With its 10,000 employees scattered all over the world, the World Bank faces a challenge — building a knowledge management program that works. Realizing that this system is vital in helping its clients fight poverty, the World Bank invested around 53 million dollars in its knowledge management initiative by upgrading its technological capabilities and launching its employee training program. Yet the process is not easy and the obstacles are numerous. One issue is developing soft and hard knowledge. Can they harmoniously co-exist after the rebirth process takes place?
What academics say
Jasimuddin (2008) conducted a study that covered several British companies and included 100,000 employees. The goal of the study was to determine which is better for organizations — soft knowledge or hard knowledge? Though some employees believed that staff expertise is indispensible for any knowledge sharing process, others argued that without technological infrastructure, knowledge management is unachievable. However, all employees agreed that soft and hard knowledge should be used according to the situation.
On the other hand examining the various factors that impact knowledge sharing through soft or hard systems can help the organization choose which one to capitalize on to reach its goals for a particular period. For instance, the human factor–with all its internal complexities, such as fear of humiliation, ambition, and greed, or the external complexities, such as culture and traditions–can dramatically affect one’s decision to participate in the knowledge sharing process through either system. Conversely, technology can facilitate knowledge transfer, but it can not monitor the quality of this knowledge or its credibility, according to Edwards, Shaw, and Collier (2005). Trying to “push” any technological tool that stores predetermined knowledge to employees can lead to failure of the whole process, according to Malhotra (2005).
The World Bank experience
Because it’s a multicultural organization, the World Bank had no option but to create a knowledge management system that promotes the use of both processes — the soft and the hard.
What the World Bank did (check out baselinemag.com for more information on how the World Bank developed its knowledge management system):
–Create an infrastructure that allows people in developing countries to make a videoconference with World Bank employees
–Translate documents and reports into different languages and make them available for its clients
–Train employees to use the newly installed technological tools
–Meet with employees to promote the knowledge management initiative
–Enhance its internet potential
Results
Suffice it to say that a doctor in Zaire can access the World Bank website or its affiliates, such as CDC, to take a look at the treatments available for Malaria or HIV and take the necessary measures to protect human life.
This week at the café we talked with KM expert Neil MacAlpine, who brings a wealth of experience and understanding to the topic of KM implementation in organizations. As one of two people in charge of the first knowledge coaching function in the Government of Alberta, Neil developed his expertise alongside the emergence of KM as a discipline. He is now a KM consultant for some of Canada’s largest corporations and shares with us his many ideas about what KM should and shouldn’t be! So grabba latte and listen to our November podcast. If you are more of a reader, grabba a latte and enjoy the podcast transcript.
Forgetting Is Only Acceptable for Charming Little Puppets
My grandmother used to say to me that I’ve forgotten more than she’d ever known. (She was just trying to be kind, boost my confidence. ) What’s curious from a KM perspective is that that statement – that one may forget more than another ever knows – isn’t just applicable to much-loved grandchildren… but, of course, to organizations.
Over 5 years ago, Andy Seidl (2004) wrote a great blog post about corporate amnesia – or organizational memory leak – which he argued was the result of “numerous, seemingly insignificant, day-to-day forgetting events”. The act of forgetting is a critical issue for KM in large organizations in particular, especially those with higher turnover rates.
What happens when knowledge walks out the door for the last time? What steps can an org take to avoid organizational memory leak?
I guess the bigger question is, Why would knowledge walk out the door for the last time in an enterprise-sized organization? In a small one with a few employees, sure – but in a large corporation with 250+ employees, there must be one or two who have similar jobs, use the same databases or shared drives, etc. No? So why then might an enterprise suffer from corporate amnesia?
Recent job cuts are a problem – especially when a corporation decides to cut a whole group, such as engineering/development, HR or Creative Services, in favour of outsourcing.
But what’s more interesting than that (because I’m sooooo tired of hearing about the tough economy) is the idea of social capital and tie-formation. More specifically, the idea that strong and weak ties can help people share knowledge across organizational boundaries. Check out this great article (1999) by Morten T. Hansen for more about search-transfer and weak ties The short story is that creating opportunities for people to network within an organization – for the third floor to mingle with the second – can actually help to prevent corporate memory loss.
Can technology help to avoid the loss of at least some organizational knowledge?
Seidl made a decent case for knowledge capture by means of internal blogging and fitting those intra-blogs into a federation of blogs (which he called a channel). He also offered an example of the success that this sort of knowledge capture achieved at a certain unnamed company, where the CEO insisted that everyone get involved in the “project blogsite”.
Today (yes, I know it’s just 5 years later), I think a lot of KM folks & employees alike would argue that being forced to contribute to a blog is… just… not… going… to… work. Further, with failed intra-blogging attempts abounding and the ongoing rhetoric of blogs as time-wasters doomed to failure, you’d be hard-pressed to find an enterprise-sized organization with a strong blogging community — a blogging community that’s able to effectively capture knowledge and a blogging culture that’s willing to visit said blogs to ascertain knowledge.
It seems there’s no affirmative response to the KM question: Can technology effectively capture both implicit & explicit knowledge? (Urgh! I so wish someone could build an app that would actually do this!)
But what, then, can we do about memory leak, about knowledge walking out the door? Pei-Wen Huang (n.d.) suggested a few solutions:
Create more apprenticeship programs
Debrief at the end of a project so people in & out of the project are brought into the loop about wins, failures, etc.
Establish a “corporate history”
Build “knowledge profiles” so you know whom to go to in an org for certain subjects
Apprenticeship programs are, of course, potentially expensive (but more expensive than losing a seasoned employee with high institutional knowledge?). The others seem simply time-consuming.
…There’s always an excuse, isn’t there? But I’m pretty sure shareholders wouldn’t want to hear that the corps they’ve invested in are “unable to commit the time” to holding 30-minute power-debriefs at the end of projects to avoid repeating mistakes & wasting money………
Well, if anyone has a better idea or wants to chime in on the above ideas – or simply wants to post a link to a blog on the topic – feel free. Looking forward to it…
In 2005, Bain & Co. asked 960 executives to rank the effectiveness of 25 management tools.
KM ranked near the bottom (Thurm, 2006).
Is KM a fad? Has KM had its day? …Exactly where is KM today?
In the oft-referenced July 2008 video that introduces this blog post, Patrick Lambe invites KM thought leaders Larry Prusak and David Snowden to answer the 3 short questions (posed above) with their characteristically thoughtful insights – peppered with soundbites like Snowden’s, “Once the government adopts something, you know it has died” (5:35) but mostly centred around the cyclical nature of interest in or enthusiasm for KM in organizations (large enterprises included).
But let’s back up a step or two. Since when did KM die? For those of us who are fairly new to KM – or who haven’t spent the past 15+ years theorizing about it – it’s a bit of a shock to hear that this interesting ‘new’ subject KM may already be dead. Isn’t KM just organizational learning and collaboration, after all? How could that die? (…Or what could kill it?)
The Moments Leading Up To The “Death” of KM
The suggestion that KM is dead does not seem to be some sort of periodic angst but rather a growing idea in literature as well as in organizations. Recent articles on the subject include:
KM leads to corporate espionage! Lee & Rosenbaum (2003) argued that spies and competitors can easily penetrate KM’s most common components – and that, in turn, every KM system is also an anti-KM system.
Davenport, Prusak & Strong (2008) showed how KM efforts went wrong at organizations like Nokia and Intel — and suggested that a new approach to KM is required to transform it into a more “pragmatic discipline”.
Chua (2007) reported on three cases in Asia and Europe where initial successes with KM ultimately resulted in “dysfunctional” outcomes.
An anonymously written article in Knowledge Management Review recently suggested that sharing knowledge within an enterprise can result in multi-billion dollar losses in productivity (Anonymous, 2008).
Wilson (2002) argued that KM was the “fashionable name” applied to help IT mend its reputation for delivering tools not solutions, to let management sleep at night in the knowledge that their spreadsheets are all safely managed… and to give out-of-work consultants a new umbrella to work under.
Who Killed KM? Norm[ative Behavior]
Sure, I know about as much about psychology as I do KM (not a lot, but always learning!) — but in psychology, or specifically in studies of human decision-making, the concept of “normative behavior” describes how suggesting that an act is appropriate or ‘the norm’ can help people passively ‘decide’ to do something.
For example, a roadside sign that reads “Caution: Theft from Cars Is a Problem in This Area” can actually increase incidents of theft from cars. Why? Because people read that as an affirmation of a behavior that is accepted or normal in the area. If that same sign read instead “This Neighborhood Values Safety & Kindness Towards Others”, theft from cars would be much less likely to increase because people believe that the norm is to be good to others.
Now back to killing KM….
A Google search of “Is KM dead?” brings up a full page of results with that exact keyword phrase… and dozens more pages. “KM is dead” does the same. (If you’ve ever worked in SEO, you’ll know that that’s significant.) Nunes, Annansingh, Eaglestone & Wakefield (2006) also wrote that there has been an increase in the number of popular business media articles stating that KM is dead.
People are talking – and talking and talking – about the death of KM. In doing so, we’re actually killing KM by making it the new norm.
So, Then, Is KM Really Dead?
As Snowden and Prusak discussed in the video, there are practices all over management that are dead yet still walking — and that has a lot to do with how those practices are sold to management rather than their true value (15:00). They are careful to underline the point that there have been — and are? — generations of KM… which we can then extend to mean that this “falling out of favour” that KM is experiencing is part of the KM lifeline rather than the end of it. Prusak also notes that KM-related ideas that are dead include:
That knowledge is a technology (later echoed by Snowden’s comment that complexity and systems thinking cannot meet and live together amicably)
That repositories of documents are knowledge
That KM can breath under the weight of bureaucracy
That people and their knowledge can be separated
That you can measure knowledge
Prusak, Lambe and Snowden do not explicitly say that KM is indeed dead. (Although, Snowden says it’s dead and we should “live with it” in this article and that it’s just reached the long tail in this article) But Snowden does state that the senior-level role of the Knowledge Manager will NOT exist in 5 years, and Prusak takes Snowden’s point further to argue that the closest we will find to knowledge managers in organizations will be “practice coordinators” (39:45). What does that mean for KM as a practice? When Snowden and Prusak foresee the demise of KM leaders in organizations, it’s akin to driving the last nails in the coffin. But others are still optimistic
IMHO, it just feels like everyone’s being a touch impatient with KM. We let a bottle of $80 wine age to reach optimum flavour, body, etc. longer than we let a huge investment like KM age to reach its peak.
~joanna
Anonymous. (2008). Is collaboration a multi-billion-dollar distraction? Knowledge Management Review 11(1),6. Retrieved 26 September 2009 from ABI/INFORM Global.
Chua, A. (2007, April 28). Business Insight (A Special Report); The curse of success: Knowledge-management projects often look good in the beginning; But then problems arise. Wall Street Journal (Eastern Edition), p. R.8. Retrieved September 27, 2009, from ABI/INFORM Global. (Document ID: 1261787511).
Davenport, T., Prusak, L., & Strong, B. (2008, March 10). Business Insight (A Special Report): Organization; Putting ideas to work: Knowledge management can make a difference — but it needs to be more pragmatic. Wall Street Journal (Eastern Edition), p. R.11. Retrieved September 27, 2009, from ABI/INFORM Global. (Document ID: 1442818651).
“Is KM Dead?” Retrieved October 15, 2009 from http://blip.tv/file/1048981/
Lee, J. & Rosenbaum, A. (2003). Knowledge management: Portal for corporate espionage? Retrieved 26 September 2009 from www.kmworld.com
Nunes, M., Annansingh, F., Eaglestone, B., & Wakefield, R. (2006, January). Knowledge management issues in knowledge-intensive SMEs. Journal of Documentation, 62(1), 101-119. Retrieved September 25, 2009, doi:10.1108/00220410010642075.
Thurm, S. (2006, January 23). Companies struggle to pass on knowledge that workers acquire. Wall Street Journal (Eastern Edition), p. B.1. Retrieved September 27, 2009, from ABI/INFORM Global. (Document ID: 974292421).
Vinson, K. (2008, July 24). Dead KM talking – sound bites. Knowledge Jolt with Jack. Retrieved October 14, 2009 from http://blog.jackvinson.com/archives/2008/07/24/dead_km_talking_sound_bites.html
Wilson, T. (2002, October). The nonsense of ‘knowledge management’. Information Research, 8(1). Retrieved September 26, 2009, from Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts with Full Text database.
Zuckerman, A., & Buell, H. (1998). Is the world ready for knowledge management? Quality Progress, 31(6), 81-84. Retrieved September 23, 2009, from ABI/INFORM Global. (Document ID: 30008695).
we discuss knowledge management (KM) in large organizations. In addition to leveraging case studies and academic scholarship on this issue, we invite conversations with KM practitioners, consultants, managers, executives and anyone who would like to share experiences, research, links and findings. Please join the conversation!
) What’s curious from a KM perspective is that that statement – that one may forget more than another ever knows – isn’t just applicable to much-loved grandchildren… but, of course, to organizations.
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