Knowledge Management

Why Knowledge Management ?

Increasingly people now recognize that we have entered an era where knowledge is the key resource driving our economies. The capitalization of major companies such as Microsoft and IBM is far greater than other tangible assets suggest it should be. Instead it is the knowledge that these companies harbor within their people and their organization that represents a large element of how they are valued and capitalized. Larry Pruzak of IBM itself noted that when 2 young upstarts in a garage (he could have been referring to Apple, HP, Google or others) can take billions of dollars away from you in business then you have to appreciate the importance of knowledge and the importance of managing it well.

The Art & Science of Knowledge Management

Actually we all do KM, we do it all the time and humans have always been doing it. We just may not call what we do by that name.

KM as a discipline, like a science, is all about scaling, turning KM from a hit and miss affair, from an art to more of a science so that good practice can be understood, repeated, and extended. Those who are KM naturals can then achieve even greater results, and all those that don’t currently do good KM, can begin to enjoy the benefits of KM by applying principles of what we now recognize as good practice.

Knowledge Management and the organization

A great deal of knowledge and intellectual capital is used everyday in conducting your organizations business. It is important that this knowledge is maximized and further developed in an organized and systematic approach that captures, retains, shares, grows, facilitates and leverages, these valuable resources.

The KM strategy needs to enable the organization to become more knowledge based by complementing and supporting staff in their everyday work, making work easier, more productive and effective and resulting in improved overall organizational performance. Whenever an organization experiences growth or forces of pressure the need for managing knowledge intelligently is particularly urgent.

The KM Strategy needs to focus attention on the management of tacit knowledge, which consists of things people know but are unable to express. Due to the fact it is embedded in people, tacit knowledge leaves the organization every night, and regularly leaves the organization for good. Without careful systematic management, the organization loses this knowledge not just when the people resign but also when they move to another position, project or location. Generally when this happens there is a considerable loss of organizational effectiveness.
How to Begin Doing KM?

KM is fraught with difficulties. The business world has learnt the hard way. It has undergone several painful generations of KM. The majority of KM efforts in both the first and even the second generations of KM practice failed to deliver anywhere near the value that was hoped. If one does not want to repeat those mistakes then it is important to learn from those lessons.

Crucially much of what can go right or wrong comes down to the view of the nature of knowledge itself, because without understanding the real nature of knowledge one cannot begin to understand how to manage it.

Today there is a new wave of KM practice that is clearly different from what has gone before. It goes under a variety of names, but what all 3rd generation approaches share is a more sophisticated understanding of KM. One that embraces the ideas behind an open and participatory Enterprise 2.0 movement and which understands the need to accept that the individual is at the forefront of any serious KM effort.

Stratagility represents 3rd generation KM. Stratagility helps organizations build and embed leading edge, agile, KM practices in a repeatable, scalable, and methodical manner.