KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SKILLS

Basically, different position in KM department need a different skill such as leadership skill, managing skill and technical skill.

According to Mohanta (2010), she identifies six essential quality that all knowledge workers need to some extent;
Possessing factual and theoretical knowledge
Finding and accessing information
Ability to apply information
Communication skills
Motivation
Intellectual capabilities.

KM Directors should have as many of the required skills below as possible. The five core scope of required skills should include:

1. Knowledge Management Experience

-        Have a clear and deep understanding of KM principles.

-        Understand in how to form a KM strategy.

-        Being exposed with KM best practices.

2. Learning Industry Experience

-        Involve with continuous learning solutions.

-        Understand on how KM and learning associate.

3. Technology Project Management

-        Skilled in technology work management

-        Managing indirectly with shared technology resources.

4. Matrix Management Skills

-        Skill on enabling cross-functional teams.

-        Comfortable in a matrix reporting environment

5. Industry Subject Matter Expertise

-      Knowledge of the core business KM is supporting

-      Clear and wide range of knowledge of existing business, process and     challenges that may happen.

-      Being exposed with organization competition, stakeholders and market chance.

Knowledge Managers.

According to McKeen & Staples (2002), they conducted a survey of 41 knowledge managers and from it they created a tentative portrait of the knowledge manager:
Highly educated
Already a seasoned organizational performer. Chosen for KM based on proven         performance.
Seeks new knowledge
Likes "being at the forefront of something new and exciting"
Derives more motivation from a challenge than from formal power
Receives intrinsic rewards from helping others
A risk-taker
Sees KM as a way to "make a mark within the organization".

A. Frost (2010, Knowledge Management Skills. KMT, An Educational KM Site.

http://www.knowledge-management-tools.net/skills.html

Innovation & Personalization Strategies. What is that?

Firms need to step up their game by reconsidering position and move more towards personalization and innovation strategies when there is is rapid market changes.  at times, the traditional methods can no longer be relevant in the situation.  as for example, the efficiency-related strategies.

Technically, ideas only are not enough.  It needs to be nurtured and being implemented in the organizational context.  Ideas come from the people and they need champions to take them forward.  accordingly, people carry, develop and marshal their ideas in a socio-political process of dialogue and discussions with other people before they gain legitimacy and currency.

According to Van de Van in 1986, there are a number of stages that ideas may go through over time.  The stages namely appreciation, articulation, adoption, institutionalisation and decay.

On the other hand, according to Wolfe in 1994, there are ten (10) common stages in the innovation cycle.  The ten common stages are: idea conception, awareness, matching, appraisal, persuasion, adoption decision, implementation, confirmation, routinisation and infusion.

The political dynamics, interest and power bases can influence the innovation.  however, on certain times, innovation may seem irrational, unpredictable and uncertain and fail to follow rationalized management process.  This may lead to frustrations among managers to manage innovation.

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Reference: Jashapara, A. (2011). Chapter 4: Innovation and personalisation strategies. Knowledge Management: An Integrated Approach. Second Edition. Pearson Education Limited. England.

CHALLENGES AND CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS OF KM

  

Knowledge exists in two forms: 

explicit and tacit 

Explicit knowledge is easily codified and conveyed to others

Tacit knowledge is more experiential, subjective and personal, and substantially more difficult to convey

Although it is more difficult to manage, tacit knowledge is the primary target of many KM efforts, because it is the repository of the organization’s most strategically valuable knowledge

This is one of many challenges a company faces when it decides to implement KM.

Companies are most likely to have success with KM if they have:

• A clear idea of the features and functionality of KM products.
• An awareness of the business goals and the critical success factors to implement and roll out a KM program
• A thorough understanding of the role of technology in the implementation of a KM program.

 Successful KM

• Identify the purpose of the KM program (internal vs. external focus and which type of internal focus)
• Have top management support — when the project has the blessing of the CEO and CIO, the roll out of the program is insured.
• Be at the core of medium to long term business goals. KM investments are not short-term financial investments.
• Break the cycle of information hoarding (intentional and non intentional). Information hoarding is sometimes the result of lack of tools to share the information, or of the non-realization that the information could actually be important to someone in another part of the organization. On the other hand, in a world where knowledge is power, it is difficult to convince some of the employees to let go of "proprietary" information, without proper incentives. In this case, the organization needs to prove to "knowledge holders" that they will benefit themselves from sharing information.
• Insure growth and flexibility — by providing the ability to customize and adjust the product over time.
• Manage the user base, by taking into consideration both heavy and light users. The solution should be able to organize the knowledge so it is most useful to the specific knowledge seeker. For example, I want it to give me knowledge relevant to my current knowledge level, so it is easier for me to understand. In addition, some of the users will be those that KM is their work, while others will be simply users of the information.

Source : Retrive from

http://web.mit.edu/ecom/www/Project98/G4/Sections/section1d.html

Managing Knowledge Processes for Value Creation by Giovanni Schiuma, Daniela Carlucci and Antonio Lerro (2012)

This discussion paper is mainly focusing on the crucial need of good management of knowledge processes in order to gain excellence in business as well as managing the uncertainties, turbulence and change in the current socio-economic scenario.

According to the discussions, for both public and private organization to get gains, they must conquer the ability to turn their knowledge domain into profitable services and/or artefacts and efficiently and effectively renew the organization’s capabilities.  Continuously acquiring, organizing, sharing and applying the knowledge resources they had are the things that need to be done by the organization in order to fit the purpose.

Like any other things that are in contact with the business/organizational management, there are always challenges. In relative to knowledge resources, the challenges would be the process of extracting the ultimate value from the available resources.  It is only when these resources are being managed effectively and efficiently as well as through proper knowledge processes that the complete potential of knowledge resources is being acknowledge.

Besides that, the effectiveness of this knowledge management processes efforts generally depends on the alignment of the organization’s process and infrastructure with the processes such as creating, disseminating, and applying and using the knowledge in a way that upholds the organization’s goals’ achievements and value proposition.

On top of that, in the process of becoming a successful knowledge resources management which includes the support system, teams, collaboration, structures, ICT tools and proper supportive culture, several factors that derived from the technology, individual and organization may intervene.  The debate on the knowledge management processes, however, is still on.

Reference: Schiuma, G. Carluccci, D. and Lerro, A. (2012). Managing knowledge processes for value creation. VINE. Vol.2. Iss 1. 4-14. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/03055721211207815

THE FUNCTION OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

We can divide all the functions performed by KM in five main categories:

1.    Intermediation: Intermediation refers to the brokering or knowledge transfer between an appropriate knowledge provider and knowledge seeker. Its role is to "match" a knowledge seeker with the optimal source of knowledge for that seeker. By doing so, intermediation ensures a much more efficient transfer of knowledge.

2.    Externalization: Externalization refers to the transfer of knowledge from the minds of its holders into an external repository, in the most efficient way possible. The function of externalization is to provide the sharing of knowledge. This is where Competitive Intelligence/Business Intelligence comes in. Through KM tools it is possible to track the vast quantity of data about competitors — from news stories to price changes.

3.    Internalization: Internalization is the extraction of knowledge from the external repository, and the filtering of this knowledge to provide greater relevance to the knowledge seeker. Knowledge should be presented to the user in the form most suitable to its comprehension. This, this function may include interpretation and/or reformatting of the presentation of the knowledge. To implement this function, companies can build yellow pages thus mapping and categorizing the skills and work experience of the organization. Another aspect of internalization would be the documentation of best practices.

4.    Cognition: Cognition is the function of systems to make decisions based on available knowledge. Cognition is the application of knowledge which has been exchanged through the preceding three functions.

5.    Measurement: Measurement refers to all KM activities that measure, map and quantify corporate knowledge and the performance of KM solutions. This function acts to support the other four functions, rather than to actually manage the knowledge itself.

These macro KM functions are combinations of many atomic functions, namely those of: 

·         finding, mapping, gathering, and filtering information

·         developing new knowledge (identifying relations among items and sharing information)

·         converting personal knowledge into shared knowledge resources

·         understanding and learning

·         adding value to information to create knowledge

·         enabling action through knowledge (performance and management)

·         processing shared knowledge resources

·         delivering (transferring) explicit knowledge

·         Building adequate technical infrastructures.

Source : Retrieve from http://web.mit.edu/ecom/www/Project98/G4/Sections/section1c.html

Would you like to have a successful company?

Company that wanted to be success must manage their knowledge management actively for these 3 reasons:

i)                   Facilitates decision-making capabilities.

Achieving great and high-quality decisions can be erupted by the overwhelming processed information.  A company needs to plant a knowledge management system as to help the members of top management to share the information, cut through the noises that erupts the dissemination of information as well as improve the decision-making process.  All in all, specifying a place for the knowledge management system can aid in producing a more informed and better decisions for the managers.

ii)                   Builds learning organization by making learning routine.

“To move ahead, one must often first look behind” (Garvin, 2000. p.106).  by this quote it means that in order to move forward, a company must make learning a routine to improve themselves.  This can be done through the assesments that is being done after an activity or event have taken place within the organization environment.  The result of this assesment is that the company gets to identify areas for improvements as well as identify the success and/or failures of the activities/events.

iii)                 Stimulates cultural changes and innovation

A very well managed and active organizational knowledge can stimulates the cultural change and innovations of the organization itself by motivating its members to have a free flow of ideas.  With a proper management of knowledge, managers are able to accept changes as well as develop ideas and insight which later on, on most of the time, lead to the developing the current ideas or we know it as innovation.

This is a reviewed article. The original article can be retrieved from: http://www.forbes.com/sites/lisaquast/2012/08/20/why-knowledge-management-is-important-to-the-success-of-your-company/