Corporate Knowledge

What is the structure of Corporate Knowledge? Why is it important?


Dharshini Bandara
Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology

Knowledge vs. Information

Why is it important to understand knowledge vs. information qualities when
implementing KM projects?


Dharshini Bandara
Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology

Critical success factors for KM

If we consider critical success factors for Knowledge Management can we include "Establish cross-functional teams" as a critical success factor?


Dharshini Bandara
Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology

Tacit Knowledge

What is Tacit Knowledge?
What are the methods you can use to obtain Tacit Knowledge?

collaboration tool

Folks, as told by all in many forums, we are yet another organisation trying to establish KM thru intranet portal and I have feeling we are fighting a losing battle. I have joined this forum hoping to gather some new ideas to get our people to use KM and contribute. I will be more than happy to share my learning. Cheers

Virtual Working Facilties

Virtual Working Facility, which helps any organization to structure its unstructured data. In short what we do is to help Industrial Age organizations (static, physical location centric operations) to migrate and develop into next generation agile Knowledge Age dittos. For this major development to happen in a productive and organized manner two major innovations had to emerge.

Let me share more details on WorkACE with you.

The first one is a new corporate and management philosophy called “QXS”. You can read and hear more about it from the below links. In short it however means that in the mobile, global and virtual organizations of the future we need to teach people how to become self-managing and paying attention to what matters most. That is done by constantly raising the awareness of the three most important things for achieving success, which are the level of Quality, the level of eXcellence and the level of Systems that we produce and use.

http://www.qxsys.com/betasite/Presentations/QXS_Philosophy_v1.zip

The second major new thing needed is new working facilities. We see that the only way to stay and become more productive ton the future is for the organization to go VIRTUAL. In short this means that the ‘office’ of the company is put on a server and thus easily accessible for every stakeholder of the organization. We have created such new facilities and we call them ‘WorkACE’. WorkACE is the first Virtual Working Community in the world and we are 100% sure that this is the way every organization has to work in the future if they want to stay competitive. WorkACE is a virtual working facility in which we organize people, processes and knowledge into one comprehensive and SAFE database. In doing this we are structuring the organization, its stakeholders and processes in a way that no other ICT company has been able to do before. WorkACE is a very dynamic system in which the stakeholders define their own daily processes and then work against them. It means that EVERYTHING they do will (send emails, chat, upload files etc) will automatically become related to people, processes, contacts etc but at the same time stay safe and organized.

http://www.qxsys.com/betasite/Presentations/Corporate_Presentation_v2.zip

Now, WorkACE has many inbuilt features like, Knowledge Management(a must for any organization to become agile and knowledgeable), Project Management,
Work Flow Management, Document Management, Supply Chain Management, Customer Relationship Management, e-Process, e-HR, Time Sheet Management, WebMail, WebChat, and a lot many features.

Knowledge Management Success

Knowledge management has often proved to be an excercise in futility. Studies have reported the failure rate of knowledge management initiatives to range from 50 - 70%. With this in mind, there is ample room for the study of sound approaches to knowledge management.

I am conducting a graduate research study into knowledge management utilizing the perspectives of the technology, organization, people, and content model. I would greatly appreciate your participation in a research survey I have prepared. The survey should take no more than 5 - 10 minutes.

If you have had a leading role in an organizational knowledge managment initiative and are able to draw conclusions based upon your experiences please visit the link below. Thank you for your time.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=639812311921

- Nick Picadura
Hawaii Pacific University

Retaining Knowledge

Organizations have three challenges in the subject matter:

1. Encouraging employees to continue with the organization.
2. If they decide to leave, ensuring that the knowledge doesn't leave with them.
3. If the knowledge still leaves, ensuring that it doesn't land up in the competitors' basket.

I will narrate the initiatives taken in the organizations known to me to meet each of these challenges.

Encouragement for a knowledge worker primarily comes from the job satisfaction. Both positive and not so positive means are adapted by organizations. The positive means are:

• Employee opinion survey and actions based on the result.
• Daily monitoring of employee's mental health by asking each employee to drop a token to indicate as to how he felt today, 'smiley' or 'frownie'?
• Other conventional methods such as value based pay, challenging job assignments, supporting the employees family and social needs.

The negative means are policing the job seeker, making bar club agreements with potential destination companies etc. These means don't work to ensure results but only develops distrust.

Organizations which have been attempting to retain knowledge through job transfers and formal training sessions have started realizing the futility of such means and have embarked upon socialization. The popular techniques are; office hour games, informal meetings, OBLs (out-bound learning sessions) etc.

The third challenge that the organizations' knowledge doesn't land up in competitors' basket is normally managed through a legal agreement. But it has hardly any validity in the judicial court for knowledge is still considered to be a personal possession. One of the organization's CEO attempted a novel method. Any employee who leaves the organization if proves that he is not accepting an offer from the competitor will get 3 years pay, on the contrary if he does accept the offer from the competitor the employee has to pay three year pay to the his organization upfront. This two way agreement brought fairness and just to the whole process.

The introduction of paper publication as a part of the annual KRA is suggested recently. The idea emerges from the academics, wherein an expert gains credit for the number of papers he publishes or the number of knowledge he shares with others. Contrary to this in profession, an expert feels discredited when he shares his knowledge. The reason for this is fear of loss of identity. If adequate recognition can be given to the employee to preserve his identity, then the academic situation can be replicated in business environments. I have come across organizations which name the theory or process devised by the employee by his name and the same is patented. Obviously the employee is compensated for this appropriately. This patenting process also prevents the employee from selling the same process to outsiders after resignation / retirement. The whole process ensures reward, recognition and protection of knowledge.

The Role of Business Intelligence in Knowledge Management

Some industry buzzwords gain market acceptance, while others end up on the scrapheap. Business intelligence (BI) has gained acceptance (even though there are many definitions for it), but knowledge management (KM) has had a mixed reception. Knowledge management has struggled because organizations have often tried to implement large enterprise-wide knowledge management projects and failed, and also because of the complexity bringing together the many components and technologies involved.

Business intelligence applications in the past have simply analyzed detailed data warehouse data and produced high-level summarized data, or measurements, about business performance. The recent trend, however, is toward the use of business performance management (BPM) applications that put these measurements into a business context, i.e., they relate the data measurements to business goals and objectives. Putting performance measurements into a business context improves the business decision-making and action-taking processing because the results become actionable. Read on."

Bestselling Knowledge Management Books