All About Knowledge Management

• A knowledge-based approach to business is the key to success in the networked economy. Trade in intangibles and knowledge-based business is growing exponentially. A firm's success lies more in its intellectual assets than in its physical assets or natural resources. The predominance of high-skill labour requirements, new computing and telecommunications technologies, and an accelerating pace of change have initiated a dramatic shift in the ways companies compete. The whole emphasis, nowadays, is on knowledge management.
• Knowledge management (KM) refers to strategies and structures for maximising the return on intellectual and information resources. It is the practice of harnessing and exploiting intellectual capital to gain a competitive edge and customer commitment through efficiency, innovation and faster and more effective decision-making. The goal of knowledge management is to create new value by improving the efficiency and effectiveness of individual and collaborative knowledge work while increasing innovation and sharpening decision-making.
• Knowledge is not the same thing as information, which is not the same thing as data. Data becomes information when it's organised; information becomes knowledge when it’s placed in actionable context. In fact, knowledge is a fluid mix of framed experience, values, contextual information and expert insight that provides a framework for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information. It originates and is applied in the minds of knowers. In organisations, it often becomes embedded not only in documents but also in organisational routines, processes, practices, and norms.
• An effective knowledge management program can help a company foster innovation by encouraging the free flow of ideas, improve customer service by streamlining response time, boost revenues by getting products and services to market faster, enhance employee retention rates by recognizing the value of employees' knowledge and rewarding them for it and streamline operations and reduce costs by eliminating redundant or unnecessary processes. 
• A creative approach to Knowledge Management (KM) can result in improved efficiency, higher productivity and increased revenues in practically any business function. Sharing knowledge e.g. of best practices can improve productivity. Embedding knowledge into products can enhance value. Connecting different knowledge sources can create innovative products. 
• Intellectual and knowledge-based assets fall into one of the two categories: explicit or tacit. Explicit knowledge includes assets such as patents, trademarks, business plans, marketing research and customer lists. As a general rule of thumb, explicit knowledge consists of anything that can be documented, archived and codified, often with the help or information technology. Much harder to grasp is the concept of tacit knowledge, or the know-how contained in people's heads. The challenge inherent with tacit knowledge is figuring out how to recognize, generate, share and manage it. Tacit knowledge exists in people's heads.
• Tacit knowledge is extremely difficult to transfer; explicit knowledge is easier to transfer. A knowledge worker is a storehouse of tacit knowledge: an asset that appreciates over time because of the learning effect. It is often seen that people find it troublesome to search for information in a database. In fact, research shows that people are about five times more likely to turn to friends or colleagues for answers than to other sources of information. The difference between tacit and explicit knowledge is more than academic. The distinction determines who owns the knowledge. Explicit knowledge is most likely the property of the firm. One way or another it is either data or a work process. But since tacit knowledge cannot be codified, it effectively remains the property of the knowledge worker. If the knowledge worker leaves the firm, he will take the knowledge and its inherent value with him.

Senior management wants an instantaneous knowledge management solution. Knowledge management is so pervasive and involves so many things that it takes many years to embed into an organisation's practices and culture. Implementation of KM requires a holistic approach that aligns business, organisational factors (such as culture), technology and knowledge. Following are some suggestions for effective implementation of KM: 

1. Insist that knowledge sharing and communication is an integral part of the job of front line workers and their leaders, rather than delegating knowledge management to an individual or a separate organisation. 
2. In the perfect knowledge-sharing model, managers are valued not because they know more than their staff, but because they can quickly communicate to their staff what they know and get staff members to do the same with each other. Leaders build environments of trust and mutual respect where creative contribution is nurtured, and where employees at all levels understand that being successful in this networked world increasingly requires collaboration. 
3. KM is not a technology-based concept but a business practice. Information and communications technologies play an important role in managing knowledge. But knowledge sharing is more than the technology that supports it, more than a business strategy aimed at, optimizing a company's experience and expertise, and even more than a cultural shift from the industrial to the information age. Knowledge sharing is, first and foremost, about people. Technology can facilitate knowledge sharing but it is trust that enables it. While technology can support KM, it's not the starting point of a KM program. Make KM decisions based on who (people), what (knowledge) and why (business objectives), save the how (technology) for last.
4. Give people time to develop relationships, to evaluate each other's trustworthiness, and to learn each other's strengths and weaknesses well enough to adapt constructively to them. Taking time to build this "social capital" at the beginning of a KM project increases the effectiveness of the team later on. 
5. Find ways to reinforce and reward knowledge sharing. Recognize and promote people who learn, teach and share. At the same time, penalize those who do not. In all best-practices companies, hoarding knowledge and failing to build on ideas of others have visible and sometimes serious career consequences. Demonstrate that knowledge hoarding is no longer power, but a reputation for knowledge sharing is. 
6. Identify, recognize and promote the KM oriented mini-cultures existing and emerging in the organisation. There are mini-cultures in every organisation. Regardless of the overall corporate culture, individual managers and team leaders can nurture a climate for collaboration within their own work group or staff. And the best of these leaders does so by taking the time and effort necessary to make people feel safe and valued. They emphasize people's strengths while encouraging the sharing of mistakes and lessons learned. They set clear expectations for outcomes and clarify individual roles. They help all members recognize what each of them brings to the team. They model openness, vulnerability and honesty. They tell stories of group successes and personal challenges. And most of all, they encourage and respect everyone's contribution. 
7. Regardless of who heads it, a KM project should be sponsored at the highest level – by the chief executive officer or the board of directors. Further, any knowledge leader must possess some common capabilities. Whatever title appears on that person's business card, he or she must be able to: build and maintain support from top executives, have authority to command sufficient resources for the project's success, take a strategic business perspective rather than a narrow departmental focus, enlist broad acceptance and cooperation from employees and avoid or nullify the negative impacts of corporate politics. 

Knowledge sharing is sometimes restricted because of the policies of the organisations. For instance, when a company's evaluation, promotion and compensation are based on relative numbers, the perception is that sharing knowledge will (always) reduce the chance of personal success. 

Most importantly, when insights and opinions are ridiculed, criticized or ignored, people feel threatened and "punished" for contributing. They typically react by withdrawing from contributing and their over-enthusiasm is dashed to the ground. On the contrary, in healthy KM oriented organisations, where people are free to take initiative, ask "dumb" questions, challenge rules and offer novel suggestions, sharing knowledge becomes a creative process of blending diverse opinions, expertise and perspectives toward a shared objective. 

The major problems that occur in KM usually result because companies ignore the people and cultural issues. In an environment where an individual's knowledge is valued and rewarded, establishing a culture that recognizes tacit knowledge and encourages employees to share it is critical. The need to sell the KM concept to employees shouldn't be underestimated. After all, in many cases employees are being asked to surrender their knowledge and experience - the very traits that make them valuable as individuals.