Professional Documents
Culture Documents
On
Knowledge
Management
1
INDEX
A. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 4
C. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 7
KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
1. INTRODUCTION 8
2. WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE? 9
5.2 ORGANIZATION 25
5.3 BUDGET 27
5.4 INCENTIVES 27
5.5 COMMUNITY 28
5.6 TECHNOLOGY 33
5.7 MEASUREMENT 35
2
INTERACTION 39
18. CONCLUSION 57
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A. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
"A company that is not managing knowledge is not paying attention to business,"
observed Thomas Stewart, author of Intellectual Capital, in his keynote presentation at
TRAINING 2000.
The term Knowledge Management (KM) has come to encompass the gamut of
organizational processes, responsibilities and systems directed towards the assimilation,
dissemination, harvest and reuse of knowledge. It can be thought of as a tripod with its
three legs defined as follows.
During the course of the project, it was found that though many companies talk
about knowledge as a key asset, but the number that have actually jumped into practicing
knowledge management is not more than a few hundred out of thousands of corporations
around the world, with consultancies and IT companies around the world leading the
way. Besides, because of the various beliefs and myths wrongly associated with KM, the
KM initiatives undertaken in an organisation with the right intentions sometimes fail
miserably.
The project report seeks to identify the various issues that underline an effective
and efficient KM implementation such as the basic strategies that help in its successful
implementation, the technologies to be made use of, the measurement techniques etc.
The Knowledge Management initiatives undertaken and the strategies made use
of at INFOSYS, one of the world’s leading IT consulting and software services company
in the world, has been incorporated in the project report as a case study to serve as a
pointer to any organization that seeks to successfully implement KM initiatives.
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B. OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY
In this report an attempt has been made to present the issues connected with the
successful implementation of Knowledge Management in an Organisation like the
strategies to be used, technology to be made use of, measurement techniques etc. The
reasons owing to which KM initiatives fail also find a mention.
The objective of the report is to outline the issues that organizations need to
consider in detail when they decide to go for Knowledge Management which involves
significant process, mindset and culture change. A successful implementation hinges on
various factors like equal support from the top management and all the employees of the
organisation, the understanding of the various propositions related with the change, the
company’s adaptability for a change etc.
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C. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Data was collected from diverse sources such as the internet, books and
periodicals to get a thorough understanding of the finer points of Knowledge
Management such as implementation methods, opportunities etc.
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1. INTRODUCTION
In 1876, the English novelist, George Eliot, wrote that, “Of a truth, Knowledge
is power”. Now, over a century later, that observation still holds true. Knowledge gives
us, as individuals, the power to grow, to better ourselves, and to succeed in our
endeavours. In the business world, knowledge is power as well. As with individuals,
knowledge is what enables businesses to grow and to succeed. Contained within every
business is a wealth of knowledge about its policies and practices, and about the industry
that it serves. A business uses this knowledge to sell and support the products and
services that it offers.
However, knowledge is not held within a business itself, but rather by the various
individuals that make up the organization. Without the knowledge possessed by the
people within it, a business cannot survive. To a business, therefore, knowledge can be
considered an asset, perhaps the most important asset that it has. The primary concern,
then, that must be addressed, if a business is to grow and prosper, is how this knowledge
can best be captured and harnessed. How can companies preserve their existing
knowledge assets, encourage the dissemination of that knowledge across the
organization, and use that knowledge to identify the best business practices and to refine
and improve those practices? The answers to all of these questions lie in the application
of Knowledge Management (KM) to the business’s operations and the adoption of
Knowledge Management Systems within the business infrastructure.
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2. WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE?
There are two basic kinds of knowledge in an Organization: Explicit and Tacit.
Explicit knowledge is knowledge that has been articulated and, more often than
not, captured in the form of text, tables, diagrams, product specifications and so on.
According to a Harvard Business Review article titled “The Knowledge Creating
Company”, explicit knowledge is referred to as “formal and systematic” and examples
include product specifications, scientific formulas and computer programs. An example
of explicit knowledge with which we are all familiar is the formula for finding the area of
a rectangle (i.e., length times width). Other examples of explicit knowledge include
documented best practices, the formalised standards by which an insurance claim is
adjudicated and the official expectations for performance set forth in written work
objectives. Thus explicit knowledge is systematically documented know-how that
becomes available to everyone in the organization.
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make tacit knowledge more widely available and to the degree possible, capture it in
explicit terms. Tacit knowledge resides in a few, often-in just one person and has not
been captured by the organization or made available to others. It is this tacit knowledge
that provides strategic edge to the organization. Typically tacit knowledge is asked for
and transferred in non-formal situations and so it is extremely difficult to record it.
Data can be broadly defined as a collection of facts, ‘facts’ about specific events
and about an industry in general. These facts can originate from a variety of sources and
includes such items as raw statistics, demographic and marketing information, and so
forth. Data can form the basis of knowledge, as it is gathered, analysed, and synthesized
by individuals within an organization.
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experience, context, interpretation and reflection. Knowledge involves the full person,
integrating the elements of both thinking and feeling.
A study of more than 700 US companies shows that only a small portion of corporate
knowledge is in a shareable form. The majority is in the employee’s brains and
documents not easily shared.
Employee Brains
20%
26%
Paper Documents
12%
Electronic Documents
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3. WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT?
1. Capturing it; that is, explicitly recording the tacit knowledge within an
organization.
2. Cataloguing and storing it; that is, placing the information into a central area
where all members of an organization who have a need to know have access to it
3. Transforming it for use in other contexts (when appropriate); that is, making
connections among pieces of information to create new approaches
4. Disseminating it; that is, transferring knowledge to people when and where they
need it.
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knowledge management activities help focus the organization on acquiring, storing and
utilizing knowledge for such things as problem solving, dynamic learning, strategic
planning and decision making. It also protects intellectual assets from decay, adds to firm
intelligence and provides increased flexibility.
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4. HISTORY OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
The pursuit of any significant human activity typically leads to the acquisition by
those involved of know-how and expertise as to how the activity may be successfully
conducted. In so far as what is learned in the process can be captured and communicated
and shared with others, it can enable subsequent practitioners - or even generations - to
build on earlier experience and obviate the need of costly rework or of learning by
making the same repetitive mistakes.
The concept of managing knowledge can be traced back to the early 1970's and
first appeared in the realm of academia. Notables such as Peter Ducker and Paul
Strassman stressed the importance of information and explicit knowledge. Peter Senge
stressed on the "learning organization" and the cultural dimension of managing
knowledge. Research at Stanford in the diffusion of innovation and at MIT in information
and technology transfer contributed to mapping an understanding of how knowledge is
produced used and diffused within organizations.
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also saw the development of systems for managing knowledge that relied on work done
in artificial intelligence and expert systems. These generated the concepts of "knowledge
acquisition", "knowledge engineering", "knowledge-base systems" and "computer-based
ontology’s". At about the same time, the phrase "knowledge management" entered the
corporate lexicon. The initiative for Knowledge Management was started in 1989 by a
consortium of US companies and Knowledge Management (KM) articles began to appear
in management publications like Sloan Management Review, Organizational Science and
Harvard Business Review.
Also in the mid-90, and largely because of the Internet, knowledge management
initiatives were thriving. The number of KM conferences and seminars has been growing
as organizations focus on managing and leveraging explicit and tacit knowledge
resources to achieve competitive advantage. Furthermore, with the advent and
acceleration of collaboration technologies, the Internet presents an ever-flourishing
environment for knowledge exchange, creation and management.
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5. THE SEVEN BASICS OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT:
What should be done? How do they do it? What are the priorities? What are the
most important things to focus on? What can wait for a later stage? The questions stem
not so much from an unawareness of the many things that will need to be done, but rather
a need to prioritise among a daunting array of possible actions, including culture,
structure, processes, organization, and personnel. Since knowledge management can
involve changes in every facet of an organization, it is sometimes hard to know where to
begin. Among the many things that need to be done, the following are among the highest
priority and form the basis on which the KM program should be ideally implemented.
2 Organization
3 Budget
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4 Incentives
5 Community
6 Technology
7 Measurement
The first and perhaps most difficult part in launching a knowledge management
program is to put in place a strategy for sharing knowledge. It entails a collective
visioning as to how sharing knowledge can enhance organizational performance and the
reaching of a consensus among the senior management of the organization that the course
of action involved in sharing knowledge will in fact be pursued. Implicit in such a
process is a set of decisions about the particular variety of knowledge management that
the organization intends to pursue, including:
The question of “what to share” includes not only the type of knowledge, but also
its quality. In organizing knowledge-sharing programs, it is common to put
processes in place to ensure that the content that is shared reaches a certain
minimal threshold of value and reliability. Some programs make no explicit
distinction between different levels of reliability of the material offered, once the
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initial threshold has been met, thus allowing users to reach their own conclusions
as to its ultimate value. Other programs, particularly those that offer external
knowledge sharing, provide explicit guidance on whether the material has been
authenticated, so that users can make inferences about its reliability. Most
knowledge-sharing systems also allow in varying degrees the inclusion of new
and promising ideas that have not yet been authenticated and in this sense are not
yet knowledge.
1 With whom to share knowledge? One of the major decisions concerns the
intended beneficiaries of the knowledge-sharing system. Knowledge sharing
programs may aim at sharing with either an internal or an external audience.
Internal knowledge sharing programs typically aim at making the existing
business work better, faster or cheaper, by arming the front-line staff of an
organization with higher quality, more up-to-date and easily accessible tools and
inputs to do their jobs, and so add value for clients or save costs. External
knowledge sharing poses greater risks than internal sharing programs — raising
complex issues of confidentiality, copyright, and in the case of the private sector,
the protection of proprietary assets — but it may also offer greater potential
benefits.
o Increasing speed,
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o Lowering costs of operation,
o Accelerating innovation, or
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Since knowledge management as a conscious practice is so young, executives
have lacked successful models that they could use as guides. Because knowledge is the
core asset of consultancies, they were among the first businesses to pay attention to - and
make heavy investments in – the management of knowledge. They were also among the
first to aggressively explore the use of information technology to capture and disseminate
knowledge. Their experience, which is relevant to any company that depends on smart
people and flow of ideas, provides a window onto what works and what doesn’t.
The two strategies are not unique to consulting. The same two strategies are at
work in computer companies and health care providers. In fact, the choice between
codification and personalization is the central one facing virtually all companies in the
area of knowledge management. By better understanding the two strategies and their
strengths and weaknesses, chief executives will able to make more surefooted decisions
about knowledge management and their investments in it.
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How Consulting Firms Manage Their Knowledge
CODIFICATION PERSONALISATION
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Invest highly in IT; Invest moderately in
the goal is to IT; the goal is to
connect people Information facilitate
with reusable Technology conversations and the
codified exchange tacit
knowledge. knowledge.
Hire new college Hire MBAs who like
graduates who are problem solving and
well suited to the can tolerate
reuse of knowledge ambiguity.
and the Train people through
implementation of one to one mentoring.
solutions. Human Reward people for
Train people in Resources directly sharing
groups and through knowledge with
computer-based others.
distance learning.
Reward people for
using and
contributing to
document
databases.
Codification or Personalization?
Some large consulting companies, such as Andersen Consulting and Ernst &
Young, have pursued a codification strategy. Over the last five years, they have
developed elaborate ways to codify, store, and reuse knowledge. Knowledge is codified
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using a “people-to-documents” approach: it is extracted from the person who developed
it, made independent of that person, and reused for various purposes. Ralph Poole,
director of Ernst & Young’s Centre for Business Knowledge, describes it like this: “After
removing client – sensitive information, we develop ‘knowledge objects’ by pulling key
pieces of knowledge such as interview guides, work schedules benchmark data, and
market segmentation analyses out of documents and storing them in the electronic
repository for people to use.”
This approach allows many people to search for and retrieve codified knowledge
without having to contact the person who originally developed it. That opens up the
possibility of achieving scale in knowledge reuse and thus of growing the business.
Take the example of Randall Love, a partner in the Los Angeles office of Ernst &
Young. Love was preparing an important bid for a large industrial manufacturer that
needed help installing an enterprise resource planning system. He had already directed
projects for implementing information systems for several manufacturers in other
industries, but he hadn’t yet worked on a manufacturing project in this one. He knew
other Ernst and Young teams had, however, so he searched the electronic knowledge
management repository for relevant knowledge. For help with the sales process, he found
and used several presentations on the industry-documents containing previously
developed solutions-as well as value propositions that helped him estimate how much
money the client would save by implementing the system.
Because Love reused this material, Ernst & Young won the project and closed the
sale in two months instead of the typical four to six. In addition, his team found
programming documents, technical specifications, training materials, and change
management documentation in the repository. Because these documents were available,
Love and his team did not have to spend any time tracking down and talking with the
people who had first developed them. The codification of such knowledge saved the team
and the client one full year of work.
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Ernst & Young executives have invested a lot to make sure that the codification
process works efficiently. The 250 people at the Centre for Business Knowledge manage
the electronic repository and help consultants find and use information. Specialists write
reports and analyses that many teams can use. And each of Ernst & Young’s more than
40 practice areas has a staff member who helps codify and store documents. The resulting
area databases are linked through a network.
Naturally, people-to-documents is not the only way consultants in firms like Ernst
& Young and Andersen Consulting share knowledge - they talk with one another, of
course. What is striking, however, is the degree of emphasis they place on the
codification strategy.
Marcia Blenko, for example, a partner in Bain’s London office, had to consider a
difficult strategy problem for a large British financial institution. The client wanted Bain
to help it expand by offering new products and services. The assignment required
geographic and product-line expertise, a broad understanding of the industry, and a large
dose of creative thinking. Blenko, who had been with Bain for 12 years, knew several
partners with expertise relevant to this particular problem. She left voice mail messages
with them and checked Bain’s “people finder” database for more contacts. Eventually she
connected with nine partners and several managers who had developed growth strategies
for financial services institutions. She met with a group of them in Europe, had
videoconferences with others from Singapore and Sydney, and made a quick trip to
Boston to attend a meeting of the financial services practice. A few of these colleagues
became ongoing advisers to the project, and one of the Asian managers was assigned full
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time to the case team. During the next four months, Blenko and her team consulted with
expert partners regularly in meetings and through phone calls and e-mail. In the process
of developing a unique growth strategy, the team tapped into a worldwide network of
colleagues’ experience.
To make their personalization strategies work, firms like Bain invest heavily in
building networks of people. Knowledge is shared not only face-to-face but also over the
telephone, by e-mail, and via videoconferences. McKinsey fosters networks in many
ways: by transferring people between offices; by supporting a culture in which
consultants are expected to return phone calls from colleagues promptly; by creating
directories of experts; and by using “consulting directors” within the firm to assist project
teams.
These firms have also developed electronic document systems, but the purpose of
the systems is not to provide knowledge objects. Instead, consultants scan documents to
get up to speed in a particular area and to find out who has done work on the topic. They
then approach those people directly.
Consulting companies manage knowledge by using both the codification and the
personalization approaches. However, effective firms excelled by focusing on one of the
strategies and using the other in a supporting role. They do not try to use both approaches
to an equal degree.
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1 a very small ‘central coordinating unit’ with overall coordination responsibility
and spearheading the change process in the organization, making the case for
change, solving problems as they emerge, measuring progress, providing support
to communities of practice, and in general, doing whatever needs to be done in
order for knowledge management to succeed.
3 Communities of practice or help desks as the key instrument for sharing; and
1 The danger with placing the coordination unit in the computer group of an
organization is that knowledge management will become associated with
information technology, rather than being seen as a better way of pursuing the
organization's business.
2 The risk of placing the coordination unit in strategy or in general operations is that
there will be inadequate coordination with IT.
3 The risk of placing the unit in the strategy group may be the lack of connection to
day-to-day operations.
The size of the coordinating unit, even in large organizations, is usually less than
ten people. Larger units have been tried, but have mostly been dismantled, as they
encourage excessive centralization of a function, which should be decentralized. It is
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important to keep the implementation arrangements light and flexible, so that they can be
adjusted to deal with changes in the organization's business.
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It is important that knowledge sharing be designated as one of a small number of
core behaviors that are rewarded in the performance review system. Getting agreement
across a large organization to focus on knowledge sharing, as one of a small number of
core behaviors is not easy, and even when accomplished, does not have any instant effect.
In the short run, there is often cynicism and posturing, but the experience of
organizations, particularly the large consulting firms, is that over time such a change
sends an unmistakable signal throughout the organization, which does accelerate the
intended behavioral change.
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In the field of knowledge management (KM), a Community Of Practice (COP)
is one of the more prevalent mechanisms for sharing organizational knowledge.
o Communities of practice
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o Learning communities or networks (Hewlett Packard)
1 Connecting people who need to know with those who do know requires an
element of trust that is often lacking in large organizations, particularly when it
comes to sharing knowledge across organizational boundaries. Thus, asking for
advice or other opinions can be seen in a low-trust environment as tantamount to
an admission of ignorance. Advertising that ignorance across the entire
organization is unlikely to occur if there is a risk that it may have personnel
sanctions, particularly in organizations that are downsizing, or looking to save
costs by laying off personnel.
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which the community is formed. Communities comprise volunteers, not conscripts, and
the community exists only so long as the members are willing to contribute their time and
effort to promoting the community and its interests. Communities cannot be commanded
into existence, and if this is attempted, they will become something other than a
community, except in name.
Launching and nurturing communities of practice for knowledge sharing programs can be
accomplished in a variety of ways.
2 Asking practitioners what issues they care about: Often the most effective way
of nurturing communities of practice is to consult practitioners as to what issues
they care about, and worry about, and would like to find out more about. The
results of such consultations which can take place in informal focus groups or in
structured groupware sessions can then be used to elicit volunteers to come
forward and lead communities built on the issues about which the practitioners
care most. In this fashion, the chances of having communities built on issues,
issues about which members are passionate, are enhanced.
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communities of practice. One will also find staffs that are naturally antipathetic to
communities for a variety of reasons, including habits of hierarchical behaviour,
distrust of fellow practitioners, or organizational game playing. Provided that
there are many active communities in core areas of the business, the knowledge
management program might choose to ignore these "incorrigibles" either totally,
or until such time as the measures to encourage compliance with organizational
priorities (budgets, formal incentives, measurement) eventually "kick in", so that
even incorrigibles find it difficult to go on working successfully in the
organization, unless they at least go through the motions of participating in
communities.
1 A knowledge sharing vision that makes sense for the business: Since
communities comprise volunteers, not conscripts, it is vital that the management
has articulated a compelling vision of knowledge sharing that makes sense to
front-line practitioners. Without this, communities of practitioners will never
form or survive.
Care has to be taken that financial resources are made available in such a way that
both the priorities of the organization and the independence and the dynamism of
the community is preserved.
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1 Incentives for communities: Participation in a community is a volunteer activity,
based on personal interest and passion, and cannot be "bought" with financial
incentives. Nevertheless, the reflection of knowledge sharing in the personnel
system of the organization can send a signal, reinforcing the budget allocations,
that participation in communities is not something extraneous or "extra-
curricular" but rather part of the core business activity of the organization.
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Information technology may, if well resourced and implemented, provide a
comprehensive knowledge base that is speedily accessed, interactive, and of immediate
value to the user. However there are also many examples of systems that are neither
quick, easy-to-use, problem free in operation, or easy to maintain. The Web, for example,
frequently creates information overload. The development of tools that support
knowledge sharing in an appropriate and user-friendly way, particularly in organization-
wide knowledge sharing programs, is thus not a trivial task.
Most of the technological tools now available tend to help dissemination of know-
how, but offer less assistance for knowledge use. Tools that assist in knowledge creation
are even less well developed, although collaborative workspaces offer promising
opportunities, by enabling participation, across time and distance, in project design or
knowledge-base development, so that those most knowledgeable about development
problems — the people living them on a day-to-day basis – can actively contribute to
their solution. Some of the more user-friendly technologies are the traditional ones —
face-to-face discussions, the telephone, electronic mail, and paper-based tools such as flip
charts. Among the issues that need to be considered in providing information technology
for knowledge sharing programs are:
3 Content quality requirements: standards for admitting new content into the
system need to be established and met to ensure operational relevance and high
value.
4 Integration with existing systems: since most knowledge sharing programs aim
at embedding knowledge sharing in the work of staff as seamlessly as possible, it
is key to integrate knowledge-related technology with pre-existing technology
choices.
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5 Scalability: solutions that seem to work well in small groups (e.g. HTML web
sites) may not be appropriate for extrapolation organization-wide or on a global
basis.
Putting in place a system for measuring progress is therefore an essential step for
a sustainable knowledge-sharing program. The organization must be prepared to accept
some ambiguity, or at least to rely on non-traditional measures, when it tries to evaluate
the impact of knowledge sharing. Measuring that impact, either in terms of return on
investment (for private companies) or development impact (for public sector institutions),
remains problematical. In principle, inputs lead to activities, which generate outputs,
which in turn produce outcomes, which in turn result in overall impact. But each link of
this chain poses its own measurement difficulties.
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In the early stages of the program, the focus will inevitably be on inputs (such as
dollars invested or staff recruited) and activities (such as help desks or communities
established or knowledge resources made available).
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As the unit costs of computing, communications and transactions decline towards zero,
all economic sectors are going through major and rapid transformations. Economic
success in this fast pace environment requires considerable agility and adaptability. Those
countries, sectors and organizations that can adapt will flourish in the new millennium.
Over the last five-to-six years, companies have increasingly been using new
organizational models to capture and spread new ideas and know-how. Communities of
practice and networks have emerged to complement existing hierarchical structures. As a
consequence they have radically galvanized knowledge sharing, learning and innovation.
More recently, however, as the richness of the knowledge sharing experience has
been digested, it has become clearer that certain features of the knowledge sharing
experience are common across most, if not all, organizations that attempt to implement
an organization-wide program. If the universality of these features is confirmed by
further study, these features might eventually attain the status of the “laws” of knowledge
management. The seven laws of KM are:
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In the new knowledge economy, knowledge sharing is increasingly seen as the
sine qua non to survival. Traditional hierarchical organizations cannot cope with fast-
changing client demands unless they are able to agilely share knowledge among
employees, partners and clients. Innovations and the creation of new e-business lines
depend on communal rather than individual knowledge. The knowledge of the
community is always larger than the individual’s. Someone else in the group already
knows capturing what and adding one’s own knowledge is often faster and more efficient
than an individual reinventing a solution. For this to occur, organizations need to develop
knowledge sharing culture and processes. In this situation, knowledge sharing is not
merely an alternative strategic option: knowledge sharing is required for organizational
survival.
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Information technology is insufficient by itself to create knowledge, but can be a
catalytic tool, which gives global reach to community members across large distances
and time zones. This would have been scarcely possible even ten years ago. Building
"learning organization" requires building communities within which learning can take
place. Without communities linked to structure, organizations don't learn very fast at all.
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looking for professional interest groups who will give them a sense of professional and
personal raison d’etre.
The necessity for passion in the workplace is a hard lesson for companies and
executives who have spent their lives trying to keep emotion out of the work place.
Nevertheless the lesson repeatedly emerges from case studies and benchmarking of
knowledge sharing programs. As a result - for reasons of sheer efficiency and
effectiveness - the modern workplace is finding it necessary to provide time and space for
both the head and the heart.
It is vital that the changes be made from inside the organization, not grafted on
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from the outside (or by outsiders). The insiders must "own" the process, be involved in
all aspects of it, make the changes happen, encourage others to make the changes and to
get involved. Only they can do that legitimately, and with organizational (or internal
political) savvy.
That said, the inside person must also use the outside world to validate and "push"
the agenda forward within the organization. For example, using the external recognition
and knowledge fairs and expos as ways of showing that what is happening internally is
valid, good, useful, appropriate, adds value, correct etc. This legitimizes the activities,
which consequently makes it "all right" for others to jump on board.
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your customers' customers. knowledge worker productivity
Articulating unmet needs. through opening a customer
Identifying new opportunities. knowledge channel from its
product end-users into its
R&D.
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Knowledge in Embedding knowledge into CIGNA made their best
Processes business processes and underwriting knowledge
management decision- available as guidance screens
making. in their computerized
underwriting processes. This
helped them turn a loss into a
profit.
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One way companies motivate employees to participate in KM is by
creating an incentive program. However, then there's the danger that employees
will participate solely to earn incentives, without regard to the quality or
relevance of the information they contribute. The best KM efforts are as
transparent to employees' workflow as possible. Ideally, participation in KM
should be its own reward. If KM doesn't make life easier for employees, it will
fail.
While technology can support KM, it's not the starting point of a KM
program. Companies should make KM decisions based on who (people), what
(knowledge) and why (business objectives). The how (technology) part can be
discussed last.
KM Is Not Static
As with many physical assets, the value of knowledge can erode over
time. Since knowledge can get stale fast, the content in a KM program should be
constantly updated, amended and deleted. What's more, the relevance of
knowledge at any given time changes, as do the skills of employees. Therefore,
there is no endpoint to a KM program. Like product development, marketing and
R&D, KM is a constantly evolving business practice.
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Not All Information Is Knowledge
The main function of the knowledge sharing position would be to help champion
organization-wide knowledge sharing, so that the organization’s know-how, information
and experience is shared inside and (as appropriate) outside the organization with clients,
partners, and stakeholders.
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3 Promoting collaborative tools such as activity rooms to facilitate sharing of ideas
and work among internal teams and external partners;
6 Helping monitor and evaluate the knowledge sharing program, including external
benchmarking and evaluation programs/opportunities;
Skills:
Communications: Ability to get consensus and collaboration across many business units;
ability to explain complex concepts in layman's language; ability to generate enthusiasm;
ability to communicate with all levels of management and staff. Establishing
straightforward, productive relationships; treating all individuals with fairness and
respect, demonstrating sensitivity for cultural and gender differences; showing great drive
and commitment to the organization’s mission; inspiring others: Maintaining high
standards of personal integrity;
Client Orientation: Understands clients' needs and concerns; responds promptly and
effectively to client needs; customizes services and products as appropriate.
Drive for Results: Makes things happen; Is proactive; balances "analysis" with "doing";
sets high standards for self; Commits to organizational goals.
Teamwork: Collaborates with others in own unit and across boundaries; acknowledges
others' contributions; works effectively with individuals of different culture and gender;
willing to seek help as needed. Influencing and resolving differences across
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organizational boundaries: Gaining support and commitment from others even without
formal authority; resolving differences by determining needs and forging solutions that
benefit all parties; promoting collaboration and facilitating teamwork across
organizational boundaries.
Learning and knowledge sharing: open to new ideas; shares own knowledge; applies
knowledge in daily work; builds partnerships for learning and knowledge sharing.
Since management as now practiced is a faddish activity, with each new fashion
following the previous with dizzying rapidity, it is not surprising that managers who were
caught flat-footed when knowledge management became the craze, are already looking
beyond it to discern the next wave. Could it be e-business? Does this mean that
knowledge management is already passé, and can be safely skipped?
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In fact, the arrival of e-business only underlines the necessity for organizations to
adopt systematic approaches to sharing knowledge. The demands of e-business for rapid
response and agile adaptation to the market-place is a challenge both for the new dotcoms
springing up (the "clicks") and the older traditional companies (the "bricks") that are
trying to adapt to the new world of electronic business.
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external sharing will affect every aspect of the organization's activities and will
become a necessity.
This idea applies to an outdated business model. Information systems in the old
industrial model mirror the notion that businesses will change incrementally in an
inherently stable market and executives can foresee change by examining the past. The
new business model of the Information Age, however, is marked by fundamental, not
incremental, change. Businesses can't plan long-term; instead, they must shift to a more
flexible "anticipation-of-surprise" model. Thus, it's impossible to build a system that
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predicts who the right person at the right time even is, let alone what constitutes the right
information.
Technologies such as databases and groupware applications store bits and pixels
of data. But they can't store the rich schemas that people possess for making sense of data
bits. Moreover, information is context-sensitive. The same assemblage of data can evoke
different responses from different people. The reason this is important is that many
information textbooks say that while people come and go their experience can be stored
in databases. But unless you can scan a person's mind and store it directly into a database,
you cannot put bits into a database and assume that somebody else can get back the
experience of the first person.
Again, this assumes that companies can predict the right information to distribute
and the right people to distribute it to. And bypassing the distribution issue by compiling
a central repository of data for people to access doesn't solve the problem either. The fact
of information in a database doesn't ensure that people will see or use the information.
Most of our knowledge management technology concentrates on efficiency and creating
a consensus-oriented view. The data therein is rational, static and without context. And
such systems, he adds, do not account for renewal of existing knowledge and creation of
new knowledge.
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system integration, custom application development, re-engineering and sustenance
amply supported by the company’s execution methodologies and delivery models. Over
the years, Infosys has grown into one of the major IT companies in the world and now
has offices in different parts of the world such as the U.S., Japan, Canada, U.K.,
Germany, Belgium, Australia, France, Scandinavia and Hong Kong.
The primary driver for Infosys’ Knowledge Management (KM) strategy is that, as
the company climbs the value curve, it increasingly needs effective mechanisms for
speedy and efficient consolidation of expertise. The large consulting organizations are the
most enthusiastic users of KM, and as Infosys’ business profile evolves to more closely
mirror the profile of these organizations, KM becomes an imperative. The turbulent
scenario of the e-business era, with its premium on speed, agility and competitive
intensity, has given a further fillip to this need.
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The goal of Knowledge Management (KM) in the Infosys context is that all
organizational learning must be leveraged in delivering business advantage to the
customer. The objectives are to minimize effort dissipated in redoing learning that has
already happened elsewhere, and ensuring that Infoscions (as employees at Infosys are
called) in contact with the customer have the collective knowledge of the organization
behind them. The company thus aims to move towards a "Learn Once, Use Anywhere"
paradigm.
Existing Initiatives
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the IPR belongs to a third party such as the customer, clearance from that party
must be obtained. This system is available on the intranet, via an easy-to-use
interface that incorporates search utilities. Incentives for contribution exist, as do
mechanisms to publicize contributions periodically; prizes are given for
meritorious contributions. Several project- and PU (Practice Unit)-specific BoKs
also exist.
2 Since only a small proportion of employees will distill and write up their
experiences, "as-is" project deliverables must be captured too. Hence a "Process
Assets" system has been developed to capture these assets into an intranet-based
repository. As part of project closure, a Project Leader fills in a brief description
of the project, the target audience and others details while uploading into the
system. This helps in classification and focused search.
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assets would provide a tool to its investors for evaluating the market-worthiness
of the company.
6 The company’s e-mailing system, which every Infoscion has access to, supports
bulletin boards for official announcements as well as technical and personal
queries. An e-mail protocol has been defined and is adhered to.
7 A web-based virtual classroom has been developed and deployed on the intranet,
and allows access to various courses whose content has also been developed
internally. This system incorporates a discussion forum where participants can
post and respond to course-related queries. In addition, several online tutorials
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have also been purchased and deployed over the intranet. Systems for supporting
training management – course announcements, nomination and reporting - and
participant evaluation have also been internally developed and are in use.
8 Practices that have worked are also propagated through regular seminars and best-
practice sessions, held both within units and organization-wide.
9 A few other such systems also exist. One such system is Odyssey, a system that
provides an umbrella for websites maintained by individual projects and a
marketing intranet, which provides information and reusable artifacts useful at the
sales and project initiation stage.
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3 Designing a collaborative process-framework, to organize, capture and share
knowledge
4 Designing content taxonomy and technical architecture for the knowledge
management program
5 Developing and deploying the appropriate technology tools for organization wide
implementation of the program
6 Instituting a “balanced - scorecard” based system for continually measuring the
strategic impact of knowledge management efforts
The criticality of Knowledge Management will increase in the future, given the
current revenue and people growth rates, geographical expansion, diversification into
new markets and more sophisticated services.
18. CONCLUSION
Knowledge Management (KM) at Infosys has truly come a long way from the
time when employees only shared information through Body of Knowledge documents.
Infosys strongly believes that having a culture of knowledge sharing and reuse is more
critical than building a technology infrastructure. Infosys has therefore embarked on a
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number of initiatives aimed at taking the prevailing knowledge sharing culture to even
greater heights. Demonstrating the business value of knowledge re-use and creating a
system demand for knowledge sharing / re-use are other means designed to accelerate
this culture-change. Today Infosys has a comprehensive Knowledge Management
infrastructure complete with a dedicated team, a fully functional technical infrastructure
and, most importantly, increasing awareness of the criticality of knowledge sharing
amongst all employees.
Any new effort needs top management push in the early stages and the full
cooperation of the top executives of the company is of utmost importance. The top
management of Infosys ably supported its KM initiatives, which is making it a success, as
the top brass was quiet early in recognizing that Knowledge is the currency of the new
millennium, and Knowledge Management is a key survival imperative.
19. ANALYSIS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
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Organizations Manage What They Know, "Organizational and behavioral change is the
hardest part of implementing anything," he says. "Buying software is the easiest part."
RECOMMENDATIONS:
All businesses must react effectively to the need to maximize profits, make
operations more efficient, reduce costs, and generally change to meet market needs and
beat the competition. Whilst these core business goals are apparent to all companies,
many fail to address them in a systematic manner and few pauses to think about
designing business processes to best approach them.
What is the reason for this? The chief reason is that re-engineering rarely creates a
source of competitive advantage, rather it 'sweats' cost, sells off non-performing
businesses, and worst of all, removes a core base of knowledge. This knowledge base is
now being recognized as an intrinsic source of competitive advantage and a means to
reacting quickly to fast moving change.
The mindset of all leading companies must become anticipative - not reactive.
Anticipation depends on a fundamental understanding of customers, and their existing
and potential needs. This can only be achieved by an intensive information gathering
process that can be greatly enhanced by technology.
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Fundamentally, knowledge management is about generating and recording a clear
understanding of business fundamentals, processes, and customers. This process itself is
enabled by technology and should be considered an ongoing commitment. Knowledge
management is the means to creating a true understanding of the way a business operates
and allows companies to test different operational alternatives before putting the
optimum process into operation.
The matrix of processes, systems, strategies, and people is endlessly complex but
nonetheless holds the key to delivering the core business goals of revenue and profit
generation, competitiveness, and growth. Knowledge management can help organizations
to unravel the mysteries of the way their business functions and hence anticipate and
address the ever-changing business environment.
Hence, there is scarcely any dissent about it: Knowledge is the currency of
the millennium, and knowledge management is a key survival imperative. Hence
organisations from all sectors should adopt KM measures with a view to increase
their competency, be more agile and be in a better position to respond to changes.
Knowledge Management is the Holy Grail of the modern company and is a
‘mission critical’ for all managers of today and tomorrow.
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BIBLIOGRAHY:
REFERENCES
1 www.cio.com
2 www.infy.com
3 www.brint.com
4 www.kmmag.com
5 www.dmreview.com
6 www.knowledge_nurture.com
7 www.indiainfoline.com
8 www.astd.org
9 www.skyrme.com
10 www.sveiby.com.au
11 www.stevedenning.com
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