Important aspect to note here is that it is Knowledge that is to be managed and not data or information, which knowledge often is confused with (with that said, to say that knowledge management is confused with data management or better still information management would not be untrue either). Let’s look closer at these three terms: knowledge, information, and data. Knowledge captures the pattern that a set of information might indicate and a set of data makes information. In other words, there is a progression in the meaning, complexity, and use of these three terms: data, information, and knowledge (in ascending order). Data is without any context, it is just a statistical number e.g., if I say 5 million dollars, it is a data, without any context and therefore without any meaning. If however, I say that a medium business ZYX Consultants (I know you feel the name is reversed) is expected to have a turnover of 5 million dollars in 2008, it becomes information, which makes sense with its context and gives me some information. However, whether you can benefit or not from this information depends on whether you can get access to more of such information set and observe a relation in that information set. Continuing with the same example, if (to keep it simple) I say, that ZYX had a turnover of 1 million dollar in 2004, 2 million dollars in 2005, 3 million dollars in 2006, 4 million dollars in 2007, then one might see a pattern in the information set available and say “ZYX’s turnover is progressing linearly from 1 million to 5 million dollars for the past 5 years.” Now, the statement in quotes becomes knowledge that has context (ZYX’s turnover, over past 5 years) and a pattern (linear increase from 1 million to 5 million dollars). This knowledge (although the example given is simple and does not owe itself to multiple uses) when made available to all people in the organization (ZYX, here) can have multiple advantages. For example, sales and marketing people, among others, can claim the organization’s track record of a healthy and consistent turnover to their prospective clients; business strategy and management people can dwell into what worked for the organization and how and what can be done to see an exponential turnover instead of a linear one. This is a very simple example of what data, information, and knowledge is; how these terms relate to each other; and how basic knowledge can help people perform better at their jobs.
With the terminology made clear and assuming that knowledge as a term is specifically clear, let’s proceed further to understand why is KM at all important (the topic of the article focuses on this however it comes late in picture because I feel it is better to understand the basic stuff before going deeper into whys and why nots of KM) and what it demands.
Why KM?
KM, as a practice, started to gain momentum in 1980s and there is not a single but many reasons why KM has gained popularity and all the leading organizations have KM on their agenda, whether on a big or a small scale. Let’s look at the reasons that make KM indispensable in this challenging corporate environment:
- Knowledge Means Business: More you know, more adept you are at your business. It is true about an organization and equally true about the people that make an organization. These days businesses offer services/solutions more than ever before and an integral part of it is knowledge---knowledge that employees of the organization possess because of their experience and formal education (at times). This knowledge sometimes is captured in tangible form (documents, templates, proposals---explicit knowledge) that people produce as a part of their work products; however, most of this knowledge is captured well in the mind of the employees in intangible form (tacit knowledge). Skillful and experienced employees are a rich reservoir (I apologize for treating people inanimately; however “reservoir” is the first word that came to my mind at this point in time) of knowledge---they know what to do in which situation, which action steps to undertake to strike the deals in a better manner, how to make informed decisions, how to tweak the processes if the need be, how to manage risks superiorly in a given situation, so on and so forth---the list being endless. This knowledge when captured in their heads can do good to the organization/business only when these brains are directly involved in projects requiring these skills. Alas, they cannot be omnipresent to guide and facilitate what other employees are doing; however, their knowledge can be. The whole idea of KM that includes identifying, explicating, capturing, and disseminating this knowledge can help a wider employee base. KM system provides a framework using which lesser experienced employees (I am not talking about number of years of experience here but the richness and exposure of it) can benefit from the knowledge shared by veterans/more skilled/informed experts. Therefore, KM system enables employees to perform better and henceforth enhance the business.
- Virtual Environment: In today’s global environment, most of the businesses operate out of different locations. Distances between the employees means most of the employees will not get a chance to interact with the experts or the people who hold more knowledge in their minds. KM system however can be made available in virtual environment and thereby all the employees can learn from the knowledge of experts that KM captures.
- Reducing Workforce: Most of the organizations are making their workforce leaner (now with recession shouting aloud, this statement weighs more) to realize higher turnovers. From business perspective, this laying off however has also a downside to it. With people goes their knowledge. A system such as KM provides as a framework to capture knowledge that employees have in their minds and retrieve it as and when needed. Even if the employee leaves, the knowledge that the person had with him remains with the organization.
- Impressing Customer: Many organizations are making their KM system(s), or a part of it (which makes better sense), available to their customers. This communicates the seriousness that the organization feels about managing knowledge and offering better solutions. Impressing the customer gives you better chances of grabbing potential deals.
What KM Demands?
I view KM as an activity that engages soft skills (interviewing subject matter experts in a manner that aims at transforming their tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge) as well as technical skills (deciding which knowledge can be made reusable to the organization for including in the KM effort, tagging the explicated documents/proposals/templates/checklists with appropriate key words that can will be searchable, identifying suitable databases, data management tools, information management tools, knowledge management tools, and so on). These skills are the essential prerequisites for KM, an activity that is important because of the reasons mentioned above.
So, if you want your business to grow more with the same resources and make the intelligence broth available in your people’s head to all in the organization, go for KM. It is the need of the hour. The longer you wait to implement it in your organization, more knowledge you might be losing and/or withholding from your workforce, which might be unhealthy to your business. The results of a KM activity might not be very encouraging at the beginning because it is a resource-consuming activity that starts yielding results after a while; however, once a KM system is in place and your people get comfortable using it, you would be surprised at the increased efficiency, better productivity, enhanced client engagement, and last but not the least, a more knowledgeable workforce in your organization.
