Tuesday, 1 December 2015

Knowledge Management Failure Factors           
 According to the study on ‘A Synthesis of Knowledge Management Failure by Alan Frost (2014), the failure factors can be divided by two categories which is: causal and resultant. Causal factors refer to the organizational issues that are required to implement KM successfully whereas resultant factors is deal with specific problem and can be regarded more like the symptoms rather than the disease.
Figure below show the causal and resultant failure factors:

Reference : A. Frost (2014). Knowledge Management Failure Factors, KMT an Educational KM Site. http://www.knowledge-management-tools.net/failure.html.

Monday, 23 November 2015

INFORMATION MANAGEMENT VERSUS KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

Some see Information Management (IM) as a subsection of Knowledge Management (KM). A good IM provides the right information at the right time to the right people. KM creates systems that enable organization to tap into the knowledge, experiences, and creativity of their staff to enhance their achievement.
Knowledge and information are actually quite contrasting, as is tacit and explicit knowledge. So, while information and data management are certainly very functional, especially as information references are growing at exponential rates and with the new focus on big data, it is not synonymous with KM.
So what exactly is the difference?

Information and IM:
  • Concentrate on data and information
  • Deal with unstructured and structured facts and statistics.
  • Advantage greatly from technology, since the information being carried is already organized and in an easily transferrable form.
  • Concentrate on arrange, examining, and retrieving - again due to the organized nature of the information.
  • About ‘know-what’, for example it offers a fact that you can then use to help create useful knowledge, but in itself that
  • Fact does not convey a course of action (such as sales of product x are up 25% last quarter).
  • Is easy to copy - due to its organized and easily transferrable nature.

Knowledge and KM:
  • Concentrate on knowledge, understanding, and wisdom
  • Deal with both organized and unorganized knowledge. Unorganized knowledge - the most valuable type of knowledge - is found in the minds of practitioners and is unarticulated, context-based, and experience-based.
  • Technology is useful, but KM's focus is on people and processes. The most valuable knowledge cannot effectively be (directly) transferred with technology, it must be passed on directly from person to person.
  • Focus on track down, understanding, allowing, and encouraging - by creating environments, cultures, processes, etc. where knowledge is shared and created.
  • About “know-how”, “know-why”, and “know-who”.
  • Is hard to copy - at least regarding the tacit elements.



A. Frost(2014). Information Management vs Knowledga Management. KMT, An Eductaional KM Site. http://www.knowledge-management-tools.net/IM_vs_KM.html

Tuesday, 17 November 2015


15 Knowledge Management Benefits

  •        Enabling Better and Faster Decision Making

By delivering the relevant information at the time of the needs through the structure, search, subscription, syndication and support the knowledge management environment can provide the basis for making a good decision. The collaboration will bring the power of large numbers, diverse opinion and varied the experience to bear when decision be based on the actual experience, large sample size and practical lesson learned. 

  • Making it easy to find the relevant information and resources

     When the organizations faced with the need to respond to the customer, solve a problem, analyse trends, assess markets, benchmark against the peers, understand the competition, create new offerings, plan strategy and to think critically, you typically will look for the information and resources to support these activities.

  •      Reusing ideas, documents and expertise

When the members of your organization have figured out how to solve a common problem and know how to deliver a recurring the service or have invented a new product, if the organizations want the same solution, service and the product to be replicated as much as possible.

  • Avoiding Redundant Effort

Basically, no one likes to spend doing something over and over again. But they do so all the time for a variety reason which is in avoiding duplication of effort by saves time and money will keep the employees morale up and streamlines work. By not spending time reinventing the wheel, the organizations can have more time to invent something new.

  •   Avoiding Making the Same Mistakes Twice

KM allows us to share the lesson learned and not only about the success but also the failures. In order to do that, the organizations must have the cultures of trusts openness and reward for willingness to talk about right and wrong.

  •  Taking Advantage of Existing Expertise and Experience

Teams benefit from the individual skills and knowledge of each member. The more of complementary with the expertise of the team members, it will be the greater the power of the team. In large organizations, there are people with widely-varying capabilities and backgrounds, and there should be a benefit from this. But as the number of people increases, it becomes more difficult for each individual to know about everyone else. So even though there are people with knowledge who could help other people, they don't know about each other.

  •  Communicating Important Information Widely and Quickly

Almost everyone today is an information worker, either completely or partially. Knowledge management helps address this problem through personalized portals, targeted subscriptions, RSS feeds, tagging, and specialized search engines.

  •   Promoting Standard, Repeatable Process and Procedures

If standard processes and procedures have been defined, they should always be followed. This allows employees to learn how things are done, leads to predictable and high-quality results, and enables large organizations to be consistent in how work is performed. By providing a process for creating, storing, communicating, and using standard processes and procedures, employees will be able to use them routinely.

  • Providing Methods, Tools, Templates, Techniques and Example

Methods, tools, templates, techniques, and examples are the building blocks supporting repeatable processes and procedures. Using these consistently streamlines work, improves quality, and ensures compatibility across the organization.


  •      Making Scarce Expertise Widely Available

If there is a resource who is in great demand due to having a skill which is in short supply, knowledge management can help make that resource available to the entire organization. Ways of doing so include community discussion forums, training events; ask the expert systems, recorded presentations, white papers, podcasts, and blogs.


  •            Showing Customers How Knowledge is Used for Their Benefit

In competitive situations, it is important to be able to differentiate yourself from other firms. Demonstrating to potential and current customers that you have widespread expertise and have ways of bringing it to bear for their benefit can help convince them to start or continue doing business with you. Conversely, failure to do so could leave you vulnerable to competitors who can demonstrate their knowledge management capabilities and benefits.

  • Accelerating Delivery to Customers

Speed of execution is another important differentiator among competitors. All other things being equal, the company which can deliver sooner will win. Knowledge sharing, reuse and innovation can significantly reduce time to deliver a proposal, product, or service to a customer. And that translates into increased win rates, add-on business, and new customers.


  •     Enabling The Organization to Leverage its Size

As an organization grows, the increasing size is only a benefit if it can use the knowledge of all of its employees. Through the use of tools such as communities, expertise locators, and repositories, the full power of a large enterprise can be exploited.


  •         Making the Organization Best Problem-Solving Experiences Reusable

Consistently applying proven practices, also known as best practices or good practices, can significantly improve the results of any firm. For example, if a manufacturing plant in one part of the world has figured out how to prevent the need for product rework, and all other plants around the world adopt this practice, savings will flow directly to the bottom line. By establishing a process for defining, communicating, and replicating proven practices, an enterprise takes advantage of what it learns about solving problems.

  •  Stimulating Innovation and Growth


Most businesses want to increase their revenues, but it becomes increasingly difficult as industries mature and competition increases. Creating new knowledge through effective knowledge sharing, collaboration, and information delivery can stimulate innovation.

If the organization can achieve all this benefits of KM, the organizations should be achieve to growth in the market.


Source from: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140811204044-2500783-15-knowledge-management-benefits 

Tuesday, 10 November 2015

LEADERSHIP AND ROLE MANAGEMENT

Definition

A system that will ensures the continuity of leadership by identifying and addressing the potential gaps in effective leadership and implements and maintains the program that captures the organizational knowledge and promotes learning.

The Relationship between Leadership Roles and Knowledge Management

The leaders and managers effectively managing the people, ensures continuity and sustain a learning environment that drives continuous improvement in performance and provide a means to share the critical knowledge across the organization. KM must be supported by an appropriates investment in training and technology.

Critical Success Factors

The leadership and Knowledge Management system is comprised of the 5 critical success factors:

Leadership Succession Management
Change Management
Integrity and Inspiring Employee Commitment
Continuous Learning
Knowledge Management


The key elements that indicate the effectiveness:

A constant flow of the leaders who can properly direct and agency’s to achieve the results
A workforce with the competencies required to achieve the agency’s mission
The workforce is motivated to use the competencies in service of the agency’s mission


Source from: https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/human-capital-management/leadership-knowledge-management/ 




Tuesday, 3 November 2015

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SOURCE

DEFINITION OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SOURCES

A knowledge management system comprises a range of practices used in an organization to identify, create, represent, distribute, and enables of the adoption to insight and experience. With the insights and experiences comprise knowledge, whether the embodied in the individual or embedded in organizational processes and practice.



PURPOSE OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SOURCES


Improved Performance
Competitive Advantage
Innovation
Sharing of Knowledge
Integration
Continuous Improvement by:
  •   Driving the Strategy
  •   Starting New Lines of Business
  •   Solving Problems Faster
  •   Developing Professional Skills
  •   Recruit and Retain Talent


ACTIVITIES IN KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

  • Start with the business problem and the business value to be delivered first.
  • Identify what kind of strategy to pursue to deliver this value and address the KM problem.
  • Think about the system required from a people and process point of view.
  • Finally, think about what kind of technical infrastructure are required to support the people and processes.
  • Implement system and processes with appropriate change management and iterative staged release.


LEVEL OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT












SOURCE OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT






Source from: http://www.knowledge-management-tools.net/knowledge-management-systems.html


Monday, 26 October 2015

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

Monday, 19 October 2015

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.

:) 

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