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HUMAN LEARNING -
NATURAL DRIFT TO LOOSE COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE
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FINANCE
WORLD IN EUROPE SLOW TO ADOPT KM -
DEBRIEF - POSITIVES | NEGATIVES | CHALLENGES POSITIVES 1. Companies who have kept their long-term commitment to KM initiatives can testify that it has been worth the effort. That is a very encouraging third party endorsement. KM practices improve individual and company capabilities enough for these companies to continue on and invest more in the process. A follow-up step could then be to study these companies in depth to determine their success factors and possible predictors for optimal KM returns. KM is becoming an 'intuitive daily normal work practice' for staff in some companies. 2. A high proportion of KM implementors have KM budgets. This says that whether at the strategic or operation levels, someone has put a strong business case and governance procedures to make it an officially company sanctioned initiative. It also means that the instigator has likely done a lot of planning to make the anticipated KM initiative a potential success. The multi-disciplinary nature of KM requires nothing short of this level of commitment. 3. Fancy technology is not necessarily needed. People-to-People methods such as Communities of Practice are proving the most effective. This special interest group method of knowledge sharing has been voted by respondents as the best for real knowledge sharing. Technology is being valued not so much for knowledge sharing but for knowledge storage. So technology has a complementary role in KM but not a mandatory role. This is true for Nucor Steel shop floor staff who used CoPs to boost individual and organisational capabilities without any strong reliance on database and intranet systems. This study has affirmed this important principle of effective KM. Regardless of how much added-value People-to-Technology-to-People systems might provide people-to-people methods are the bread 'n butter of KM. 4. There is a combination of KM methods being used in a company. Multiple communication channels are being seen as important by many and this may be an ideal setup. What can't be found from a face-to-face interaction with your immediate colleagues could be found with the use of an electronic discussion forum or the humble email or phone call to the appropriate source. 5. End users want to see more of the KM process in their work. 60 % see the level of current investment here as inadequate and according to the decentralised budget fact most of the KM process is being driven by the end-users, the operations staff that KM has been primarily intended for. That is a healthy sign that there is atleast a strong buy-in from this critical part of the company. POSITIVES | NEGATIVES | CHALLENGES NEGATIVES 1. KM seems to have been slow to reach mainstream awareness. The continued poor level of knowledge toward KM - 90 % of all respondents - is a great worry. Despite several annual KM conferences promoted widely across Europe along with exhibitions as well as a plethora of popular press articles the discipline is still perceived as more confusing than convincing to many companies. Undoubtedly early proponents to KM have been incapable of communicating its processes and benefits , and there is clear evidence for this as seen by the myriad of bland business definitions (see KM Tutorials section if need be). No doubty the discipline is still steadily evolving and has yet reached a basic 'steady state' of a set of basic universal principles. In a previous study, I concluded that without a working knowledge of proven human learning models as a foundational element, KM outcomes will be modest at best. Yet the majority of practitioners to date who run KM services are from the Information Management/ Information Technology field and only 10 % at best from HR and Training/HRD fields. So there must be a new type of KM practitioner who has a sub-set of skills in each of the above disciplines. This may take DECADES. Only then will major outcomes be realised from KM practices and that this new discipline will be recognised as a legitimate player in the corporate world. The lack of coverage of it in business schools across the world along with generally shallow articles is another clear sign of the overall confused state of KM. A third factor is that senior managers may still be over-stretched with existing process improvement initiatives that prevent them from learning and implementing newer ones. Fourthly, managers may be more skeptical of newer improvement processes having had mixed success with current or previous ones. Of course, it could be a combination of these factors that are producing a 90 % ignorance level !!! This is how confused the majority of European respondents are with KM - the top most response for reasons to use KM came at 63 % of respondents who declared knowledge storing as the driver. KM is not about knowledge storing ! It is about producing astute employees and improved processes from generated and stored knowledge ! As Dore, the researcher, warns : 'Any organisation that can document itself is history.' (p.23) How about BUILDING intellectual capital ? Let's not confuse means with ends. Contributing to a glorified electronic database does not necessarily motivate me. Proponents of the Quality Movement would say that it took a long time for their discipline to reach mainstream status (30 years ?). So we should not be surprised that KM acceptance and usage is taking longer than expected. Arguably, it is more complex than Quality because it is perceived to be less measurable as we are not dealing with physical objects but unpredictable, mental objects primarily. Quality cars have a universal standard... not a problem. Quality ideas are far less perceptable and more open to interpretation and which require enabling social cultures. Further to this, it is more holistic and multi-disciplinary than Quality, as mentioned earlier. A 90 % unsatisfactory knowledge level is also troublesome because part of these respondents have already put so-called KM processes in place ! Extrapolating from the percentages, atleast a third of KM users admit they too still have a poor level of knowledge of KM and its benefits. One only hopes they are aggressively learning as they go along... and recording their learnings ! That is a natural step for any new discipline to grow into maturity. 2. Senior managers are not leading enough by example despite the possible causes to this mentioned earlier. The signs are that although there seems to be operational buy-in, senior leaders are slow to understand the potential benefits of KM. Dore declares that only continued education may turn around these senior managers. I think education through continued growing success stories may bring management thinking to a new threshold of acceptance and implementation. Early adopters of KM practices were none other than the CEOs themselves who role modelled the practices... Jack Welch of GE, Andy Grove of Intel, John Seely-Brown of Xerox, Bob Buckman of Buckman Chemicals, etc. I suggest it takes a visionary senior leader to drive new cultural changes. This is a major factor in the KM success equation. 3. Likely over-reliance on technology versus culture improvements because of perceived associated links by KM to initiatives like CRM. This came out in the problems section of the results pictorial highlighting technical obstacles. Five of the seven problems seem to be associated with technology. POSITIVES | NEGATIVES | CHALLENGES CHALLENGES 1. Length of years implementing KM on its own is probably an unreliable determinant of a company's level of KM maturity. Duration of activity is not necessarily adequate evidence of your competence levels.... in your work role or on the tennis court. This study could have considered a few more indicators. We need to look for 'pervasiveness' of practice as another success indicator. One small department of one mega-division out of five mega-divisions does not equate to a 'knowledge-smart' company. Yet from other research, including some of the more established companies in this discipline that level of pervasiveness is closer to reality. We need to look at sophistication of the KM process as another success factor. We need to look at the major customers - the end users - and their feedback to see if it is meeting their needs. McKinsey and Co went further and decided to examine 134 KM practice indicators as a truer measure of KM maturity (see 'Business Rationale and Returns' in KM Tutorials pages). So next time a few more perceptive questions in this area would be valuable. 2. The respondents could be differentiated next time into senior management and operations staff as well as truly maturing KM companies and novice companies as stated previously. Success factors could then be more accurately elucidated. 3.
Computer interfaces and portals must be adequately user-friendly
and tailor made to some degree even down to the individual user,
not just the department. 4. KM proponents must be great educators and influencers in their own context. It won't be enough to hand someone an article by Davenport, Prusak or Stewart. But just as importantly, you can't educate anyone unless you yourself have a well-established set of first-principles to the discipline in question. Thus any KM practitioners must also be researchers and communicators. They must uncover more first principles, ironically through practising their very own discipline. Then they must learn to clearly communicate it with conviction across their company. Learning to think beyond one's traditional discipline and incorporate other disciplines as mentioned earlier is the challenge. One may need to find and keep like-minded KM practitioners as a critical support mechanism to transform oneself into a KM leader. Are you prepared to walk a long, perhaps lonely journey ? CONCLUSION Although a few years old, this survey is one of the largest ever undertaken in the KM discipline. One out of ten companies could be said to have some reasonable set of KM practices in place. Undoubtedly the discipline is still in its infancy phase. Yet KM has already been an invaluable feature to some companies who have perservered in pursuing the promised benefits. But cultural and technical obstacles are still prevalent. Visionary leaders and passionate KM proponents and implementors will be needed to progress KM towards its full potential.
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