Knowledge Management - Some first thoughts

Knowledge management is often perceived as the management of knowledge sharing. However, it is a much broader discipline which encompasses a range of practices used in an organization to identify, create, represent, distribute and enable adoption of insights and experiences. In order to be effective, knowledge management must be based on a robust learning management program.
Learning management addresses the need of organizing in a structured and strategic manner the creation and distribution of knowledge within an organization in order to increase performance and business value creation. As such, one may perceive knowledge management of an extension of the former in which knowledge is create in an ad-hoc fashion by the collective and distributed through collaborative mediums. Many benefits may be achieved by the adoption and implementation of learning and knowledge management:

• Enable high performance through workforce transformation;
• Enable individuals to achieve a more holistic view of the organization as well as their role in the creation of business value;
• Facilitate organizational-wide change management;
• Foster a culture of a “collective” and team-driven success.

Accenture Consulting, a world leader in the sector of consulting services, has achieved great competitive advantage from its capacity to manage the knowledge of its workforce. The company is well known for its innovative approach to learning and knowledge management which has enabled it to offer innovative business value creation solutions. Their approach to learning management has become an industry wide benchmark. They have also innovated by their demonstration of the substantial financial benefits (353% return) called “return on learning” that could be achieved by investing in learning. The following important statements may be made about Accenture’s learning management functional:

• The learning function is run like a business;
• A philosophy of “just-in-time learning” is adopted instead of “just-in-case”;
• Learning is focused on achieving business needs;
• A “phenomenal” learning experience is core to the approach;
• The responsibility is shared between business and training groups.

I believe that all IT organizations should (not to say must) implement knowledge management. Moreover, its implementation should differ little from Accenture's. Many perceive ITs as different from consulting services organization because of the latters focus on revenue and the other on cost. Hence, many IT organizations (and corporations) minimize the importance of investing important sums in learning and knowledge management under the pretext that it is not necessary for their economic survival. I beg to differ.

Accenture's goal when investing money in these activites can be applied to all organizations : to maximize productivity and efficiency. The only important different I believe one will see between various organizations is the targeted outcome. By achieving it goal, Accenture benefits from higher profit margins; ITs benefit from the other side of the coin : lower overhead costs. In the end, both outcomes are the same : if an IT has high overhead costs then it will be easily replaced by an outsourcing firm that has low overhead costs allowing it to offer the same service for less will still making a profit.

Wrongful use of organization design

The design of an organization is a key element which can greatly influence interpersonal group dynamics. As such, an organization's design should faciliate group dynamics which foster the espoused values of the organization; at the opposite, the wrong design can greatly hinder cultural goals. For example, an organization which values team work and intergroup collaboration, by using a matrix structure, will promote rich interpersonal group dynamics. At the opposite, using a highly structured functional model would promote little lateral interpersonal exchanges and would foster a culture of "them and us".

Organizational design can and will help forge culture and interpersonal group dynamics, however it is probably not the most effective tool to influence or manage aspects such as knowledge management. To often, manager are too quick at using organisation redesign as a tool to manage problems. They wrongfully use the "divide and conquer" approach to organization design under the assumption that if there are issues to be solve in their group, creating smaller and more focused sub-groups will surely be the solution. If the issue is a gap in the KSA (knowledge, skills and aptitudes) of the group, no matter how a group of people is slided and diced, the issue will no be resolved.

A new view of the world

Over the last couple of months I have become increasingly interested in the topics of organizational culture and change management. The major cause of these newly found interests was the ever growing frustration I was feeling when faced with my inability to understand (what seem to be at the time) the “irrational” behavior of many people I worked with. Mainly, I could not understand why people were so determined to resist change and continue to use “what I\we have always done” ways of doing things.

Reading books from Kotter and Schein has opened my eyes to a whole new world shaped by beliefs, values and deep assumptions. Up to this point, being a technologist, I held the unconscious and deeply rooted assumption that an organization could be rationalized and controlled; none conformance could be managed simply through governance. Hence, changing the organization was merely a question of careful planning and methodic execution.

Today, I realize that my old Tayloristic view of organizations was outdated; it’s underlying “machine” metaphor was to simplistic in that it was incapable of capturing all the subtle but important psychodynamics which exist and drives human actions and interactions.

Exordium (The Beginning)

Through this blog, I wish to share my ideas and interests on various subjects such as information management, organizational learning, change management and semantic technologies just to name a few. I hope to get feedback and I'm always interested in discovering new subjects.