Knowledge Management & The Role of Technology
Organizations hoping to leverage intellect need to think less in terms of knowledge and more about encouraging communication, hence a networked economy. A networked economy co-creates a shared understanding, perspective and language among people from a diversity of disciplines, priorities, growth stages and cultures. This is why the paradigm needs to move towards emphasizing a "communicating", "connecting" or "networking" rather than a "knowledge" economy.
Technology: Blessing or Curse?
The role of technology in assisting with capturing knowledge will increase in the future. IT executives and professionals now bring substantial business experience to their jobs. This suggests that chief information officers (CIO's) may play a bigger role in overall business strategies. However, some experts suggest reliance on technology obscures the crucial human issues in learning and teaching. In the early 1990s, executives at London's water supplier sought to improve efficiency by giving inspectors hand-held computers and eliminating the central dispatching station. However, research revealed the depot had been more than a place for the inspectors to change clothes and pick up their trucks. It was also where they learned vital tricks of their trade. Dave Snowden, then a knowledge-management consultant for IBM, found that need was so great that the inspectors soon began meeting on their own at a local restaurant and jotting tips in a notebook they stashed behind the counter.
A few years earlier, Julian Orr, an anthropologist then working for Xerox, heard remarkably similar stories from copier technicians. Xerox supplied manuals, but the employees told Mr. Orr they more often relied on tips gleaned from colleagues. Backed by Mr. Orr's research, Xerox gave the technicians radios so they could confer while confronting a malfunctioning machine. As in the HP-China study--research seem to suggest adding a technology piece--after creating a robust knowledge exchange program.
Don't Forget the Human Factor
Many leaders fail by putting the lion's share of their KM investment in technology solutions intended to make it easier to search and find information, capture lessons learned, and share best practices. So, it's now easier to find content, but content doesn't deliver performance--people do. Managers can't avoid the daunting people aspects of what it takes to transfer and use knowledge. Experts agree that it is of immense importance to understand how to design knowledge management systems so that they mesh with human behavior at the individual and collective levels. By allowing users to see one another and to make inferences about the activities of others, online collaboration platforms can become environments in which new social forms can be invented, adopted, adapted, and propagated, eventually supporting the same sort of social innovation and diversity that can be observed in physically based cultures.
What Data is Important?
Using business intelligence data to evaluate and ultimately improve corporate performance requires knowing exactly what data should be examined and what should be ignored. You only need a certain amount of data to make the right decision. Therefore, specific business needs must be kept in mind when developing business intelligence strategies.
The key question, according to Mark Smith, CEO of San Mateo, California--based Ventana Research, is what specific data is necessary to measure the effectiveness of each department, e.g., what data is needed for finance and what data is needed for manufacturing. It's easier to determine what data is needed and create the proper metrics and key performance indicators if you break things down in this fashion.
What is Knowledge?
But this is only the beginning. Most of the "knowledge" on which the knowledge economy is built is actually just information--data, facts and basic business intelligence. Knowledge itself is more profound. As management guru Tom Davenport once put it, "Knowledge is information combined with experience, context, interpretation, and reflection." It's the knowledge derived from information that gives you a competitive edge.
Political, economic, and social forces in conjunction with rapid technological advancements are shaping today's organizational operating environment. These forces have accelerated the speed and frequency of change. This new reality requires the community to be innovative, adaptable, and poised to take advantage of a fast-changing environment. Coupled with the increasing lack of time and attention workers have available to commit to traditional competency-based learning, there is a deep recognition that learning methods must keep pace with the needs and expectations of the organization's community. Technology bridges the gap. However, technology along cannot do the job. Astute, savvy, and intelligent people are needed for a knowledge management program to be complete.
Summary
Organizations hoping to leverage intellect need to think less in terms of knowledge and more about encouraging communication, hence a networked economy. A networked economy co-creates a shared understanding, perspective and language among people from a diversity of disciplines, priorities, growth stages and cultures. The operative words here are "among people." Reliance on technology alone obscures the crucial human issues in learning and teaching.
As the role of technology in assisting with capturing knowledge increases in the future, it is imperative that organizations not forget the human factor. And, while technology now makes it easier to find content--managers must keep in mind that content doesn't deliver performance--people do.
References:
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- CIO. (2006). CIO's strive to be strategic.
- Conroy, K. (2006). The networked economy. Business & Finance Magazine, (6)7.
- Erickson, T, & Kellogg, W. A. (2000). Social translucence: An approach to designing systems that support social processes. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human
- Interactions, 7(1), 5983.
- Greenes, K.A. (2006). Knowledge management. Leadership Excellence, 23(6), 19.
- Neal, H. (2006). The focus shifts from all the available data to just the right data.
- Manufacturing Business Technology, 6(11).
- Thurm, S. (2006, January 23). Companies struggle to pass on knowledge that workers acquire. Wall Street Journal, p.B1.
Copyright © 2008 Cubie
Davis King. All rights reserved.
Dr.
Cubie Davis King is a performance technologist who holds a Ph.D. in
Training & Performance Improvement. As president of FIT (The
Foundation for Improving Talent and Performance) located in San Diego,
CA, he is considered a foremost expert in developing workforce plans
for knowledge management, talent management, and succession planning.
He is the author of the new book America's Red-Hot War for Knowledge
and Skilled Workers. Dr. King can be reached at http://www.goldcrowninc.com
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