Knowledge Management White Paper

Introduction

Knowledge Management is the new statement of intent by the needs of the business.

Knowledge Management includes the understanding of how to improve performance by adding to the knowledge of teams, that perform their process and operational duties with: 

• Measured skill, 
• Sound knowledge, 
• Retrievable information, 
• Sharing this with teams to capture the insights and 
• Understand the outcomes of their actions 

The Big Six consulting firms all speak and use Knowledge Management as a key focal business consulting offering. The majority use Lotus Notes and Domino to support their Knowledge Management Practice especially, Arthur Andersen, Ernst & Young, McKinsey, Coopers & Lybrand / Price Waterhouse as well as EDS, Deloitte Touche.

IBM have 220,000 Lotus Notes users using Notes for many business applications, but key is Knowledge Management. Prudential have 55,000 for insurance and knowledge management. Chrysler use a single Notes-based program to communicate with suppliers in an effort to wring out cost in-efficiencies, they report savings of $2 billion over a four year period. The Domino server now scales, and more importantly networks transparently, so that the enterprise can have access to all of its information and knowledge equity.

The conclusion therefore is that Lotus Notes / Domino is a sound proven base for establishing Knowledge Management support to a Continuous Learning Organized Enterprise.

Background

The need to constantly change to react to the market and the environment demands a pace of learning that requires a disciplined organization supported by Information Technology in order to survive and lead the competition. To perform to participate nee keep ahead of the competition demands an understanding of what the "learning agenda" is in order to support performance improvement. Leadership companies have some of the following characteristics as part of their fabric: 

• Their leadership promotes the continuous identification of skill and knowledge requirements and promotes knowledge activities that lead to enhanced learning that add value to the business
• They have a coordinated approach to closing skill gaps and creating, organizing and sharing knowledge 
• They foster a culture where knowledge is created and shared through formal and informal networks of people organized around a common business purpose 
• They have a technology infrastructure that supports the interactions required by their knowledge shared networks 

Part of this disciplined organization is providing those things you really want to know such as who is the expert in a specific subject, how do I learn about the enterprise, what other world-wide companies have approached this before and how, who knows about the chap and his approach I am about to meet, I would like a network of colleagues that can share and debate the observations I have made.

Everyday we all perform to a business process set whether it be in planning and analyzing, negotiating, communicating or operating the business. It is during these steps of the process that we need a better understanding. If we could call up knowledge about the subject given by experts, be provided with a best practice checklist, make observations to debate with others that responded predictably and allowed me to skill up with the subject in hand; all during the input being considered, this would enable me to perform and turn around tasks with a learned approach predictably. Indeed, compared with today this provides the following benefits: 

• Measured increase in performance by reducing duplication and repetition 
• Measured predictability of turnaround time of processes, shortened by not continually having to research the information required 
• Up-skilling individuals to levels of knowledge shared with each other that provides consensus and less debating time more easily 
• Relating reward to contribution of work in terms of increased process performance and providing the effects the business requires based on understanding the causes in the least amount of time 

The challenge therefore is to provide the leadership and the environment for all staff to establish a culture to become "a continuous learning organization", based on incentives and infrastructure in organization supported by Information Technology.

What is the picture that Enterprises would like to see

Primarily, the enterprise would like to see the key objectives of the business performing to best-in-class in the industry to grow the revenue and satisfy their customers world-wide providing their stakeholders with a return that is second to none in the industry.

To achieve this requires some key ingredients being an environment of a continuous learning organization needing some key subtle changes to the culture in which the enterprise operate: 

• How to establish the key objectives of the business for their customers with what indicates performance 
• How to construct the Value Chain that provides the high level key business processes that require to be operated, clearly identifying what each process offers and how they interact 
• How the performance criteria or new performance requirement are for each process in the value chain 
• How the people organization environment operates the processes supported by the provision and sharing of skills, knowledge, information, records action to understand the outcomes and learn by sharing observations and insights into the processes and the way of working 
• How support is provided for managing change of individuals and groups by a clear reward structure related to performance 
• How to provide a role model for the industry 
• Who participates inside of the enterprise and what do they do

It would be somewhat glib to say everybody, but to support the business performance requirements, this is obviously a necessary target. There are however, some key roles:

Sponsor - This must be sponsored by the board and preferably the chairman as to breath vitality in to all staff means looking for leadership and vision of how the culture should operate.

Champion - a board member who has the passion to see this through with an understanding of causing changes across the organisation

Transformation Manager - a director who is pragmatic and balances the investment in the business to reap the step performance change. He must understand the activities that cause the cultural change and ensure that they are effective.

HRO Manager - with the transformation manager review the rewards and recognition infrastructure to establish a revitalised environment related to performance.

Knowledge Programme - a senior manager who is an expert in how the journey to create a learning organisation will be achieved and may establish the right environment to succeed. 

Subject Editor, Experts and facilitators - provide expertise and guidance in a small set of subjects relative to organisation needs.

Virtual Teams - subject discussion and observation groups to grow the content

Librarian - to maintain the content for best practice acquisition

What does Knowledge Management provide?

When operating the processes the leaner the process the more knowledge is required. Indeed the simpler the process the more knowledge is needed to support the process, otherwise a barrier appears and the process has to be redefined. Knowledge Management therefore provides the methods, tools and techniques that provide the capture, review, categorization, presentation and publication in order for an individual or group to have shared learning.

In the background there is the librarian who with Information Technology support gathers subject matter, based on best practices including case studies, best practice checklists, reports and records subject matter identified by the virtual teams. The librarian also works on the tools that structure this input into abstracts and leveled contextual templates so that an individual can start at a high level and drill down into the depths of the subject. All can capture and record actions and insights to be shared with each other, the knowledge editor will place those critical ones in a high level "top list" in a disciplined manner so that precise knowledge can be accessed rather than unstructured information. Virtual subject matter teams will continually share and interact to provide information and observations to each other and submit really performance oriented insights to an editor who can then categories and publish this knowledge to all who are seeking it. The Knowledge Programme director will be enabling the subjects and continually iterating a path for the fostering the creation of knowledge by understanding the benefits, establishing workshops, support of investment proposals, and introducing IT standards for knowledge management. He will hold a road-map of the overall programme and monitor its progress.

How do we reward participation

Key to cultural change is how to motivate to establish real change rather than change in job title. This means understanding how individuals and the group can be rewarded both at an image and token level, brownie points and real rewards. When the existing culture does not have clear boundaries of reward and penalty, and the current reward system means, being there and performing as best you can with no real measurement, can provide disincentives to just continue what you are doing with best faith. In the past information and knowledge has been power, so the willingness to share is purely based on being rewarded otherwise keep that piece to yourself. The environment must disown any self containment of information and knowledge and thus to promote more visibly the sharing of knowledge and information as part of a measured performance by individuals and groups is critical to success. Each of the groups mentioned should have specific token, brownie points and financial incentives based on the roles they play.

What are the critical success factors

As can be seen from the rest of this paper, leadership, the vision, the transformation and programme management will be key to the success of truly increasing individual and group performance within the enterprise, by supporting the key processes with knowledge. Getting the processes right may only be done if there is the right and continually refreshed knowledge for the processes. This is not a one off it must operate as part of the fabric of the enterprise. Thus there must a shift in the culture, the motivation and reward system and the way we spend 160 hours as individuals per month.

Back to why we need to help staff 

If the staff can perform the process predictably and shorten the turnaround by having levels of knowledge, the enterprise may not only survive in the industry, but will show leadership in the industry. The ingredients have been laid out, the cooks have been proposed, it is now a matter of starting the journey.

What will it provide?

When operating the processes the leaner the process the more knowledge is required. Indeed the simpler the process the more knowledge is needed to support the process, otherwise a barrier appears and the process has to be redefined. Knowledge Management therefore provides the methods, tools and techniques that provide the capture, review, categorization, presentation and publication in order for an individual or group to have shared learning.

In the background there is the librarian who with Information Technology support gathers subject matter, based on best practices including case studies, best practice checklists, reports and records subject matter identified by the virtual teams. The librarian also works on the tools that structure this input into abstracts and leveled contextual templates so that an individual can start at a high level and drill down into the depths of the subject. All can capture and record actions and insights to be shared with each other, the knowledge editor will place those critical ones in a high level "top list" in a disciplined manner so that precise knowledge can be accessed rather than unstructured information. Virtual subject matter teams will continually share and interact to provide information and observations to each other and submit really performance oriented insights to an editor who can then categories and publish this knowledge to all who are seeking it. The Knowledge Programme director will be enabling the subjects and continually iterating a path for the fostering the creation of knowledge by understanding the benefits, establishing workshops, support of investment proposals, and introducing IT standards for knowledge management. He will hold a road-map of the overall programme and monitor its progress.