Knowledge Management Strategy
When a method or an approach is seen to be beneficial then people may seek to apply the method or adopt the approach because of the perception of benefit. The decision may be taken without the identification of a specific need and may be based on reported success by others.
This approach to developing a Knowledge Management strategy takes a look at the sort of things people in organisations may wish to think about if they have taken or are considering taking a decision concerning the use of Knowledge Management.
This approach is biased towards the use of the Knowledge Structure Map and readers should prepare themselves for this before reading on.
Where to start thinking from
The right place to start is by asking the right questions. So what are the right questions?
I need to develop a Knowledge Management strategy so what are the typical or accepted or well used strategies that already exist?
This may not only be the wrong question but it is about the wrong thing. This question is about solving the problem of developing a Knowledge Management strategy. But why does a company want or need a Knowledge Management strategy: certainly not simply so that it will have one. It is important to make sure that the thing or things introduced to the company under the heading of Knowledge Management are of value and can show business benefit. This cannot really stray too far from the reasons that the company is in business or rather the activities that the company undertakes that enable it to remain in business.
Maybe a better question to ask and one that will really focus things is:
If we already had a successful Knowledge Management team in the company, what sort of things would it be doing each day?
It could also be useful to ask why it is doing the things that it is doing each day.
Proactive and Responsive Knowledge Management
A KM programme will need to be both proactive and responsive. The responsive element may include investigating and solving business problems at the request of department managers that are currently experiencing particular operational difficulties. It will certainly be valuable to consider this more carefully and also to consider some. There is within this, an assumption that the KM programme is known at least across the company management group. That is, not only known of, but known to address and solve certain types of business problem. This is something that should not be taken for granted.
Reactive approaches
The investigation, analysis and solution of business issues could suggest that there needs to be a toolkit available to a business KM team. The KM team would be expert users of a range of KM tools that are each suited to address particular classes of issues.
Dealing with Knowledge Related Issues
If there were never any knowledge related issues that arise or that could be identified then it may be very difficult to justify investment in a Knowledge Management activity.
This is not strictly true because Knowledge related issues might not always be easy to see. A forward looking company (rather than one that is fire fighting) may require a Knowledge Management team to look for issues related to the knowledge resource that can improve the business.
Proactive KM
Knowledge Management should also and possibly mainly be a proactive undertaking. The reason for this is that there is often little known about the business knowledge resource and often any information that is available is held by certain individuals and not easily accessible to the business decision makers. The decision makers are the ones that should know about the knowledge resource so that they can account for this resource within the decision making process. So one of the main responsibilities of the Knowledge Management team is to find out about the knowledge resource and how it interfaces with all business processes. This activity may then become the main driver for the Knowledge Management team.
How to discover Information about the Knowledge Resource
Simply interviewing everyone or asking everyone to fill in a questionnaire concerning what they know and do is probably too unstructured. Constructing a series of Knowledge Structure Maps (KSM) at a strategic business level would certainly help to clarify the business knowledge resource and would also provide some first line analytical information about it. The results of this could then be used to justify the application of other tools, could identify areas for urgent and specific action or could identify knowledge areas that require further study using the same method. There are certainly other approaches however and this could be a good time to look at how other people do things.
Fixed Format Knowledge Resource Information
Discussion about a set of results or a source of information about the company knowledge resource that can be used in decision making leads to a requirement to define the format of such a resource.
Deciding on a base format
The format of information about the business knowledge resource needs to show information at a granularity or level of detail that matches the object of the particular decision that is required. It needs to be able to show things that could affect the decision such as what knowledge is needed in a specific case, whether that knowledge is available and safe within the company, what knowledge may need to be purchased additionally, what aspects of the knowledge is our speciality or what knowledge should be developed etc.
The main point of Fixed Format Base Information
A hypothetical company would have a particular way of bringing the business knowledge resource into business decision making processes. Furthermore the company would have a front line recommendation process for knowledge related issues that arise and support for the provision of other Knowledge Management services that the business is thought to need.