January 25, 2009

Knowledge Management Strategy: what do we mean by strategy?

In early decade there was a discussion on the subject Knowledge Management. The outcome of this discussion was, if the organisation has to survive in the modern Knowledge Era they have to have strategy for managing and leveraging value from their intellectual assets, and many KM lifecycles and strategies were projected. (Haggie and Kingston, 2003)

A KM strategy is a general, issue-based approach to defining operational strategy and objectives with specialized KM principles and approaches (Srikantajah and Koenig, 2000)

Strategy is all these—it is perspective, position, plan, and pattern. Strategy is the bridge between policy or high-order goals on the one hand and tactics or concrete actions on the other. Strategy and tactics together straddle the gap between ends and means. In short, strategy is a term that refers to a complex web of thoughts, ideas, insights, experiences, goals, expertise, memories, perceptions, and expectations that provides general guidance for specific actions in pursuit of particular ends(Nickols, F., 2000)

To my view Knowledge Management Strategy is a way to identifying process in the organisation, which can best influence its knowledge resource. In an organisations point of view, if they define an appropriate definition to Knowledge Management Strategy they will have a clear picture ahead. This can further help in knowing the organisation in better way and prioritize the knowledge management tools and its approaches in order to support long term plans.

Further going ahead with the topic, Kimiz Dalkir (2005) explains the road map of knowledge management strategies by considering the following points,

1) Knowledge Audit
My perception behind knowledge audit after going through the authors book is Knowledge Inventory within an individual or a group need to be audit as to be on the right track, He considered the view of Skyrme who says,
“A knowledge audit is often carried out in conjunction with a knowledge management
assessment, which provides a baseline on which one can develop a knowledge management
strategy”(Skyrme, (2001))
After studying on Audit Knowledge, I think it is a serious study of Knowledge Management in the organization. Audit of knowledge helps to clarify the needs of businesses in knowledge and skills, strengths and weaknesses of the company in organizing the flow of knowledge, threats and risks of loss of knowledge, as well as new ways to improve knowledge management.

2) Gap Analysis
The Strategy is used to define a plan of action by undertaking a gap analysis”. Kimiz Dalkir (2005)
But my view on Gap Analysis is, it is a part of Knowledge Mapping Process where I agree on the facts from KM WIKI say’s “Knowledge mapping is data gathering, survey, exploring, discovery, conversation, disagreement, gap analysis, education and synthesis.”(kmwiki, knowledge mapping)

Failure of KM Strategies (Andrusenko, T. (2007))

According to Andrusenko, T. (2007) following are the reasons due to which there is an failure of KM strategies and I completely support this failures,

1) Lack of support for top management of the company.
Effective implementation of CM requires much more than mere information technology. The first necessary change in corporate culture, starting with the leaders of the enterprise. That is, they must first begin to implement KM in their practice.

2) Underestimating the potential benefits and costs.
How much will it cost and what return on investment? - They should be asking at the outset. High expectations as well as the lack of methods for estimating project costs may lead disappointment. Although this requirement at the level of common sense, many companies neglect these estimates.

3) Inadequate technology support.
Consultants advise companies to protect their investment in KM projects also through the careful choice of supporting information technology based on proven standards and software.

4) Bad planning and lack of clear criteria for assessing effectiveness.
We recommend that you devote sufficient time to determine the points of the plan and all the necessary requirements for its security, including the identification of business goals, return on investment, technological requirements, development of a pilot project, and evaluation of results.

Note: The above Article of (Andrusenko, T. (2007)) is not in English format so I have publish his ideas by translating.

Reference
1) Haggie, K., and Kingston, J. (2003). Choosing Your Knowledge Management Strategy. Journal of Knowledge Management Practice, June 2003. Available: http://www.tlainc.com/articl51.htm [2/10/2009,2009]
2) Srikantajah, T., and Koenig, M. (2000). Knowledge management for the information professional. Medford, NJ: Information Today.
3) Nickols, F., 2000, strategy: definitions and meaning. Available: http://home.att.net/~nickols/strategy_definition.htm [2/11/2009, 2009]
4) Skyrme, D. (2001). Capitalizing on knowledge: from e-business to k-business. Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann.
5) Kimiz, D. (2005). Knowledge Management in Theory and Practice, Pg No. 247-259.
6) Kmwiki, knowledge mapping. Available: http://kmwiki.wikispaces.com/Knowledge+mapping [2/11/2009, 2009].
7) Andrusenko, T. (2007). KM Strategy in Organisation. Available: http://www.knowledgeboard.com/item/2849/pg_dtl_art_news/pg_hdr_art/pg_ftr_art [2/11/2009,2009]

January 23, 2009

Use and Misuse of Terms - Knowledge, Information and Data (KID)

There is a bond between data, information and knowledge so it's often depicted as pyramid or a linear form. By keeping data at the base and converting data to information and further information is converted to knowledge.

According to my view Fig. 1.0 shows the structure of the KID (Knowledge, Information and Data) in a cyclic manner.



Fig. 1.0

I believe that knowledge helps use create a set of facts and figure which is data and then further data converts in to information and the cycle keeps on going. Also Shawn (2007) has similar kind of view where he say's

"Knowledge acts as an interpretant to turn data into information. The information we notice (we don't notice all information channelled toward us), might create some level of dissonance (its surprises us or we ask ourselves, "What's the story here?") and if we care about resolving this dissonance we create knowledge."(Shawn, (2007))

As I understand that a specific set of facts are relevant to someone else's information. For example, But data to one person is someone else's information. A commodities trader might stare at a computer screen of numbers which would look to most people as raw data. To the commodity trader, however, slight changes in the numbers convey messages which act as information they might convert to knowledge and take action. Consequently, context is a key ingredient acting as an underlay to all three concepts of data, information and knowledge. (Shawn, (2007))

But data to one person is someone else's information. A commodities trader might stare at a computer screen of numbers which would look to most people as raw data. To the commodity trader, however, slight changes in the numbers conveys messages which act as information they might convert to knowledge and take action. Consequently, context is a key ingredient acting as an underlay to all three concepts of data, information and knowledge.

According to Tuomi (1999) view, there is no "raw" data, since every measurable or collectable piece of fact has already been affected by the very knowledge process that made it measurable and collectable in the first place. Knowledge, embedded in our minds, is thus a prerequisite. We can instantiate some of this knowledge as information, which is explicit and processable. By examining the structure of this information, we may finally codify it into pure data, which, from an IS/IT perspective, is the most valuable of the three. Since only data can effectively be processed by computers, the value hierarchy should thus be turned around and have data on top (Tuomi, 1999).

Reference

  1. Shawn, (2007), anecdote: data, information, knowledge: a sensemaking perspective. Available: http://www.anecdote.com.au/archives/2007/06/data_informatio_2.html [2/12/2009, 2009}.
  2. Tuomi, I. (1999a), "Data is More Than Knowledge: Implications of the Reversed Knowledge Hierarchy for Knowledge Management and Organizational Memory", Journal of Management Information Systems, Vol. 16, No. 3, pp. 107-121

January 22, 2009

eSSENCE of Organisations, Social/Business Networks, Communities of Practice (Cops) and its dISPARITY..?

Organisations, what is it and what i believe…?

Organisation, Is a well known term and there are various definition and views on it. But my view towards organisation is bit different. To me Organisation has to do something with systematize a business or activity with a group of people working together. As the definition state it's a group of people working together for a particular objective/activity/goals, It means that I am talking about organisation which is not only the business organisation, It can be found in schools, colleges, welfares, etc. where ever a group of people getting collected to attain certain goals.

But I believe organisation drive in the theory of incompetence. By contrast, the idea of competence support flat organisation. The characteristic theory of incompetence is controls and directives, rules and procedures, layers of management and pyramids of power. Incompetence is a quite important but minimally explored variable in organisation. (Ott and Shafritz, 1994)

Further, incompetence just is not what it used to be. Traditionally one person could be fully responsible for a major failure in business. Although it is still possible to properly credit one individual for a major instance of mission failure, the far more likely explanation is that an organisation's structure, culture, or policies are at fault. Still it is far more emotionally satisfying to lay blame on a single individual. But this attitude does not take into account the nature of modern organisations.(Handy, C.)

Social/Business Networks, What is it..?

Social/Business Network is a social structure which consists of standalone nodes which are connected to each others by some means. These means are the purpose or needs of each another which brings them to form a group or called as networks. Nodes are basically Individuals or Organisation.(Anklam and Hoppe, 2005)

Social Network is nothing new for us, We are already part of one of the social network for an example as we look within ourselves we have relationship in the family. When all of our relatives come together for certain occasion we form a social network. And if one new member is entered in the family the size of the network increases because of the existing relationship get merged with the new relationships and so on and on..

Now a days there are lots of internet application playing role in connecting different people with each other. So these internet applications become means for forming network. As there is a saying "World is become small place to live". It has been tested by Stanley Milgram's in Six Degrees of Separation.

Communities of Practice (Cops)...?

According to Mr. Fred Nickols (2000) "Communities of Practice are the group that form to share what they know and to learn from one another regarding some aspects of their work". Further Mr Etienne Wenger (1998) had a unique explanation; he said "Communities of practice are everywhere". With these definition and many others I believe Communities of Practice can be simply explained as a groups of people working together to share work-related knowledge and experience.

After the research on Cops I believe that we are linked with many of Cops in the form of School, work, home or in our hobbies. You might have joined an online community or might be a part of sports club. No matter what forms of involvement is there, but most of us have experienced the belonging in community of practice (Wenger, E. (1998) a)

While reading about CoP I recollect one of the incidents in my past organisation where my profile was of System Administrator and also I have possess knowledge in programming so I use to work parallell with programmer for certain automation on AD and Exchange. Automation of a process took quite some time but till it was in process of being completed I had to work with them so I had to meet them two days in a week. This was a kind of CoP where there is a purpose to achieve within certain group of people over a period of time.

There is one better example for COP; it's about the Technicians at Xerox Corporation.


Organisations, Social/Business Networks, Communities of Practice (Cops), its dISPARITY…?

There are many different opinions and view on the above topic, as I went on looking views of different experts and ActKM members what I found was

According Steve Denning's book, The Leader's Guide to Storytelling, in chapter 7 Steve makes a clear distinction between CoPs and Networks as shown in the Table 7.1 (from the authors book, Click on the link to view the table) also he makes a mark by saying

"Communities are often confused with networks. Networks are collection of people who maintain contact with each other because of a mutually perceived benefit of staying in touch for purposes that may or may not be explicit" (Denning, S. 2005)

Further to his saying I looked over a view from Communities of Practice, by Etienne Wenger.

"Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly." (Wenger, E. b)

I would like to comment that, it entirely depends on people's perception to consider a COP as a network or Network as a COP. Because Etienne Wenger also said in his earlier article that COP is found every where which mean for example, ActKM, is a network or a community of practice. According to Steve Denning's book

"I see ActKM as a CoP. I'm also a member of CP Square but I don't know that group's stories and consequently I see it more as a network than a community. I would like to change my perception in that case."(Denning, S. 2005)

To elaborate more about the disparity between the group types see Table 1.0 dISPARITY between Organisation, Social/Business Network and Communities of Practise.


Table 1.0 – dISPARITY between Organisation, Social/Business Network and Communities of Practise.

Note: Due to lack of space, Table 1.0 is saved as image to view the table please click on the link.

Reference

  1. Ott, J., and Shafritz, Jay. 1994. toward a definition of organizational incompetence: A neglected variable in organization theory. Available: http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst?docId=5000218958 [2/7/2009, 2009].
  2. Handy, C., managing the dream -- learning organization article. Available: http://www.ourfuture.com/arts02.htm [2/7/2009, 2009].
  3. Anklam, P. and Hoppe, B. 2005, social network - wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Available: http://p2pfoundation.net/Social_Network_Analysis [2/7/2009, 2009].
  4. Wenger, E. 1998 a, CoP: best practices. Available: http://www.co-i-l.com/coil/knowledge-garden/cop/lss.shtml [2/7/2009, 2009].
  5. Denning, S. 2005. "The Leader's Guide to Storytelling". Page No. 150, Available: Google Book Search: http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&id=wuorz5X0KsIC&dq=The+Leader%27s+Guide+to+Storytelling&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=lNgnguUzkl&sig=yhFgQh2oIKjIgzqtLFCWa16cVc4&ei=QH6RSfTgG-TSjAe2sdmoCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=10&ct=result#PPP9,M1 [2/10/2009, 2009].
  6. Wenger, E. b, Communities of Practice : A brief introduction. Available: http://www.ewenger.com/theory/index.htm [2/7/2009, 2009].
  7. Nickols, F. 2000, Communities of Practice (CoP): Definition, Indicators and Identifying Characteristics. Available: http://home.att.net/~discon/KM/CoPCharacteristics.htm [2/7/2009, 2009]

January 15, 2009

Knowledge Management

What is Knowledge..?

Why do we have to manage knowledge..?

These are few questions which arise when I think about Knowledge Management.

After researching on this topic I found out that. Knowledge is a set of information within an individual; this knowledge is gain to an individual in the form of education and experience.

After stretching knowledge with management, it reminds me about a saying “Too Many Cook Spoils the Broth.” When we have many individuals brain working towards one objective with there kind of knowledge creates a mess without an administration. So here knowledge management comes in picture where many individuals knowledge are managed under a supervision to attain an objective.

Similarly I think that not all fingers are same which means every individual is got a unique brain but different intellectual because of which not much of our thoughts are similar. So the need of knowledge management arises here when processes are defined to attain the objective by analysing, accepting and testing.

While researching about the topic I found out interesting facts from different authors. Which I feel is quite relevant to my thoughts, they are

Knowledge management is about understanding how knowledge is created, developed and used for value creation and also understanding how to facilitate this process”. (Poyhonen, A.)

More to be added...!

References
1) Poyhonen A., What is Knowledge Management? , A collection of short video interviews that pose the question "What is KM?" (Gurteen Knowledge). Available: http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/wiskm [2009, 2/4/2009] .