KM 3.0 Part IV: a practical KM system

Introduction

The nature of your organization should determine the type of knowledge management system(s) you should implement. Focus should no longer be on simply collecting or sharing everything and anything, but rather on use to avoid information overload.

Every organization is different, so this chapter will not provide a blueprint for everyone to use, but rather give an example of how you could analyze and determine which knowledge management system(s) that will fit your organization.

Some knowledge should be captured and shared on a company level, some on a project level, and some knowledge is highly specialized and should not be shared by anyone.

The type of knowledge (value, scope, expiration) you collect and share should be evaluated for each level, and the process (collect, cultivate, distribute,apply) should also be adjusted according to level.

Each individual should be responsible for his/her knowledge contribution, and editors on each level should be responsible for moderating and sharing across levels (from project to project, from project to department, from division to organization etc).

Different levels will probably need different strategies, processes and tools (e.g., company, division, department, group, project, personal level). Most organizations will benefit from having a major KM system for the organization and then some minor KM subsystems for individual departments and/or projects.

The value of knowledge (organization vs. the individual)

Organizations struggle with the valuation of their knowledge capital. If ten computers are stolen or lost in a fire, their value will be depreciated and recorded as a loss. If ten of your knowledge workers quit the loss of knowledge will not show in the financial reports (even if they each have accumulated many years worth of knowledge).

People struggle with sharing knowledge as their "personal value" of the knowledge decreases when it is shared (the organization becomes less dependent on them for their knowledge as more people get the same knowledge).

The key to solving both of these problems is knowledge management. You need a culture where people share their common knowledge with others, and where the organization recognizes and rewards their contribution. You need both to succeed.

Sharing knowledge makes it possible (to some degree) to measure the knowledge that exists in your organization. All shared knowledge should have an " owner" that is responsible for maintaining the shared knowledge (due to expiration date and the dynamic nature of knowledge). By having people list their most important tacit knowledge and write down and share their common explicit knowledge you get both an account of the knowledge available and people get recognition for the knowledge they have and share.

In most cases, the tacit and explicit knowledge is highly interconnected, and everybody should realize that sharing a piece of knowledge does not make the owner "less valuable". Even if the explicit knowledge is shared, having an expert available to update the knowledge and help people with further understanding is even more valuable than simply having an expert that holds on to his/her knowledge to maintain "power".

Major, Minor and Personal KM

Having all knowledge collected for everyone in a single database usually means that a lot of the knowledge is not useful to you. Finding what you need will be more difficult, and it is easier to feel overwhelmed by the large quantity available (information overload). Separating the knowledge into more specialized knowledge bases will often lead to better targeted knowledge that is easier to handle and find.

A simplified division of different KM systems:

Major KM needs to be more formal and organized as it targets many different people in different roles.

Minor KM can be more informal and temporary as it is mainly targeted at people in similar roles/groups/projects. Sharing knowledge is easier than Major KM as people have a better understanding of what other people need.

Personal KM is the easiest and most efficient as it targets only you - and you are therefore free to collect, cultivate and apply anything you want, in any shape or form you want.

Major KM should be similar to Wikipedia
- "everybody" use
- some contribute
- few edit and moderate

A Minor KM system will be more specialized (for a department, a project etc) and therefore have fewer users. However, a larger share of the users will contribute and moderate as they all have a stronger interest in the knowledge.

Some organizations will need a strong Major KM and very little Small and Personal KM, while other organizations may be highly fragmented and have little use for Major KM and more use for Small and Personal KM.

The level of detail, the quality and the structure of each piece of knowledge depends on which level the knowledge is applied. At the company level the knowledge is usually much more general than knowledge at the project level, as it reaches many more diverse people.

At a practical level, each "snippet of knowledge" that is stored and shared should be described with some meta-information about the knowledge (for both Major and Minor KM, but not necessarily for Personal KM).

An example:
"Last updated: 14.apr.03, Expiration: !Week, Scope: !Marketing, Author: !AtleIversen"

The "Last updated" and "Expiration" information helps the user determine how current the knowledge is. If it was last updated in April 2003 with an expiration time of one week, you can safely assume that this knowledge is expired and probably not too relevant. Expired knowledge just adds to the noise and should either be deleted or updated.

Having an author/owner attributed to the knowledge, you'll know who to contact directly and ask for updated information. This is the responsible person for this piece of knowledge, and is therefore also the person who should be credited both for having the knowledge and for sharing the knowledge.

Scope could be useful in some cases, but depends on the level. If you have a KM system for your project, you probably won't need to specify scope (as it is assumed to be 'Project' for all the information stored in the project KM system).

For the Company KM system you may want to specify the scope for all articles ("All", "Marketing", "Accounting" etc) to simplify filtering and finding relevant information.

How to get started ?

Which strategy you should use depends on the nature of your business. If you have a lot of knowledge workers, you should probably start with Personal KM. If you run a "franchise-like" business with standardized procedures and processes like McDonalds, you could maybe have a single Major KM system to document and share standard operations throughout the organization.

Knowledge Management is a huge field with lots of research, documentation, tools and opinions. Most companies would probably benefit from having a small team who becomes KM experts (both theory and tools) and tries to answer the question:
"What common knowledge does people need to get their job done ?"

"Common" is a key word here. Collecting and sharing knowledge that won't be re-used by anyone is wasteful and useless. What you want to collect and share is reusable knowledge - knowledge that several people would find useful. The type of knowledge is important - you want high value knowledge with long expiration date collected and shared within the right scope (organization, department, project level etc).

Knowledge workers should start with Personal KM, and if they find it useful then you should consider a Small or Major KM system. If nobody is willing to collect and cultivate their own personal knowledge to get their job done, you shouldn't expect them to collect, cultivate and share knowledge for the rest of the organization.

If you create a culture where helping each other is the most important trait, collecting and sharing knowledge could become almost automatic. Find the simplest, easiest to use and most efficient tools available for their needs, and then teach and help them to use them.

After you have decided which strategy to use, you could start analyzing what kind of knowledge your employees need to get their job done.

Once you have identified what they need, you could start simple by implementing a few of the highest value items first. Start small to avoid information overload and to make it easier to get started with a KM system.

Most important criteria when selecting KM tools: Very easy to use !

You need to be able to collect, cultivate, share and find what you need when you need it. And all operations must be very easy to do !

Summary

Remember that the most difficult and important part is not the technology, but rather the culture in the organization. You need to trust and empower your people to enable them to share their knowledge. If they don't want to collect and share knowledge, they won't !

Start small - help each individual improve their own personal productivity and personal knowledge first.

If people start using personal knowledge management you may continue to the next stage.

Ask them what they need in order for them to get their job done, and let them be part of the strategy/process/technology discussion. The KM system is for them - the organization benefits when everybody is doing their job better.

Implementing a successful KM system is not easy - but it can give huge rewards for your organization if it helps people get their jobs done !

Appendix: Why PpcSoft iKnow is (almost) the perfect personal knowledge management tool

How is knowledge organized ?

PpcSoft iKnow is based on the same principle as your brain, the web and Wikipedia. You store lots of small tidbits of knowledge, and then you connect them to find related knowledge.

Unlike the web and Wikipedia where you explicitly say which knowledge is connected to each other, PpcSoft iKnow does this automatically for you.

You give each note a title (e.g., PKM, wiki, marketing, ERP, Sharepoint etc) and every time you write this title in any note, it will automatically be converted into a hyperlink to the note. As you enter more notes, more words will be converted to links and you'll automatically create your own, personal web of knowledge.

Your PpcSoft iKnow data is stored as plain text, so you can open and edit your data on any platform with almost any text editor.

Why "almost" perfect ?

Simply because there is no "perfect" tool for everyone. And we won't claim that PpcSoft iKnow is perfect for everyone either !

PpcSoft iKnow is optimized to be fast, simple, very easy to use and still powerful enough for all of your needs on the Microsoft Windows platform. However, you may still prefer other tools that are better suited to your needs.

As always, figure out what your people need to help them get their job done !