Knowledge Management

Knowledge Management

Knowledge Management

Knowledge management programs have had mixed success. The Bain and Co. study mentioned earlier found that satisfaction with knowledge management was "below average" when compared to other management tools. Of course, there were many firms who rated themselves "extremely satisfied" as well. However, clearly, knowledge management is no panacea. Below are my observations on why this is the case, drawn from five years of experience working with firms engaged in knowledge management. (Applehans 1999)

It has been found out that Knowledge management never a nil activity. To some extent it is happening to some extent in every company. While the proponents of knowledge management would like to argue otherwise, the reality is that firms have been managing their knowledge since the dawn of time. For example, formal organization structures are typically designed to ensure that knowledge exchange takes place between those who most need it. Informal social networks--the groups of people who have lunch together or go for a drink after work--are mechanisms for transferring knowledge.

Transferring best practices

Everyone recognizes how important this is in principle, but few firms actually do it well. One industrial products company took a management tool that had worked very well in its Canadian headquarters and imported it into its Spanish and German subsidiaries. While moderately successful in Spain, the tool failed miserably in Germany.

Knowledge databases

These are great when they work, but the reality for most firms is that they do not. There are often problems with the quality and volume of information they contain, so that searching is a slow or useless exercise. And many are simply underused, because people find different ways of getting access to the information they need. One executive called this the "ignorance is bliss" syndrome.

Most knowledge management techniques end up looking just like the traditional techniques you have been using for years. The deeper that firms get into these sorts of tools, the more they find that managing knowledge is integral to the working of the entire organization. For example, the Skandia Navigator model I mentioned earlier was built on intellectual capital foundations. However, it ends up functioning exactly like the Balanced Scorecard. The concept of communities of practice is alluring, but essentially it is just about encouraging people to communicate with one other and share their ideas. This idea is as old as the hills. Knowledge databases have an important role to play in sharing knowledge, but the challenge of aligning such tools with user needs is the same one that IT managers have always faced.

These observations are not meant to be cynical. Good management practice always boils down to a few basic challenges, so the fact that knowledge management leads to a certain amount of deja vu among seasoned managers is actually a reassurance that it is addressing important issues. The acid test is whether these techniques end up being better understood, and better implemented, as a result of the knowledge management "framing."

Knowledge management is as much about generating ...