'business 2.0' still does not exist. So many companies are now trying to build their own technical foundation for growth.

We at NewtonIdeas not satisfied with the current system provides for the possibility. So we kept seeing on-edge developments in this field, and consider our 8 years experience in IT and business. And build our own, where we put the principles of Enterprise 2.0 in the way we understand it.

Reference:
[1]http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Arturas_Kvederis

Free Knowledge Management Tools

2011-01-01T05:11:00.000-08:00

A little while ago, I had an idea.

The idea was that knowledge management (I realize not everyone is familiar with knowledge management, so a definition is always useful) is an extremely useful approach to getting things done within an organization.

However, knowledge management is often limited to large organizations with big budgets and dedicated staff who can set up complex tools and processes to make it work.

So I thought: why can't this approach work for small businesses, non-profits and other organizations with limited money and resources?

This article is designed to be a guide to using the many free tools on the web to set up your own personalized knowledge management initiative -- and best of all, how to do it at absolutely no cost to you (except your time of course).

While I could write a short tip once in a while about how to go about doing this, I thought I'd rather package all this information up into a longer article that you can read when you have time. If you don't have the time to read it now, print this article out or bookmark it for later.

Interested? Have time to start reading now? Great. Let's get started.

My reasons for wanting to help you.

So first you ask, why am I doing this? Well, I wanted to take some of the cool knowledge management stuff I do every day and explain to you how to do it for free. Why? There are so many organizations that can benefit from this type of approach. Whether you're running a small business or are part of a non-profit organization (like a school or library) you can put some of these principles into practice and save time and money.

Time to get started: Google Desktop Search.

You'll notice that I am suggesting a great deal of Google tools in this article. Not only are Google tools almost always free, they are also of high quality and available online (which makes you wonder about Google's aspirations for providing online collaborative software).

OK, enough speculating. Now we're going to get into how to actually go about setting this stuff up.

First, you will need a Google account. So if you don't have one already, go create one. Just lick "Create an account now" in the bottom right-hand corner.

After you've done that, you'll want to install Google Desktop Search.

Before we can get our strategy going, we first need access to all of the information and knowledge stored within our own files, emails and drives. This follows from the fact that good knowledge management must build on solid information retrieval tactics. This step provides the foundation for the knowledge edifice we are going to erect on top of it.

Before you go ahead and install it however, you should know that you have two options with Google Desktop search: the regular edition and the enterprise edition.

The regular edition of Google Desktop Search will allow you to search your network drive, your emails, your web history, and any other difficult-to-find stuff that you have on your computer.

The enterprise edition of Google Desktop Search allows a central administrator to control how desktop search is set up on each person's computer, and to centrally administer policies.

For most purposes, regular Google Desktop Search will be fine. Click on "Agree and Download" and then install the application.

Rather than going through all of the features of Google Desktop Search here, you can view Google's guide to the features of Google Desktop Search.

Got Google Desktop Search installed? Good. Let's move on.

Google Personalized: get the feeds you need.

Now you're able to find the information you need on your own PC, we need to move to the next step of our personalized our strategy: personalized news and information feeds that reflect what you're interested in and what you need.

While there are many desktop search tools to choose from, no other search engine really offers the personalized search option that Google does (which certainly could change in the near future, especially if we consider whether it's possible for Google to grow their current search market).

First of all, you'll need to go to the Google Personalized page. Use the Google Account you created right before step 1 to log into your account. Here is a sample Google Personalized page I've set up (click on it for a bigger view, if the bigger view still looks messy, click once to zoom in on it).

You will see from my example above an "Add a tab" link in the top and middle of the page, right under the Google search bar. This will add more tabs to your page, which you can then use to organize your content.

Most importantly however, you will want to use the "Add stuff" link to the right of that. This will provide you with categorized lists of content that you can use to populate your page with useful news and information.

I would also suggest creating a 'Tools' tab, where you can store any useful reference information you use at work on a regular basis. This could include Wikipedia, driving directions, or an online dictionary. This will save you a great deal of time, since you'll now be able to access all your resources from one page. See below for an example of what I mean.
A sample of Google Personalized Tools.

If you want to get a little more fancy with adding feeds, go to any web page that has RSS support and you can add the link directly into the "Add stuff" part of Google Personalized. If you're not familiar with RSS feeds, check out Wikipedia's page on RSS.

Now that we've got personalized information feeds, let's take a look at a collaborative knowledge-sharing tool you can use with your colleagues.

Don't just personalize your page, personalize search itself.

Do you ever wish Google search could prioritize particular sites in their ranking related to what you're interested in? Or that you and your colleagues or friends could work together on maintaining a listing of the sites you want searched and the priority you want to assign to those sites?

So how do we go about doing this? First of all, check out the search engine I've set up. Or try a search in the box on the right-hand side of this page. Conduct a few searches to get an idea how the personalized search engine works (for more information on Google personalized search, check out this post on Rocky's reDesign blog).

Now that you've done that, visit the Google Coop page to get you started. Click on the image to the right of "Create your own search engine". You will need to sign in with your Google Account to create your search engine.

Basically, you'll give your search engine a name and assign the sites that you want it to search. Because this is done through Google Coop, you can enlist 'volunteers' to help you with your search engine. Get your colleagues to sign up for it (they will need Google Accounts), and they can suggest sites to add to the search engine.

For some interesting uses of the Google Coop service, check out this post on librarian.net.

Isn't that fun? Let's move on to the next step.

Install Firefox.

As an astute reader, you may be asking yourself why I'm asking you to install Firefox. It's not a Google product, right? Right. However, it still has many features we can use to our advantage, with the added bonus of also being free.So first, go install the latest version of Firefox.

Now that you've done that, I'm going to tell you that installing Firefox itself will help you use some great features, but there's nothing you really won't get with Internet Explorer 7 (which you should also install, by the way, if you haven't already).

However, there's one area where Firefox beats Internet Explorer hands down, and that's in its use of extensions.Extensions basically 'extend' the functionality of your browser in ways not possible through a standard install. It's how we use these extensions that will form the basis of our customized and personalized strategy.Google has some great extensions for Firefox available for download.

And one final suggestion: OpenOffice.

Finally, I'll suggest one other software suite you should try. While it's not going to necessarily provide you with a new knowledge tool, it can certainly save you some money. Go try out OpenOffice. You will get all of the functionality that would be provided with Microsoft Office, but it's free. Sound too good to be true? You be the judge -- since it's free, what do you have to lose by trying it?

Article Source:
http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lucas_McDonnell

Information Sharing Initiatives:Discussion Groups and Online Communities

2010-12-30T23:21:00.000-08:00

Business industry today is very competitive compared with the past. It is clear that to maintain this competition, people must be aware and updated. One of the easiest and proper way to keep updated is "Sharing Knowledge" or "Share Information". The use of groups and online communities is probably the best alternative of all.

Group A is not another medium through which people can connect on the web and communicate to share information. Here, people discuss about common interests and seek appropriate solutions. There are many providers of free services available to the user group. Most popular are:

o Google Groups

o Yahoo Groups

o MSN Groups

o AOL Groups

These days users have started a trend that uses the group as a means of free advertising. If you use the right way, the group can create heavy traffic relevant to your website. Moreover, these groups are easy to join and we can easily sustain one's profile.

Once you are registered in certain groups, the next step is to find the right category to post. Once you've found it, just add your new post in the form of an email. When posting a topic, the following points should be noted:

o Do not overexpose your organization's profile. It should be like that you are just talking about your company.

o Always be precise in everything you post. Remember that the higher post content, visitors to the higher will refuse to read it.

o Target the right audience to get relevant traffic.

o Frequently update your profile and posts.

Online communities are also used for the same purpose as a group. They are also a good choice for sharing knowledge. Posting process remains the same in terms of online communities. One of the major benefits of groups and online communities is that if for example you find that you join the group or community that is not relevant, then you can easily stop in a few minutes. This is what groups and online communities can do to users. Use them and share information on how to best!

Reference:
[1] http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mike_James_Thomas

Knowledge Community

2010-12-28T18:55:00.000-08:00

In this article you will read about what the society of knowledge, strategies, tools and processes.

What knowledge society?

Knowledge Community (KC) can be defined as:

"Knowledge communities are groups of people who share common challenges, opportunities or a passion for a particular topic, and who work together to deepen their understanding of the topic through ongoing learning and knowledge sharing." (AIA Knowledge Communities)

Theoretical aspects of knowledge society based on technology management, and managing people who share their knowledge effectively. Sharing of knowledge are dependent on information seekers who need specific types of knowledge. So that they can perform certain tasks with confidence and sources of knowledge that may have all the necessary information. Theoretical aspects are implemented in such a way that effective knowledge sharing is possible between the seeker of knowledge and sources of knowledge. This helps the search terms and resources to realize their needs and resources.

The concept of Knowledge Society mostly comes from what is known as a community of practice (CoP). The term was coined in 1998 by Jean Love, and Etienne Wenger who claimed that the practice of people everywhere and that we are generally involved in a number of them whether in the workplace, school, home, or the interests of our civil and recreation. In some groups we are core members, on the other we are more on the margins. (Smith, 2003)

Towards the end of the last century included the idea of sharing knowledge for use in the business world and form broader than developing CoP known as the "knowledge society".

"The basic difference between the CoP and KC is that the scope of participation of members is clearly defined by the job description (such as the farming community) in the CoP, while in case of participation of members of the KC wide open and include in some cases, all employees working in a large organization" ( Yamazaki, 2004).

KC is the first time to practice by Xerox are confronted with a global IT infrastructure transition project. Top managers decided to launch a knowledge-sharing initiative called the Transition Alliance. The Alliance consists of fifty IT professionals who are responsible for managing 70,000 desktop workstations, nearly 1,200 servers, and networking hardware across five continents. It was observed that the motivation to learn and develop at the individual level appear larger in the structure of society than in other organizations. This has important implications for long-term performance of the participants. (Storck and Hill, 2000) Since then, large companies have been using the KC with documented positive results.

KC Strategies

KC based on the idea that knowledge and insight that is created and acquired when humans interact with each other and their environment. Any strategy to implement the KC because it must be stressed on the need for a variety of social interactions, such as one-one conversation, information and communication technology (ICT) tools, discussion groups, research projects and presentations. Storck and Hill (2000) identified six guiding principles that are important to the success of organizational learning. This is stated below and apply for KC in a corporate environment:

-Design a format that promotes interaction of openness and allows for the chance.
-Building upon an organization's culture.
-Indicates the existence of mutual interest, after initial success to solve problems and achieve company goals.
-Leverage aspects of organizational culture that respects the value of collective learning.
Embed knowledge-sharing practices into the group process.
-Establish an environment where knowledge sharing is based on process and cultural norms defined by society than other parts of the organization. (Storck et al,. 2000) Apart from the management of both technology and context in order to provide effective support for learning and sharing knowledge is essential.

KC Tools

In this section, the aim is to clarify where the IT tools support the knowledge society. Most of today's KC on-line, there is very little interest in face to face KC. Tools commonly used for KC because that e-mail, groupware, e-learning systems teleconferencing etc. But there are constraints on the benefits of these technologies. Face-to-face interaction can sometimes be very important for example in developing and strengthening relationships of trust among team members. Most of the knowledge society Knowledge Management component architecture standards that are based on knowledge portals, components, and databases. This architecture acts as a tool to organize and classify knowledge in a skillful manner. In Knowledge Management, Portal is the basic source of knowledge from which community members have started to enter, search, and knowledge access by using various methods of KM. Most of the search tools used by the knowledge society is a system based portal server that can handle different organizations. These tools must be designed so that they follow a top-down design approach. Because of their inherent complexity basic, this is a centralized, inflexible and slow to respond to changes in the knowledge base.

If the knowledge base should be handled by an individual rather than society, the approach will be bottom-up design, and the level complexity of the equipment to a minimum. Of course, all the tools used for infrastructure must be maintained so that they can provide the necessary knowledge in ways that are classified as necessary. Knowledge society using the knowledge asset for applications such as collaborative product development, different business process automation and real-time collaboration for online applications. If the application is user-centric, then the storage costs can be reduced with the help of knowledge assets that are provided and maintained by the society of knowledge. Based on the knowledge base that is managed by the people at large, it is possible to improve the ability of search-based applications. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools can only provide basic infrastructure and environment to support learning. But tools alone are not sufficient to stimulate effective learning in the knowledge society. "The technology but has a central part to play in providing facilities and infrastructure for learning within and between public knowledge if the motivation and the learning context already exists." (Barrett, et al.. 2004)

Discussion: KC Process The process used in the knowledge society are as follows:

1. Creation or construction of knowledge database. This is the main process in the development of information databases, and it must be implemented efficiently so that other processes can use this process again if necessary.

2. Storing knowledge so that it can be used to study and implement the knowledge database. This process is also related to the retrieval of information if data loss is clear.

3. The next transaction process with the transfer of knowledge from one category to another. There are several different methods available for transfer and for anyone of them can be selected according to need. Transfer process is different for different types of users, and can occur at various levels.

4. One other important processes are supported by a community of knowledge is the application. Knowledge base is only useful if he is able to provide useful information for users.

5. The deal last with the learning process, which is useful for organizational knowledge base. It discusses the process by learning what is needed, and why it is needed.

Knowledge communities have their utility in the field of high structure, process and task automation, and stable business environment. Applications must be based on the most suitable conditions with a pre-specified knowledge base. The structure of this application should be able to take advantage of the knowledge society. automation process of this new technology that is used on and based workflow can get a proper backup of the public knowledge with other systems. This application uses the knowledge base generated by the community to achieve lower costs, higher quality, and greater market share for existing products and services. The process of formation of KC is not direct. Needs or context of knowledge sharing must be defined first. So we must focus on where to get knowledge of, namely, that members of the organization or community to focus on. After the community and context knowledge have decided we need to decide on the media. KC Putting in place is not too difficult but to maintain and run this efficiently, especially when community members are expected to have lost interest in the future or if there is lack of trust among users. periodic examination and review are therefore very important to maintain each KC.

Relationship with knowledge management

KC strongly associated with knowledge management. Knowledge Management is to capture, manage, and store knowledge and experience of individual workers and groups within an organization and make this information available to others in the organization. This is KC not too so that we recognize that KC is a very effective tool for knowledge management.

Examples of system KC

A good example of the use of KC at the firm level is the Hewlett Packard IT Resource Center (ITRC) which brings together engineers, internal IT staff and customers. Communities using the intranet or extranet and focused on a particular product or problem. Communities inter-organization has a membership runs in thousands and include topics such as planning and business recovery operating system software. Community participants can ask questions and receive answers in a short time. So, when the system administrator has a problem, they can post electronic signs on the intranet, and receive detailed help on how to proceed in a few minutes. For such communities to succeed, members must have mutual trust. Hewlett Packard associated with mistrust by using a system of user profiles and ratings. Members of the public up to the level of each response from 1 to 10. The response now has a 'credit rating and the problem is difficult queries with ease to assess the utility of this reply. (Barrett, et. Al, 2004.) KC Success stories like that abound in the corporate world today.

Conclusion

It's a fact that people are well-established with the public interest facing similar problems to learn faster when in groups. Interaction between the individual creating the knowledge base is very important for every member of this community. The knowledge society is based on the basic premise. They tried to bring people together mostly using advanced tools currently ICT. KC has found tremendous acceptance in the corporate world because of their simplicity and usefulness. ICT tools best work in creating the KC when the stimulus is enough to learn already exist in society. ICT tools have the constraint, however, and face-toface interaction becomes important at times. For KC to succeed there must be a learning context, enough members to contribute knowledge, media and mutual trust among members. If these requirements occur, KC can be an indispensable tool for any organization or community. The society of knowledge helps the organization to identify the priorities of their knowledge, so that these organizations can upgrade their devices to become more user-friendly platform in the handling of knowledge. It helps organizations to develop management knowledge base that is more appropriate, meaningful and useful.

Reference:
[1]Maria Johnsen,http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Maria_Johnsen

Knowledge Sharing Best Practice Iniatives

2010-12-27T18:48:00.000-08:00

large organization knows many things but they may not necessarily know what they know. Knowledge sharing has become much more challenging while at the same time become much more important. It's an issue faced by many organizations, once a day and the reason why the management of knowledge sharing has become so important. The main objective is to ensure that the right information to the right people so that they can make the right decision. Some people argue that there should be a straightforward process, but in reality, it is not so simple.

The organization has struggled with this for a long time, this is certainly not the flavor of the month. We have too large a traditional, though still highly effective, methods of sharing information such as the interaction of people-to-person. Top-down flow of knowledge of traditional organizations is no longer adequate as the information must flow across the organization. What about the technology, it can provide answers to the needs of our information flow? When used appropriately, technology can be a great asset to the organization if he also has a knowledge sharing initiative in place, but can not replace a culture of sharing knowledge. Knowledge management means a lot more from the database and network. The issues are more difficult to handle most people's problems. And this is the most predictable element of knowledge sharing initiatives, the most difficult to manage, but the most important. If the employee is unable or unwilling to share knowledge in basic human level, all the technology in the world will not convince them to do otherwise. Technology must be built on a strong foundation of internal cooperation, if it's like building a structure on top of a swamp.

What are examples of human obstacles, we need to overcome in building a culture of sharing information? Some still believe that "knowledge as power," which became the only one capable of certain tasks will make them much needed and keep them secure jobs, especially in this current economic time. But how true is the company today where so much depends on teamwork and collective knowledge? In the end, there is little to gain by knowledge accumulation and can be self-defeating. Sufficient mandate to share knowledge does not solve the problem. Managers need to lead by example, setting up a mentoring program where new entrants have access to the carrier of knowledge and applying knowledge contributors' Hall of Fame "or" Donor Month "program. In these ways and others, norms can begin to be set so that knowledge as power can begin to be transformed into "shared cultural knowledge as power."

Sometimes technology is so embedded in the user's mindset that they sometimes forget it's not the be-all and end all to share knowledge and communication. Technology is only a tool used to support and enhance social knowledge-based organizations to share, not a substitute for a system of well-rounded knowledge sharing is marriage-based tools of modern technology and good old-fashioned people skills - and the two should compliment each other.

Reference:
[1] Marsha Stein,http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Marsha_Stein

Business Knowledge Management Software

2010-12-14T01:35:00.000-08:00

Business Knowledge Management, in which the idea of a comprehensive and conscious companies collect, share, review and manage knowledge based on the document, skills and resources. Form of management has two fundamental objectives in the business. The main objective in the collection of business-critical knowledge and is directly related to business strategy. The second objective is the planning organization's intellectual assets and create a large volume of information obtained by the company as well as sharing best practice through technology that allows the functions above, including groupware and intranets.

It also plays a very important role to maintain a business method in triumph. With a sound knowledge management there is a link between business strategy management, and practice issues. Form of management influence on various business sectors that include best practice, change management, benchmarking, risk management. Most of the professionals at the firm level and analyze business-class knowledge management as a business process reengineering. In most past research conducted on business strategy has been recognized that knowledge and information are business assets and business needs and policy instruments to manage these assets.

Need for general knowledge of business management focused on increasing creativity and also in the sense of creating new knowledge. There has been a growing understanding that intellectual capital is essential for the growth of the organization and discussion of intellectual capital has mushroomed into the world, but only a few businesses have acted on this understanding. Where companies have taken action, and the growing number have done so - the application of knowledge management is different from technology driven to control the process, provide and access information with a massive effort to change the company's tradition.

Most of the times of knowledge and information requirements are often used interchangeably by business writers. Knowledge has two basic definitions of interest. The first relates to defined body of information which can consist of opinions, facts, theories, models and principles. Of course there is the possibility of additional categories as well. Subject (eg, chemical mathematics, etc.) is just one of probability. Also knowledge is a condition of a person into information about a person. These countries consist of awareness, ignorance, understanding, facility, familiarity and so forth. In the conservative viewpoint on the role of knowledge in business organizations, tacit-knowledge is often viewed as a real key in getting things done also create new value. No explicit-knowledge. As a result we often see an emphasis on organizational learning and other approaches that emphasize the internalization of information through the actions and experiences and creating new knowledge through interaction is managed.

Therefore it can be concluded that the intangible wealth of knowledge, where it provides the organization with the ability to destroy competition, in addition to proven weight in influencing itself. Every organization does not have to look only at the best practice in the field, but must adjust to the needs of each approach is exclusive and tradition to effectively use knowledge management.

Reference:
[1] Jamie Hanson, http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jamie_Hanson

Knowledge Management in Service Industry

2010-12-09T18:01:00.000-08:00

In the twenty-first century,industry compete heavily. Employers try to use technology to grow their business. However, the technology used to produce a high cost. So companies must find new ways to survive by using existing resources to gain maximum benefit. Knowledge Management is one attractive alternative because it can provide competitive advantages such as competence and greater synergies, more balanced decisions and fewer errors, more creativity and innovation, a broader collaboration and knowledge sharing, and links easier to expertise and more in understanding.Knowledge management has been used in most enterprise-based products and also has been expanded for use in the service sector.

However, there is not much research looking closely to explain the situation in the service industry, while the service sector continues to growing.Thus, it is necessary to understand the situation and how the service sector to develop knowledge management strategies. Knowledge management can play an important role for the company to compete productively.Service industry is one of the industry sector involves providing services to other businesses and to end consumers. Activities relating primarily to the provision of services rather than tangible objects for the benefit of end users and / or other industries. This includes insurance banking and finance, supply gas and electricity and water, health care, transportation, communications, entertainment, retail and wholesale, and central and local governments "are. Knowledge of the fluid mixture framed experience, values, contextual information and expert insight that provides a framework for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and this information is derived and applied in the minds of knowers. In organizations, it often becomes embedded not only in documents or repositories but also in organizational routines, processes, practices, and. norm "to help. Knowledge to produce information from data or information which is more valuable than less valuable information. Thus, knowledge is essentially the same as the information and data, although the richest and deepest of the three, and consequently also the most valuable.When company that creates knowledge, he has concerns about the process of interactive teamwork.

This process involves a different background, cutting across organizational boundaries, and combing skills, artifacts, knowledge and experience in new ways. There is the assumption that when people work together, they can produce results that are more creative than those working individually. It is difficult to establish effective teamwork because people come from different backgrounds and have different knowledge bases.Teamworking is a key factor for creating mutual understanding knowledge with tacit knowledge that depth of experience to share together for a long time. Tacit knowledge is knowledge that is in people's heads and is difficult to explain or communicate with others. For explicit knowledge, it is knowledge that can be expressed in text form or by talking. Explicit knowledge is easy to explain and advance communicate.While computers and technology has helped people to connect to each other, people are also concerns about the geography of their influence in the emergence of new knowledge economy.The virtual space does not reduce the significance of physical space. Although people have a quick step technology to communicate and the ability to transfer data across distances, they still want to contact with others in person by gathering together for the event, shaking hands and hugging.

Time is another factor to consider because the virtual community or online community to make people work with their colleagues anytime and anywhere. For example, an employee can work at four o'clock in the morning with other employees from other continents.Another aspect of time is the knowledge obsolete. Although the sharing of knowledge from time to time are considered as important, one should not overestimate the knowledge of the past. Knowledge of the past can not always be the basis for the work today; the things that can change quickly and radically innovate industries.Nowadays in the creation and application of new knowledge is essential for the survival of tangible products - ideas, processes, and information - grow in global trade share of, the real traditional stuff from the application of new knowledge creation economy.The increasingly important in society. Increased staff turnover. People do not take a job for life anymore. When they leave they leave with the knowledge organization of global them.Large geographically small or even organizations not rapid changes in technology, business and society can lead to knowledge obsolete. As things change so quickly, in some companies, decreasing their knowledge base. Some 50 percent of what the staff knew five years ago may be obsolete. To create a Knowledge Sharing Culture, this is about making knowledge sharing the norm. Sharing knowledge does not only share the information. The purpose of sharing knowledge is to help the entire organization to achieve business goals. This not only share the benefits of one department.Sharing knowledge is as significant learning to make knowledge productive. It's hard to change a culture.

Companies that want to create a culture of sharing knowledge that need to encourage staff to work together more effectively, to collaborate and share - the last to make knowledge more productive organization. However, the direct and indirect benefits should be put in place to encourage knowledge workers may be financially sharing.Knowledge or admirable appreciated to contribute to working knowledge. However, it may not be true in all cases because it is impossible to make people share their knowledge with their benefit only. Some employees are motivated by more than just money, such as experience and knowledge they can get themselves for doing the work of knowledge. Therefore it is necessary to ensure that the appropriate reward in place.Behavior knowledge sharing can be encouraged when employees realize that sharing knowledge is valuable to them. Sharing knowledge helps employees do their jobs more effectively. Also, help them maintain their jobs, assist them in personal development and career advancement, reward them for getting things done, to understand what they know in the whole picture. Skills learned and applied in one part of this organization is not utilizing the sustainable innovation processes will maintain a competitive advantage in most companies.

Reference:
[1]Renita Dubey, http://www.articlesbase.com/management-articles/knowledge-management-and-its-benefits-to-service-industry-2051629.html

The Important of Knowledge Management in Business

2010-12-06T01:56:00.000-08:00

Knowledge is a philosophical concept defined by Plato as a belief that is supported by an account or explanation (Blair, 2002). In the context of view of an organization's knowledge, the definition indicates the knowledge that comes from increasing the company's ability to utilize and a sense of the information available to create value for shareholders (Leiponen, 2006).

There has been significant growth in knowledge-based school of thought, which shows that the yield and retention of knowledge can have a positive effect on firm performance (In Mattia & Scott, 1999). To manage the company's intangible assets with leverage for these benefits are considered a core capability. Knowledge management (KM) has aimed at capturing, integrating and using existing organizational knowledge and consequently creating a knowledge asset that can be a source of sustainable competitive advantage in the long run (Brooking, 1999; Havens & Knapp, 1999). Revolution in KM come with the advent of technology and there have been misunderstandings linking IT with MI, although only facilitate the process (Papers4you.com, 2006).

The literature divides knowledge into two main categories depending on the nature to be codified for use in the KM system. Structured and systematic knowledge that can be described in a formal language and easily communicated and shared through formal means qualify for this kind of explicit knowledge (Elizabeth, 2001). It was decided that the knowledge is easier to arrange in the form of a database and viewed as a basic resource for the inherent nature of easy imitation by other organizations. Another form of knowledge that has been gained tremendous importance of collective behavior is automatic and is called tacit knowledge (Richard et al, 2001). Tacit knowledge, according to Sajjad et al (2005), consists of mental models, values, beliefs, assumptions and perceptions that are fascinated to the organization's intellectual capital. It has been suggested that tacit knowledge is clearly faced with a dichotomy that is imitated features that make it a sustainable source of competitive advantage also makes it difficult to capture and share in the organization to obtain the potential benefits.

Therefore it can be concluded that elusive asset knowledge, which provides organizations with the ability to weaken the competition also proved to be a challenge to leverage itself (Papers4you.com, 2006). Every organization should not only see 'best practices' in the field but had to adjust each culture unique approach and requirements to successfully using MI.

Reference:
Blair, D.C. (2002), "Knowledge management: hype, hope, or help?", Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 53(12), 1019-1028

BROOKING, Annie (1999), "Corporate Memory: Strategies for Knowledge Management", Intellectual Capital Series London: International Thomson Business

Di Mattia, S. & Scott, I. A. (1999), "KM: hope, hype or harbinger?", Library Journal, 15 September, 122(15), p. 33

Elizabeth A. Smith, (2001), "The role of tacit and explicit knowledge in the workplace", Journal of Knowledge Management; Volume: 5 Issue: 4; 2001 Research Paper

Havens, C. & Knapp, E. (1999), "Easing into Knowledge Management, Strategy and Leadership", 27(2), p. 4

Leiponen, Aija (2006), "Managing Knowledge for Innovation: The Case of Business-to-Business Services", Journal of Product Innovation Management, May2006, Vol. 23 Issue 3, p238-258

Papers For You (2006) "P/M/440. Tools of knowledge management", Available from http://www.coursework4you.co.uk/sprtmgt8.htm [22/06/2006]

Papers For You (2006) "P/M/325. Knowledge management: definition of the concept", Available from Papers4you.com [21/06/2006]

Richard T. Herschel, Hamid Nemati, David Steiger (2001), "Tacit to explicit knowledge conversion: knowledge exchange protocols", Journal of Knowledge Management; Volume: 5 Issue: 1; 2001 Research paper

Sajjad M. Jasimuddin, Jonathan H. Klein, Con Connell (2005), "The paradox of using tacit and explicit knowledge: Strategies to face dilemmas", Management Decision; Volume: 43 Issue: 1; 2005 Conceptual paper

Read more: http://www.articlesbase.com/management-articles/how-important-is-knowledge-management-for-businesses-40447.html#ixzz17K86bDgF\

Communication Issues in Knowledge Management Implementation

2010-11-23T20:20:00.000-08:00

Inside Knowledge magazine talks to Andréa Thompson about the change management issues surrounding KM.

The knowledge that exists within your organization is your only sustainable source of competitive advantage. We believe this makes knowledge management a strategic imperative. But how do you ensure that your KM initiative is effective, that it delivers on its promises and that your organization sees a return on its KM investment?

Change communications and engaging employees is a critical part of this process and in this interview we talk to Andréa Thompson, Managing Director of Marmalade Consulting about some of the key communications issues organizations face in implementing KM.

Q. What are the key change-management issues that organisations need to address when looking to develop a KM programme?

A. The key change-management issues are: committed support from the top, the need for companies to put KM at the heart of their business strategy, introduce measurement tools and recognise the importance of engaging with target audiences through a comprehensive and robust communications plan.

Large companies tend to be composed of specialist units (commonly known as silos) and therefore no one person has a clear understanding of the overall corporate objectives in terms of what a KM initiative should achieve.

Organisations need to bridge the gap between ‘doing’ and ‘acting’. KM is a culture shift that transforms the way the company does business. It is about encouraging cross-functional working and improving individual performance for the benefit of the employee, the company and ultimately the customer.

Q. Do you think organisations looking to implement a KM programme have paid enough attention to these issues in the past?

A. Definitely not. We have a work culture that is information rich but most definitely knowledge poor. Companies need to define clear principles for KM rather than hold a mass of data that serves little purpose in growing the business.

In my experience one of biggest barriers to success is the failure of senior management to understand the value that informed internal communication can bring. By all means focus on process but don’t forget the emotional experience. It is your employees whose knowledge you require and they are the ones that will make it happen – if you cannot engage your audience you have little hope of improving operating performance and little chance of success.

Q. What can a well thought-out change-management strategy bring to a KM programme?

A. Success. Stakeholders need to establish a common recognition of the change required, agree the benefits of a clearly defined KM approach, establish a process to support it and define what level of support is required to make it happen. KM needs to become part of the culture and ‘the way we do things’.

Q. What techniques can organisations use to help increase acceptance of changing working practices?

A. There is no prescriptive method and no perfect way to communicate change. However, whatever the method, communication has a critical role to play in gaining the acceptance and participation of employees. There are many frustrations regarding methods of communication. Inevitably you can’t please all the people all the time, but there are some fundamentals that can be addressed. One overriding factor is that communication is vital for a successful change programme.

Many different channels can be used from a simple CEO memo through to full-scale staged event and getting the balance of communication channels right is extremely important. The most important aspect is to segment the audience and target messages and channels appropriately and consistently over a specified time period.

The overall lesson for communication is that the ‘closer’ you can get to the individual the more effective communications will be – hence the importance of the cascade process and face-to-face delivery.

People need to be listened to during times of change more so than usual. One-to-one meetings with managers should be seen as a critical part of the process. In difficult times, spokespeople are listened to more than ever, so it is essential that all messages are co-ordinated and that the company speaks with one voice. A leader’s behavioural can make the different between success and failure.

For example – the knowledge steward: We worked with Innogy One, the engineering division of Innogy (now RWE Energy), on the branding and communication of a knowledge-management initiative. There was a small, dedicated team to ensure the successful implementation of the programme and knowledge stewards were introduced into the process. The knowledge steward was someone who was not only supportive of the KM principle but was also experienced in the business and, importantly, a good networker.

This ensures that positive messages are being relayed to the team in which they operate and also other departments across the division. This works successfully on two levels: it begins to break down the silos in which so many companies operate and it brings together dedicated champions from each department on a regular basis to share experiences and ideas. In effect, they become the communication lynch pins through which everything is funnelled, creating consistency and commitment.

Another important aspect, and one that has worked for GSK and the United Health Group, is measurement. It should be a key part of the process to provide simple feedback loops ensuring people’s concerns are listened to and addressed.

Q. How important is senior-management buy-in in encouraging the adoption of new working practices?

A. The importance of strong leadership and the cascade process should never be underestimated. If the programme has support from the highest level then employees are far more likely to take it as a credible management initiative driven from the top. If the management team do not present a unified front then the programme has little hope of succeeding. Sponsors should give visible support as often as possible in terms of face-to-face team meetings, editorials, quotes and feedback.

When working with GSK on the introduction of a global project management improvement programme (Apex), sponsorship was key to success. It was visibly supported at the highest level and the programme director made it a priority to consistently rally advocates by keeping all senior management informed and involved at every step of the process. This was done on a face-to-face communication level supported by appropriate communications tools. This process ensured they were motivated and enthused in terms of cascading information through to their teams. I have rarely seen a better example of the impact senior-management buy in can make. Not only was the programme director fully committed to making it happen but the director was also given the resource and budget to do it properly.

Q. How important is the process of obtaining feedback from those the KM programme will affect?

A. In our experience, talking to the people who will be affected by the programme is essential. Before starting work on any KM programme, employees’ opinions should be gauged to gain a better insight into their needs and expectations and they should be encouraged to contribute ideas. In this way they feel involved from the outset and they will have an awareness and anticipation of the programme well before the launch. Once issues are understood, benefit-led messages can be introduced to address them.

Feeding back the feedback is just as important. It is critical to understand any ongoing issues so that any shortfall or drift can be addressed. We have experienced situations where research with employees has been carried out but they have had no follow- up communication so why should they bother next time round?

Q. How important is it that KM is integrated with existing work practices and not made a separate function in its own right?

KM should never be a separate function but the management team should be mindful of the existing processes used by the company. What are the lessons learnt? Are these practices useful to our way of working? And, importantly, are they the future of the organisation?

A. Many existing KM or project-management programmes are introduced on a project-by-project basis, not in the context of a wider, properly developed ‘vision’. The KM vision should strive towards a good practice and self-development programme that is linked to the organisation’s long-term corporate objectives. In which case they must be assessed and abandoned if not required. The best of the best should be taken from existing programmes and incorporated into the new working practices.

The KM programme of the United Health Group, a private health-insurance company in the US, combined five good-practice methodologies together in the same system. Taking the best from the best and pulling it together to make one common good-practice toolbox that would be introduced as a mandatory way of working for internal employees and also external consultants.

Q. What are the most common pitfalls relating to change management that organisations need to avoid when attempting to implement KM?

A. One of the most common pitfalls is to hand over the project to IT. KM should be viewed as a key asset because it is a lot more than technology. Stop viewing it as a process tool and begin to think of it as a culture change, which should be driven and supported from the top until it becomes second nature.

An IT system is an enabling tool that facilitates support. The purpose of KM, however, is to encourage faster and smarter working, built on the sharing of good-practice information and knowledge that will benefit the individual, and ultimately the company. Individuals need to recognise how it benefits them before they will support it. It is worth bearing in mind that the most powerful persuasion tool is self-interest.

Q. What are the likely consequences for organisations that continue to neglect the change-management aspects of knowledge management?

A. In large organisations, in particular those who are less asset focused, KM is fundamental to growth and profitability. If companies do not recognise the importance of change management in this area but continue to introduce systems on a project-by-project basis with no consideration to the wider company strategy, then effort will continue to be duplicated and the opportunity to capture intellectual capital will be lost.

Q. Are there any other issues that you feel deserve closer attention?

A. Having a well-conceived programme is one challenge; making people aware of it and want to use it is yet another.

Engaging the internal audience through customer-focused communications can contribute enormously in this process. In the outside world people will only buy something they think is worth buying, the same principles apply to our internal customer.

In my experience, employees successfully adopt this type of programme when it is well branded and promoted. The Apex initiative for GlaxoSmithKline is one such example. Apex (Advancing Project Expertise) is a well-planned system but to help its success we applied the rules of branding. The programme has a name, an identity; a visual appeal and targeted communications that were key to helping achieve heightened awareness and outstanding success.

A strong brand can encourage employees, it can provide a framework, common link, direction and cohesion, and a shared sense of purpose and unified attitude. It is a very powerful tool in the persuasion process.

Reference:
[1] Andrea Thomson, http://www.articlesbase.com/organizational-articles/critical-communication-issues-in-knowledge-management-implementation-1682123.html

Knowledge Management and Learning Organisation

2010-11-19T16:42:00.000-08:00

Moving Beyond “Knowledge for Knowledge’s sake”

Quick ± in 25 words or less, define knowledge management. Can't do it? You're not alone.

    There are an assortment of disciplines that have influenced the field of Knowledge Management (KM) thinking and praxis – the most prominent are philosophy, in defining knowledge; cognitive science (in understanding knowledge workers); social science (in understanding motivation, people, interactions, culture and environment); management science (in optimising operations and integrating them within the enterprise); information science (in building knowledge-related capabilities); knowledge engineering (in eliciting and codifying knowledge); artificial intelligence (in automating routine and knowledge-intensive work) and economics (in determining priorities). As a result, there are enormous working definitions of KM and emergent philosophies circulating in the literature and around corporations of the world.

            One cannot get a clear understanding and definition of what KM is without studying the various concepts of knowledge and information (including data), as well as the tacit, implicit, and explicit knowledge dimensions. Much of the still existing confusion that surrounds the topic of KM is based on the varied scholars’ interpretations and suggestions distinguishing the terms information and knowledge as well as the terms tacit, implicit, and explicit.

What is knowledge?

             Some authors appear to try to avoid the epistemological debate on the definition of knowledge by comparing data, information, and knowledge. However, von Krogh et al. (2000) or Kakabadse et al.’s (2003) understanding of knowledge as ‘justified true belief” goes back to Michael Polanyi’s original work (we know more than we can express) (Polanyi 1958), an epistemological position which is acknowledged to have grown out of Plato’s discourses (Meno, Phaedo and Theaetetus). This definition has been particularly adopted by Western philosophy (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995), which provides a comprehensive taxonomy of knowledge models, Plato’s concept was also debated from Aristotle, one of his students, throughout continental rationalism, as well as from German philosophy (Kant 1965; Marx 1976; Hegel 1977); British empiricism (Locke 1987) to twentieth-century philosophers (Dewey 1929; Sartre 1956; Habermas 1972; Tsoukas 1996; cited in Kakabdse et al. 2003, p. 77).

            The above discourse implies that knowledge itself is a very multifaceted concept with many different variations and definitions. Based on the fact that the nature of knowledge is widely acknowledged on differing epistemological stands taken from the individual contributors, but led ultimately to the following definition of ‘knowledge’:

            “Knowledge is a fluid mix of framed experience, values, contextual information, and expert insight that provides a framework for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information. It originates and is applied in the minds of knowers. In organisations it often becomes embedded, not only in documents or repositories but also in organisational routines, processes, practices and norms.” (Davenport and Prusak 2000, p. 5).

Knowledge: Tacit/Implicit/Explicit

            ‘Tacit’ knowledge is not expressible and can in no way be made directly explicit or in other words codified into rules and formulations (e.g. the way a project manager behaviourally interacts or communicates during a conflict-solving process). In other words it has to do with an individual’s aptitude for doing things or even cognitively thinking about things.

            ‘Implicit’ knowledge is expressible and by applying appropriate knowledge management practices it has the chance to be made explicit. Thus, implicit knowledge is then transferred into explicit knowledge in a direct way. This process of transferring can be observed through the propagation, application, the amalgamation or the interpretation of explicit knowledge. Interestingly, from time to time, the terms ‘tacit’ and ‘implicit’ are used interchangeably..

            ‘Explicit’ knowledge is expressed implicit knowledge. There is enough evidence from the literature as well as from practice, suggesting that the two terms ‘explicit knowledge’ and ‘information’ have exactly the same meaning. In other words, explicit knowledge should be regarded as implicit knowledge, which when expressed becomes information. However, whereas the management of knowledge is mostly understood as the management of the processes, which can support the conversion of employees’ individual knowledge into overall organisational implicit knowledge, the management of explicit knowledge is understood as the management of knowledge-objects typically held as information in the organisation’s information base or systems in form of data records or documents.

The history of KM

            Knowledge management (KM) is currently receiving significant attention, from both academics and practitioners, and is being addressed by broad range of academic literature and popular press. The study of human knowledge has been central subject matter of philosophy and epistemology since the ancient Greeks and western philosophers. Eastern philosophers, Tzu and Confucius in China and their contemporaries in India, have an equally long and well-documented tradition of emphasising knowledge and comprehension for the conduct of spiritual and secular life. The first attempts at KM, such as capture, storage and retrieval, began with the Cuneiform language in about 3000 BC.

            A number of management theorists have contributed to the evolution of KM, among them such notables as Peter Drucker, Paul Strassmann, and Peter Senge in the United States. Drucker and Strassmann have stressed the growing importance of information and explicit knowledge as organisational resources, and Senge has focused on the "learning organisation," a cultural dimension of managing knowledge. Chris Argyris, Christoper Bartlett, and Dorothy Leonard-Barton of Harvard Business School have all examined diverse aspects of managing knowledge. In fact, Leonard-Barton’s well-known case study of Chaparral Steel, a company which has had an effective KM strategy in place since the mid-1970s, inspired the research documented in her Wellsprings of Knowledge.

            The 1980s also saw the development of systems for managing knowledge that relied on work done in artificial intelligence and expert systems, giving us such concepts as "knowledge acquisition," "knowledge engineering," "knowledge-base systems, and computer-based ontologies. Knowledge management-related articles began appearing in journals like Sloan Management Review, Organisational Science, Harvard Business Review, and others, and the first books on organisational learning and knowledge management were published (for example, Senge’s The Fifth Discipline and Sakaiya’s The Knowledge Value Revolution).

            By 1990, a number of management consulting firms had begun in-house knowledge management programs, and several well known U.S., European, and Japanese firms had instituted focused knowledge management programs. Perhaps the most widely read work to date is Ikujiro Nonaka’s and Hirotaka Takeuchi’s The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation (1995).

            By the mid-1990s, knowledge management initiatives were flourishing, thanks in part to the Internet. Knowledge management, which appears to offer a highly desirable alternative to failed TQM and business process re-engineering initiatives, has become big business for such major international consulting firms as Ernst & Young, Arthur Andersen, and Booz-Allen & Hamilton.

What is KM?

            Murray E. Jennex (2005) tells us that during a conversation he had with a fellow engineer, he made the comment that it was too bad we could not get back to the moon. Murrray, of course, agreed and expressed the desire that the government would allocate funds for it. His friend then surprised him by saying it was not money that was the issue but that what really prevents the US from getting back to the moon is that they do not remember how to build Saturn V rockets, Apollo capsules, and Lunar Modules. It seems after the end of the Apollo programme; management ordered all the plans put on microfiche and all but a few of the paper copies destroyed. This was done, however, when there was talk of going back to the moon and engineers went to retrieve the plans, the usable paper copies could be found, and everyone who knew how to build the rockets, capsules, and modules were either dead or retired. Additionally, when the younger engineers began to reverse engineer these components, they were stymied because they did not understand the technology from that time; technology had advanced so much that the engineers had not been taught some of the fundamental issues faced by engineers of that time. In other words, they had forgotten the knowledge from the experience of solving the problems that prevented moon flights.

            The above does in fact show that the space program is an example of failed KM. They attempted to store relevant knowledge but when it came time to retrieve it, it could not be retrieved and applied to the current decision- making activity due to media volatility and a lack of capturing the relevant context that makes the critical knowledge usable.

Why do we need KM?

            Why do we need knowledge management? We need KM because we need a proper process to help organisations identify, capture, store, and retrieve critical knowledge. We need KM processes to help organisations deal with changing storage strategies. We need KM to help us deal with the transience of knowledge workers. We need KM processes to help organisations manage a glut of knowledge. Ultimately, we need KM to help organisations make sense of what they know, to know what they know, and to effectively use what they know. The whole point of knowledge management (KM) is to make sure that the knowledge present in an organisation is applied productively for the benefit of that organisation.

            An organisation’s emergency preparedness activities might involve collaborative efforts between various entities. A vital activity is responding to an actual crisis situation that hits one or more of the member organisations/entities. For some organisations, responding to a crisis situation in done within a consortium environment. Managing knowledge across the various entities involved in such efforts is critical. This includes having the right set of information that is timely, relevant, and is governed by an effective communication process given such organisational structures, and the need to manage knowledge in these environments through effective Knowledge Management Systems (KMS).

            KM efforts typically focus on organisational objectives such as improved performance, competitive advantage, innovation, the sharing of lessons learned, and continuous improvement of the organisation. KM efforts may overlap with Organisational Learning and may be distinguished from that by a greater focus on the management of knowledge as a strategic asset and a focus on encouraging the sharing of knowledge. KM efforts can help individuals and groups to share valuable organisational insights, to reduce redundant work, to avoid reinventing the wheel per se, to reduce training time for new employees, to retain intellectual capital as employees turnover in an organisation, and to adapt to changing environments and markets.

Implications of Global cultural diversity on KM

            Global cultural diversity has profound implications for the effective design and implementation of knowledge management (KM) projects. Thus, the view on global cultural diversity recognises the existence of different organisational contexts and great care must be taken when making assumptions about patterns of organisational performance and innovations (Avgerou, 2002). For example, the wide gap in the availability and use of ICT across the world, and the influences ICT exerts on globalisation, raise questions about the feasibility and desirability of efforts to implement the development of ICT through the transfer of best practices from Western industrialised countries to developing countries, and whether organisations can utilise such ICT in accordance with the socio-cultural requirements of the contexts (Avgerou, 2002).

            Reliable research concludes that diversity and local context does matter, and that the global techniques employed in western industrialised countries should not be implemented mechanically in developing countries without consideration for the local context. Further, gender considerations have been shown to be of great importance in the successful adoption of ICT.

The Arab region Knowledge Evolution

            Recently, there have been a couple of noticeable groundbreaking models pursued by Dubai and Qatar to transubstantiate the region’s population into a ‘‘knowledge society.’’ Both of these initiatives deemed human development a central goal and targeted narrowing the knowledge gap between the Arab region and the rest of the world. At the latest Middle East World Economic Forum, held in Jordan in May 2007, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, launched an endowment of ten billion US dollars for an avant garde foundation called the ‘‘Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation’’ to promote knowledge in the region.

            The second major initiative occurred in Qatar, where the government gathered leading world university representatives into a center for knowledge-creation called ‘‘Education City,’’ which is headquarters for the ‘‘Qatar Foundation.’’ The main objective is to form the most powerful educational and research hub in the Middle East.

             One of these efforts may lead to Beit Elhikma II or may produce distinguished geniuses such as Averroes (ibn-Rushd) (1126-1198), who created the first domestic and exotic knowledge hybridisation model that is not only admired, but also accepted, by Western societies. Averroes published his commentaries on Aristotle based on the epistemic fundament that ‘‘knowledge is the conformity of the object and the intellect.’’ The comeback of the Arab mind in a systematic ‘‘brain gain’’ program is needed as happened in India.

            To align the intellectual capacities with new business requirements, the region must work on different fronts to invest in expatriates, to leverage its strategies to reverse the ‘‘brain drain’’ and to fill the knowledge gap at both intra- and inter-regional levels. To keep the momentum of the ‘‘Knowledge Society” paradigm, the sustainability of the paradigm needs uninterrupted diffusion and infusion of innovations and continuously relevant knowledge, which may need restructuring at the organisational level.

            The chimera of ‘‘epistemic sovereignty’’ is an outmoded self-centeredness that is not acceptable in the current globalised marketplace. More pointedly, epistemological pluralism is required for success in the realm of the ‘‘knowledge society’’. A ‘‘co-opetitive’’ relationship is considered crucial to build the ‘‘knowledge society’’. The Arab world can revert from the status of ‘‘knowledge entropy’’ to the former ‘‘golden age’’ of Islam – if the principles of modern knowledge are effectively leveraged and crossbred with traditions to result in a lucrative ‘‘knowmadism’’.

Knowledge transfer and social capital: the case of Corporate Egypt

            Most of the knowledge related initiatives in Egypt have been at the country and community levels with limited emphasis at the organisational level. According to the World Development report for Africa, Egypt needs to work fast in order to increase its knowledge base, to invest in educating the people about knowledge management, and to take advantage of the new technologies for acquiring and disseminating knowledge. The report emphasises the importance of (1) instituting policies that enable them to narrow the knowledge gaps that separate poor countries from rich countries; (2) promoting collaborations among the organisations—governments, multilateral institutions, nongovernmental organisations, and the private sector—in order to work together; and (3) nurturing a knowledge sharing culture.

            A study performed on 41 public/private organisations in Egypt using Hofstede’s (1980) cultural dimensions highlights the need for a change in network relationships and efforts to build the relational dimension of social capital. While the structural and cognitive dimensions are already in place, the insubstantiality of the relational dimension and the focus on individual achievement are curtailing members from sharing their expertise. It is apparent that the lack of trust in getting credit for the information they share makes it hard for them to volunteer their expertise unless instructed to do so and unless they feel the risk of not obeying commands.

            It was concluded that the initiative has to start at the top in order for knowledge workers to have confidence in the system and to be able to cross the cultural gap between a knowledge-hoarding and a knowledge-sharing environment. The initiative must define several processes in order to enable the cultural transition. The study showed that the development of social capital as an infrastructure for knowledge transfer is a critical facilitator of knowledge transfer within organisations. Combining members’ knowledge resources can lead to collaborative knowledge creation that has the potential to limit the economic and knowledge gaps that exist within Egyptian organisations.

Knowledge sharing / lessons learned / storytelling

            U.S. Army has installed knowledge sharing as a standard part of its work in both training and real duty in the form of its well known after-action reviews. No effort is considered complete until it has been reviewed and its lessons obtained, including the lessons learned from failures.

            During the U.S. military efforts in Bosnia, lessons learned were distributed on a frequent basis. Because such observations as, “avoid snow-covered roads with no vehicle tracks, as they are probably mined” were credited with saving lives, members of other cooperating armies frequently requested a copy of the latest “lessons learned.”

            Openness builds confidence and sharing stories openly builds confidence in employees and in the organisation as a whole. This openness also leads to the development of trust that can support innovation. This is done by individuals using stories to build confidence in themselves, the direction of their team or the future of the company. In these cases the moral of the story could be “We did it before and we can do it again”, or “Look how bright the future can be.”

            Companies can further develop the organisation and its employees if people are given the opportunity to reflect on both the positive and negative realities of their workplace. Learning from each others past mistakes or successes through stories can build awareness, skill and confidence. The “glory days” tales or “war stories” you hear informally or formally throughout a company present learning opportunities without having to actually go through the experience. This is what NASA did to convey the culture of excitement around advancing space exploration to a young generation.

            Texas Instruments is a company that is extremely serious about encouraging re-use of ideas and design by its engineers. To encourage this process Texas Instruments periodically holds a contest within the company to collect the best story based on “We didn’t build it here but we used it anyway.” Teams within Texas Instruments scramble to come up with the best story on design re-use. They then share the story with others at an awards dinner. The stories and the activities of the company serve to foster their knowledge-sharing culture. In a well known example, Texas Instruments has achieved $1.5 billion in additional wafer fabrication capacity as a result of their knowledge-sharing program.

Knowledge work and knowledge workers

            Early literature on knowledge work tended to take a Taylorist view, separating ‘thinking’ and ‘doing’ and comparing it with the fundamentally different but more familiar, type of manual work or blue collar work (Drucker, 1999; Schultze, 2000). Task performance within knowledge work cannot be compared with the sequential prescribed performance of manual work, by claiming that knowledge work is the exact opposite. Contemporary concept of knowledge work integrates doing and thinking and involves an uninterrupted cycle of re-use and creation of knowledge, which can be compared to a process of learning by doing. It involves a large amount of tacit knowledge (Schultze, 2000).

             A knowledge worker in today's workforce is an individual that is valued for their ability to interpret information within a specific subject area. They will often advance the overall understanding of that subject through focused analysis, design and/or development. They use research skills to define problems and to identify alternatives. The term was first coined by Peter Drucker (1959), as one who works primarily with information or one who develops and uses knowledge in the workplace. Toffler (1990) observed that typical knowledge workers (especially R&D scientists and engineers) in the age of knowledge economy must have some system at their disposal to create, process and enhance their own knowledge. In some cases they would also need to manage the knowledge of their co-workers. Knowledge workers engage in ‘’peer-to-peer’’ knowledge sharing across organisational and company boundaries, forming networks of expertise.

Knowledge Management (KM) Strategy

            Two philosophies for managing knowledge have evolved over the past decade. Firstly, the codification or explicit-oriented approach, which aligns strategy with information management efforts, such as embedding knowledge in documents, which can be stored and reused. Secondly, the personalisation strategy or tacit-oriented KM style emphasises the human and hence more complex part of tacit or implicit knowledge. Attempts to externalise and transfer this type of knowledge are based on communication strategies, both faceto- face and technology supported, by facilitating informal networks.

            Traditionally, organisations tend to focus on the tangible part of knowledge, introducing information and communication systems to capture and document knowledge, even though these efforts might never have been explicitly termed a ‘KM strategy’ or aligned with organisational strategy. In recent years, however, KM researchers have realised that human KM is the challenge, which has revived the notion of social networks.

            Some other knowledge management strategies for companies include:

    * rewards (as a means of motivating for knowledge sharing)
    * storytelling (as a means of transferring tacit knowledge)
    * after action reviews
    * knowledge mapping (a map of knowledge repositories within a company accessible by all)
    * communities of practice
    * best practice transfer
    * collaborative technologies (groupware, etc)
    * knowledge repositories (databases, etc)
    * measuring and reporting intellectual capital (a way of making explicit knowledge for companies)
    * social software (wikis, social bookmarking, blogs, etc)

KM (CoPs) Strategy: A success story

            Communities of practice (CoPs) are designated networks of people who share information and knowledge. Community members exchange ideas, collaborate, and learn from one another in both face-to-face and virtual environments. For example:

            Caterpillar, Inc. is the world's No. 1 producer of earthmoving machinery and a leading supplier of agricultural equipment. The organisation's strategic driver for communities was just-in-time learning. In the past, Caterpillar employees attended in-class training on topics they might or might not find relevant to their daily jobs. By constrast, CoPs provide a platform through which employees can obtain timely answers to current issues or problems. Communities at Caterpillar are very narrowly focused in order to maintain a direct relationship between community activities and daily work. Communities are a way for Caterpillar employees to connect with the organisation's global partners, customers, or teams in a virtual environment. Caterpillar currently has approximately 3,500 CoPs with about 40,000 unique participants. Approximately 7,000 Caterpillar dealers also participate in the organisation's CoPs.

Knowledge management as "doing the right thing" (effectiveness) instead of "doing things right" (efficiency).

            The relatively stable and unchanging environment of the past allowed the luxury of predicting, pre-defining and pre-determining the future based on past data. Businesses could once define their business models, business practices and business value propositions - thereafter, the key challenge remained that of optimisation for increased efficiencies: of 'doing things right'.

            However, changing customer trends, competitive products and services and changing societal and governmental pressures make the existing business models, business practices and business value propositions obsolete. Most of us are aware of the bloodbath in the desktop computer industry that eliminated many companies competing for business worldwide. However, some companies realised that the only performance outcomes that matter are the ones the customers really care about. They have been savoir-faire in tailoring and growing their customer value propositions around what the customers really needed rather than what they wanted to sell to customers. Dell has been an agile player that has been able to refine and play the game of 'doing the right thing' again and again, first in desktops and later in web hosting, printers, PDAs and storage. In the longer run, companies that can figure out the 'next right thing' and prepare well in advance to ride the next wave will be more effective in the longer run. However, it goes without saying that 'doing the thing right' also matters once you have figured out what the next cash cow will be.

            One central measure of organisational effectiveness is the creation and continuance of a measurable competitive advantage. Many broad initiatives such as efficiency, core competency advancement, actualisation of customer-centric products and services, and limitation of the fixed costs of doing business can help to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage within the marketplace. Thus, the effective management of knowledge understandably has the capacity to deeply impact the way a firm does business from the minor details of daily operations to the broadest strategic decision-making processes.

Organisational Learning/Learning Organisation

            Argyris (1977) defines organisational learning (OL) as the process of "detection and correction of errors." In his view organisations learn through individuals acting as agents for them: "The individuals' learning activities, in turn, are facilitated or inhibited by an ecological system of factors that may be called an organisational learning system".

            Huber (1991) considers four constructs as integrally linked to OL: knowledge acquisition, information distribution, information interpretation, and organisational memory. He clarifies that learning need not be conscious or intentional. Further, learning does not always increase the learner's effectiveness, or even potential effectiveness. Moreover, learning need not result in observable changes in behaviour.

            Moreover, by taking the view of the organisation as a learning system, Senge contributed meaningful new insights. In his highly cited publication ‘The Fifth Discipline’ (1990) he argues that the organisations that will truly excel in the future will be the ones that discover how to tap people's commitment and capacity to learn at all levels within an organisation. Senge believes that the ‘five component technologies’ are converging to create learning organisations: Personal Master - Shared Vision - Team Learning - Mental Models - Systems Thinking

            In his work ‘Disciplines of Organisational Learning: Contributions and Critiques’, Easterby-Smith (1997) argues against most scholars’ attempts to create a single framework for understanding and explaining the management of OL. By reviewing the most meaningful literature in the field he identified the following six disciplinary perspectives: psychology and organisational development, sociology, management science, strategy, production management, as well as cultural anthropology.

            Ang & Joseph (1996) contrast Organisational Learning and Learning Organisation in terms of process versus structure. They define OL as the ability of an organisation to gain insight and understanding from experience through experimentation, observation, analysis, and a willingness to examine both successes and failures. However, the managers' role in the Learning Organisation, Senge (1990) argues, is that of a designer, teacher, and steward who can build shared vision and challenge prevailing mental models. He/she is responsible for building organisations where people are continually expanding their capabilities to shape their future -- that is, leaders are responsible for learning.

Implementation of KM: The Xerox Case

            Xerox was set out to be as educated as possible about knowledge management (KM). The organisation has spent considerable financial resources and time to codify the collective knowledge through its research, consortium work, and sponsorship of research.

            During a study on its representative’s behaviour, Xerox noticed that most of the causes of breakdowns in the machines they sold couldn’t be found in any of the firm’s record of cases.
However representatives, thanks to their own knowledge and the knowledge they shared among each other during lunch breaks, were able to solve those problems.

            The solution, called Eureka project, was the creation of: An electronic database, in which they stored best practices, ideas and solutions; an intranet for representatives to make knowledge accessible to the whole company and facilitate the information sharing.

            The validity of the KM Eureka project’s implementation is strictly linked to the economic resources that it succeeds in recovering and saving up. In that perspective, the project Eureka made the Xerox Corporation save about the 5-10% on the job developed from the representatives and about $10 million on the cost of pieces or replaced machines.

Poor Knowledge Management can kill

            On September 30, 1999, a nuclear criticality accident occurred at a uranium processing plant operated by JCO Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as JCO) in Tokai village, Ibaraki Prefecture. A solution of enriched uranium in an amount several times more than the specified mass limit had been poured directly into a precipitation tank bypassing a dissolution tank and buffer column intended to avoid criticality. This action was in contravention of the legally approved criticality control measures. Three JCO plant workers were exposed to high levels of radiation in the accident. This has resulted in the death of two of the workers making this an unprecedented nuclear accident in Japan which has developed nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

            Except for what are sometimes called ‘Act of God’, any problems arising at a nuclear plant originate in some way in human error. However, unless there is a sufficient set of vulnerability causal factors and one or more triggering causal factors, neither an instance of human error nor a consequential event occurs. Based on the systemic analysis of the criticality accident, it was proved that its root cause was inappropriate knowledge management - combination of (1) inadequate risk awareness by the top management and (2) “kaizen” (production improvement) drives.

Conclusion

            Today’s more balanced view of KM is therefore a combination of managing explicit information resources as well as managing the working environment and people so that tacit knowledge is more readily developed, shared and exploited. KM is well beyond the “fad” stage – from previous surveys that showed two thirds of senior managers regarded KM as a fad, today it is recognised as fundamental and a contributor of value. It does add value to an organisation’s bottom line, and though difficult to prove directly, new measuring instruments have helped stakeholders identify the sources of value more clearly.

            KM becomes more pervasive, a knowledge ‘lens’ and KM perspective are being applied to wide range of management and business processes. Total quality management, customer relationship management and risk management are examples of where such approaches have given stakeholders new insights and methods improves through the fusion of existing methods with good KM practice.

            KM was very much a practitioner led discipline and only belatedly has the academic community caught up. However, there are now several business schools with active programmes of research. We are constantly learning more about KM in different contexts. KM is also considered a side-show until it is fully integrated into the strategic planning and decision processes of an organisation, which means the explicit recognition of knowledge, and KM in the corporate strategy and a clear articulation of its contribution to the business bottom line (including non-financial objectives).

            Both the literature on organisational learning and knowledge management has been growing over the past years. While OL primarily aims to identify the underlying processes of learning by clarifying critical issues like the content, agents and levels of learning, KM takes a proactive role of explicitly providing guidelines for active intervention into the organisation’s knowledge base. Both perspectives have their merits. OL provides a theoretical framework for analysing changes in the organisational knowledge base. This framework can be used to hypothesise and explain cognitive and behavioural changes within organisations over time. KM serves as a manager’s framework for improving the OL’s potential. By guiding managerial intervention into the organisation’s knowledge base, KM serves as a management tool of one of the most critical resources of organisational success.

Reference:
http://www.articlesbase.com/management-articles/knowledge-management-learning-organisation-six-of-one-and-a-half-dozen-of-the-other-1059069.html

What are Knowledge Management Benefits To Service Industry

2010-11-06T17:25:00.000-07:00

In twenty-first century, the industry competes heavily. Entrepreneurs try to use technology to develop their business
. However, using technology generates high costs. So companies need to find a new way to survive by using the existing resources to gain maximum benefit. Knowledge management is one of interesting alternatives as it can deliver competitive advantage such as greater competencies and synergy, more balanced decisions and less errors, more creativity and innovation, broader collaboration and knowledge sharing, and easier links to expertise and deeper understanding.Knowledge management has been used in most product-based companies and it has also extended to use in service sector.

However, there are not many studies looking closely to explain the situation in the service industry while service sector is continuously growing.Thus, it is necessary to understand the situation and how the service sector develops knowledge management strategy. Knowledge management can play an important role to make companies compete productively.Service industry is the one sector of industry involves the provision of services to other businesses as well as to final consumers. Activities are mainly concerned with providing services rather than tangible objects for the benefit of the end users and/or other industries. It includes insurance banking and finance, provision of gas and electricity and water, health care, transport, communications, entertainment, retailing and wholesaling, and central and local government."Knowledge is a fluid mix of framed experience, values, contextual information,and expert insight that provides a framework for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information. It originates and is applied in the minds of knowers. In organizations, it often becomes embedded not only in documents or repositories but also in organizational routines, processes, practices, and norms."Knowledge helps producing information from data or more valuable information from less valuable information. Thus, knowledge is basically similar to information and data, although it is the richest and deepest of the three, and is consequently also the most valuable.When a company creates knowledge, it has to concern about interactive teamworking process.

This process involves different backgrounds, cutting across organizational boundaries, and combing skills, artifacts, knowledge and experiences in new ways. There is an assumption that when people work together, they can produce more creative results than they work individual. It is hard to establish effective teamwork because people come from different backgrounds and have different knowledge bases.Teamworking is a key factor to create knowledge with mutual understanding of deep tacit knowledge based on shared experiences together for a long time. Tacit knowledge is knowledge that is in people's heads and it is hard to explain or communicate with other people. For explicit knowledge, it is knowledge that can be expressed in text form or by speaking. Explicit knowledge is easy to explain and communicate.While advance computer and technology have helped people to link with each other,people also concern about geography affecting them in the new knowledge economy.The emergence of virtual space does not decrease significance of physical space . Even though people have the fast pace of technology to communicate and the ability to transfer data across distances, they still want to contact with others in person by gathering together for events, hand shaking and hugging .

Time is another factor that needs to be considered because virtual communities or online societies make people work with their colleagues anytime and anywhere. For example, an employee can work at four o'clock in the morning with other employees from other continents.Another aspect of time is obsolete knowledge. Although sharing knowledge over time is seen as important, people should not overestimate past knowledge. Knowledge from the past cannot always serve as a basis for the work of today; things can change quickly and radically in innovating industries.Nowadays the creation and application of new knowledge is essential to the survival of Intangible products - ideas, processes, and information - are growing in the share of global trade from the traditional, tangible goods of the manufacturing economy.The application of new knowledge is increasingly important in the society. The increasing in turnover of staff. People do not take a job for life any more. When they leave an organization their knowledge is gone with them.Large global or even small geographically dispersed organizations do not Fast changing in technology, business and society can cause the obsolete knowledge. As things change so quickly, in some companies, their knowledge base declines. As much of 50 per cent of what the staff knew five years ago is probably obsolete .To create a Knowledge Sharing Culture, it is about making knowledge sharing the norm. Sharing knowledge is not just sharing information. The purpose of knowledge sharing is to help a whole organization to reach its business goals. It is not sharing for only the benefit of one department.Sharing knowledge is as significant as learning to make knowledge productive. It is hard to change a culture.

The company which wants to create a knowledge sharing culture needs to encourage it staffs to work together more effectively, to collaborate and to share - lastly to make organizational knowledge more productive. However, Direct and indirect rewards must be put in place to encourage knowledge sharing.Knowledge workers might be financially or admirably rewarded for contributing to knowledge work. However, it might not be true in all cases because it is not possible to make people share their knowledge by only rewarding them. Some employees are motivated by more than just money such as more experiences and knowledge they can gain by themselves during doing knowledge work. Hence it needs to ensure that appropriate rewards are in place.Behavior of knowledge sharing can be encouraged when the employees realize that knowledge-sharing is valuable for them. Sharing knowledge helps employee do their jobs more effectively. Moreover, it helps them keep their jobs; helps them in their personal development and career progression; rewards them for getting things done,understand what they know in the whole picture. Expertise learnt and applied in one part of the organization is not leveraged in another continuous innovation process will sustain the competitive advantage in most companies.

Reference:
[1] Renita Dubey http://www.articlesbase.com/management-articles/knowledge-management-and-its-benefits-to-service-industry-2051629.html

Knowledge Management Practices – The Role of Organizational Culture

2010-11-03T20:06:00.000-07:00

Knowledge is compounding of two words know and ledge. The meaning of first word ‘Know' is to be aware of how to do or perform something, be aware of the truth of something; have a belief or faith in something; regard as true beyond any doubt, be familiar or acquainted with a person or an object, perceive as familiar and second word ‘Ledge' to enhance or ridge mountain. It is tedious to give exact definition or meaning to knowledge. But as per Oxford dictionary, Knowledge is defined as expertise, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject; what is known in a particular field or in total; facts and information; or awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation. The classical definition, described but not ultimately endorsed by Plato, specifies that a statement must meet three criteria in order to be considered knowledge: it must be justified, true, and believed. Management means to attain the object with utilization of resources by the economical way. It is also a technique to set co-ordination in different resources to get maximum output.

Knowledge has two basic definitions of interest. The first pertains to a defined body of information. Depending on the definition, the body of information might consist of facts, opinions, ideas, theories, principles, and models (or other frameworks). Clearly, other categories are possible, too. Subject matter (e.g., chemistry, mathematics, etc.) is just one possibility.

Seeing the definition, knowledge has various kinds of resources to gain it. Management responsibility is to get the knowledge from these resources in economical with effective manner.         Knowledge management (KM) comprises a range of strategies and practices used in an organization to identify, create, represent, distribute, and enable adoption of insights and experiences. Such insights and experiences comprise knowledge, either embodied in individuals or embedded in organizational processes or practice. Many large companies and non-profit organizations have resources dedicated to internal KM efforts, often as a part of their 'business strategy', 'information technology', or 'human resourcemanagement' departments. Several consulting companies also exist that provide strategy and advice regarding KM to these organizations. Knowledge Management efforts typically focus on organizational objectives such as improved performance, competitive advantage, innovation, the sharing of lessons learned, integration and continuous improvement of the organization. KM efforts overlap with organizational learning, and may be distinguished from that by a greater focus on the management of knowledge as a strategic asset and a focus on encouraging the sharing of knowledge. KM efforts can help individuals and groups to share valuable organizational insights, to reduce redundant work, to avoid reinventing the wheel per se, to reduce training time for new employees, to retain intellectual capital as employee's turnover in an organization, and to adapt to changing environments and markets. "Knowledge Management: Where Did It Come From and Where Will It Go?" Knowledge Management is about applying the collective knowledge of the entire workforce to achieve specific organizational goals. It is about facilitating the process by which knowledge is created, shared and utilized.

Knowledge starts from analysis and ends with feedback and review. The development of knowledge has ten phases. The phase explains that the knowledge can never universal and constant over the time. It should revive and works start from phase one to phase ten. It process is perpetual and never end. As per definition and philosophical way knowledge has intention or object. So it can starts from creation and ends with revive.

Source of Knowledge

Knowledge has various sources to expand it. Generally it is part of learning. There are two way of knowledge tacit and explicit knowledge. Explicit knowledge is knowledge that has been or can be articulated, codified, and stored in certain media. It can be readily transmitted to others. The information contained in encyclopedias (including Wikipedia) are good examples of explicit knowledge. Tacit knowledge (as opposed to formal or explicit knowledge) is knowledge that is difficult to transfer to another person by means of writing it down or verbalizing it.

OCTAPACE Culture for Knowledge Management

O

Openness

C

Collaboration

T

Trust & Trustworthiness

A

Authenticity

P

Pro-action

A

Autonomy

C

Confrontation

E

Experimentation

CULTURE

Openness: It is found where people feel free to express their ideas, opinions and feelings to each other irrespective of their level, designation etc. The organisation not only encourages them for such expressions but also take them seriously for exploring their talents and implementing them after deciding about their suitability.

Collaboration: Where people are eager to help each other. There is spirit of sacrifice team spirit and familial feeling among people and personal power, ambition and departmental loyalties do not come in the way as hurdles.

Trust and Trustworthiness: Where employees, dyads, team, groups and departments believe or trust each other and act on the basis of oral message and instructions without waiting for instructions and explanations in black and white.

Authenticity: It means speaking the truth fearlessly and making full efforts for keeping up promises made/words given. It is higher than trust and trustworthiness.

Pro-action: People are action oriented, willing to take initiatives and initiate new actives and newer and improved ways of doing things for cost effectiveness, innovation, culturing etc.

Autonomy: People are given some freedom for exercising some discretion in their jobs and, for that sake; they are empowered to do so. It is very essential for bringing out excellence in performance and, as such, very indispensable in case of knowledgeable organizations like IT & HRD.

Confrontation: It means facing issues and problems squarely or boldly by people without hiding or avoiding them for fear of hurting each other.

Experimentation: It means risk taking, trying out new ways of doing things, taking new decisions, discovering new potentials etc.

Query and Response

After the discussion with students, teachers and parents of different institute the result has come that are presented through diagram. Three major technical and management institute of Gorakhpur (150 students, 45 teachers) and local guardian are source of discussion.

Query1: Do you rely that computer is the best resource of knowledge?

Yes 84% No 16%

Query2: Can computer create knowledge?

Yes 23% No 73%

Query3: Computer can communicate full duplex mode in knowledge sharing.

Yes 11% No 89%

Query4: Which is the best knowledge Management source?

Yes 11% No 89%

Query5: KM's analysis and finding method.

MRP /SIP 17% Suggestion 16% Feedback 25% Curriculum 16% Exam Paper 26%

Suggestion

    * Which is required for OCTAPACE culture, computer or e-learning can not fulfill.
    * Human is the best resource of knowledge Management and it fit in OCTAPACE culture.
    * Mining of knowledge is good but basket analysis of knowledge can possible through human being.
    * There is not important, you have much information but there is required modify and update the information.
    * "Imagination is an art but we can not imagine". Knowledge is based on imagination. Computer has no imagination but human being has imagination attribute in itself.
    * Knowledge Management can do some following practices:
          o Free discussion with two way communication
          o Hortative environment for learning
          o Multiple channels for knowledge transfer
          o A standard, flexible knowledge structure.

Reference:
[1]Amit Pratap Singh, http://www.articlesbase.com/human-resources-articles/knowledge-management-practices-the-role-of-organizational-culture-3247139.html

Knowledge Management Implementation Measurement

2010-10-31T01:11:00.000-07:00

May your Organization have implemented Knowledge Management. However, the new question is emerged, that is How to measure the success of your Knowledge Management? This article reveal the answer.

Like all technology projects, it is very important to have in place a process that allows you to measure the success of the project. There are a number of reasons for this; obviously the first is that nobody really wants to be associated with a bad project. The Flipside is that every person who wants a piece of a successful project, it is good for a career, good for your company and good for users.

This article provides some tips on how to measure the outcome of a knowledge management project.

    * Complete detailed gap analysis. It is impossible to determine how successful the project is if you do not know what it is trying to solve that problem.
    * Measure the use of knowledge management systems, especially in seeing how regular people who use them and whether they use again.
    * Seek the opinion of users, while it is not very scientific it can be very useful. A high profile case studies that the internal is a great way to increase support for a project.
    * Record details of what a department or a process such as post-installation. In particular, focus on how long it takes to complete the task and shows how this is enhanced by knowledge management.
    * Establish who the power users and ask for their feedback and contributions. A knowledge management project live and die by the user, thus making them stay involved.

Reference:
[1]   Charlotter Alice,http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Charlotte_Alice