Summary: A high-level, low-jargon, "fun" introduction to Knowledge Management, describing its approach, specific concerns, and methods.
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
– T.S. Elliot
Knowledge Management. That odd phrase has been popping up a lot for the last decade or so. What in the world is it? I Googled the phrase and came up with 15,100,000 hits. I promise to condense it here.
As I answer the question, think about all the “brain work” it takes to make your company work. Some estimate that only 10-20% of the average modern company’s assets are physical. The rest are intellectual assets like patents, business processes, market share, brand loyalty, employee skills, databases, corporate image, and a host of other stuff. That takes a lot of brain work!
I remember first being struck by this in 1999 when Microsoft purchased Hotmail. Hotmail’s physical assets were worth about $100 Thousand. Microsoft paid them $400 Million.
Imagine that for a minute. I want to buy your lemonade stand. We agree that your cardboard box, jar of Country Time, pitcher, and paper cups are worth $10, but I offer to pay you $40,000 for it!
What made Hotmail worth 4000 times as much as its physical property was worth? It was Hotmail’s “brain” - its intellectual assets.
If you have only been part of your company for a short time, your experience has probably been similar to the following: Your finished product is pretty simple – some sort of widget or wadget that is delivered to the customer in a simple package. Procuring and fulfilling orders for your product, however, can be surprisingly complex. Selling, making, and delivering such a simple product requires a whole lot of very smart people doing a whole lot of very smart things together. Coming in from the outside, you have a certain advantage. You aren’t bound by the way they’ve “always done it around here.” You bring insights from the successes and mistakes of previous employers.
If, on the other hand, you’ve been with your company a long time, you’ve seen things become more complex over the years. You have a significant advantage. You remember a day when things were simpler. It’s easier for you to see through the complexity to the core business. The things newbies get distracted by are just ways of accomplishing the things you’ve done since the beginning. No matter what smart ideas new people bring to the table, you have learned to deal with the complexity and you can see how simple your business is at its core.
All of that – what new and established employees contribute, including what they’ve learned about products, business, and service there and elsewhere – is part of your company’s intellectual assets.
I’ll describe knowledge management now. As I do, think about how important communicating and learning are to performing all that brain work…but you’ll need to expand the normal use of the words “communicate” and “learn.”
In the modern world people communicate with other people and with computers. Computers communicate with people and other computers. Similarly, both people and computers learn from both people and computers.
So communication and learning happen people-to-people, people-to-computer, computer-to-people, and computer-to-computer.
That’s a large part of what makes your company go ’round, and that’s where knowledge management focuses its attention. Knowledge management is a way of thinking about communication and learning. It’s also a way of acting to ensure communication and learning are effective. It really boils down to this:
… Help people know what they need to know when they need to know it …
Knowledge management accomplishes this by developing good processes, developing good people, and developing good tools. You might think of it as Just-In-Time for knowledge.
“Managing knowledge” sounds a little weird. Can knowledge really be managed? Not really. We don’t really manage knowledge; we manage the processes, culture and tools that help people communicate, learn, and apply. But that’s too long to put on a business card.
Basically we manage knowledge creation, capture, transfer, flow, and application. To what end?
- Knowledge management can help established employees get the knowledge they need right now more efficiently – without poring through multiple systems or wasting time finding someone who knows.
- Knowledge management can help new employees see how it all fits together more quickly.
- Knowledge management can connect the pieces of the company together in a way that nurtures innovation and discovery.
And I think you’ll especially like this one…
- Knowledge management can help employees spend more time doing what they love – their core jobs – and less time preparing to do what they love.
I’ll close by describing some core beliefs in knowledge management. Hopefully they sound like common sense…
- Collaborate – All of us are smarter than any of us. your company is smartest when its people think together
- Simplicity – Communicate simply so you can learn quickly
- Some learning isn’t necessary – The better a system is designed, the less people need to learn to use it
- Only what matters – Remove all the information that doesn’t matter right now. You only need what you need; everything else is distraction
- Recycle – No need to reinvent the wheel. Reuse knowledge as often as possible
- People are better than tools – Tools are necessary, but people communicate better than computers and learn better from each other than they do from computers
- Respect experts – People at the front line know more about the details than people up the line. People up the line know more about connections between the details than people at the front line
- Process-based – Most useful knowledge in a company is directly connected with a business process. In fact, business processes are simply knowledge in action
- Results are king – Knowledge is useless unless it is linked to action. Put ideas into action as fast as possible. Understand what you want to do; determine what you need to know; decide how to communicate it; and then do it
That last one is really important. Managing knowledge – or, perfecting corporate communication and learning – has a very specific goal: Deliver quality products to customers efficiently. Or, as I repeatedly say, “transform knowledge into profit.”
If you have insights or questions on this topic, please start a dialog in the comments section below and I will reply.
If you’d like to know more about how to transform your organization’s knowledge into profit, Contact Me
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