Engr. Edward Ang
MAHATMA GANDHI
SINS
OF THE WORLD
Wealth
without work.
Pleasure
without conscience.
Commerce
without morality.
Worship
without sacrifice.
Politics
without principle.
Knowledge without character.
The error of
youth is to believe intelligence is a
substitute for experience,
while the error
of age is to believe experience is a substitute
for intelligence.
Your actions will speak for itself.
- Power
is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other
by acts of love.
XXV-563
- Power
based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent than the
one derived from fear of punishment.
XXV-563
- Real power
does not consist in the ability to inflict the capital punishment upon the
subjects, but in the will and the ability to protect the subjects against
the world.
T-2-178
- There
is an indefinable mysterious Power that pervades everything.
T-2-312
- Whilst
power, superimposed, always needs the help of police and military, power
generated from within should have little or no use for them.
MM-345
END
Do we need a Knowledge
Management Officer ?
Write-up by Engr. Edward Ang
For the executive committee meeting.
This write-up is a product of voluminous research published in management journals, and compilations from the research academy done in various parts of the world through the Internet. It tends to examine attributes of the Knowledge Management Officer or KMO position and the backgrounds of the people who fill it. Variations in the prescribed role for the KMO are reviewed, as are KMO critical success factors. One critical knowledge management issue, implicit-to-explicit knowledge conversion, is investigated in some depth to reveal the unique nature of issues confronting the KMO position. Finally, the arguments for potentially not implementing a KMO function are discussed.
T he Knowledge Management Officer (KMO) is an old paradigm under a new concept created to help manage a unique organizational asset — intellectual capital. The KMO concept is rooted in the realization that companies can no longer expect that the products and services that made them successful in the past will keep them viable in the future. Instead, companies will differentiate themselves on the basis of what they know and their ability to know how to do new things well and quickly. The changes and pressures of a rapidly changing global, information-based economy make knowledge vital to organizations.
The “intangibles” that add value to most products and services are knowledge-based — technical know-how, product design, marketing presentation, understanding the customer, personal creativity, and innovation. Critical success factors for organizations today — the need for speed, management of complexity a sense of history and context, effective judgment, and organizational flexibility — are all related to and dependent on organizational knowledge.
To meet these challenges, firms must recognize that long-term prosperity depends on management’s ability to leverage the hidden value of corporate knowledge. They must understand and appreciate that people in the organization may be ignoring past mistakes, making the same mistakes over and over, and wasting time that could be saved by making better use of the collective knowledge that exists in the organization. They must be candid and accept the premise that they are often not making good use of employee knowledge. In a nut- shell, they must realize that intellectual capital probably matters more than any other asset and must be managed explicitly, not left to fend for itself. Hence, in response to this realization, many firms are creating the KMO function.
The KMO role
The responsibility for developing and implementing knowledge management programs often falls on the shoulders of a KMO. It becomes the KMO’s responsibility to develop a strategy that dictates how a company handles its intellectual assets, which include such elements as creativity, communication ability, analytical skill, and intuition, along with traditional, bottom- line accounting and production bench- marks. The KMO’s goal is to foster a corporate culture that is constantly learning and growing by getting the firm’s individuals committed to learning, and to embed that in the process structure of the business.
To accomplish the KMO’s objectives, certain technical and organizational infrastructures must be in place so that knowledge can be transmitted, received, and clearly understood. Therefore, a KMO must address the following critical knowledge management activities:
•
Development of the knowledge management big picture, perhaps including a vision
for the knowledge management program.
• Active promotion of a
knowledge agenda, including the development and diffusion of knowledge
management models, frameworks, and language.
• The
design, implementation, and over- sight of the creation and development of the
organization’s knowledge architecture and infrastructure, including its
libraries, knowledge bases, human resources, computer knowledge networks,
research centers, and academic relationships.
• The
securing and prioritization of funding for knowledge management programs.
• The
establishment of a knowledge culture by creating mechanisms for the development
and maintenance of knowledge bases in different functions and departments.
• The facilitation of
knowledge-oriented connections, coordination, and communication activities,
both internally and with important external constituencies.
• The
identification, measurement, and dissemination of results. The KMO must
determine how better management of knowledge will make or save money for the
firm and must document that economic impact.
However, what a KMO is functionally able to
accomplish may depend on how and where the KMO role is positioned in an
organization. For example, the KMO may be established as a senior standalone
role, one in which the KMO’s responsibilities are
seen as important and substantial enough to require significant power,
authority, and influence. In such a role, the KMO would likely value ongoing
communications with information technology and human resource executives, both
of whom help to shape information sharing channels and capabilities. In this
standalone role, some firms view the KMO as a position at the level of chief
knowledge officer, chief technology officer, chief information officer (CIO),
and chief operating officer, with duties that stretch across the company.
It is possible for the KMO function to report to
Human Resource Department. The advantage here is that the KMO could help to
shape personnel practices that facilitate employee empowerment and
cross-departmental dialogue. At the same time, however, the HR function may
already be consumed with other activities and do not want to add the
responsibilities of creating, disseminating, and managing knowledge. The KMO function
could also be embedded within the CIO role. Certainly technology is critical
for information capture, storage, analysis, and dissemination. However, this
might create a conflict of interest — CIOs typically
care about information infrastructure, not information content. Moreover, CIOs often are not included in the senior management’s
inner circle. Hence, many firms deliberately place the position outside the
organization and assign it a high level of status and authority.
The
KMO job description.
Once the position has been established, the job
description itself can encompass a number of responsibilities. For example, the
KMO might be responsible for leading executive management to develop an
enterprise knowledge strategy, validating this strategy across the enterprise
and then ensuring that its evolution complements and integrates with business
strategy. The KMO may also be charged with setting priorities and securing
funding for knowledge management (KM) programs as well as defining policies for
security, usage, and maintenance of intellectual capital. Depending on the
organizational culture, the KMO may also act as the chief advocate for KM as a
discipline, walking and talking the program throughout the enterprise and
assisting executives and senior management in building and communicating
personal commitment and advocacy for KM.
In any scenario, the KMO must at least be
responsible for managing and administering the day-to-day activities of the KM
program and infrastructure. As noted earlier, this means overseeing the
development of a KM architecture and assessing the
specific knowledge needs of business processes. Moreover, the KMO must ensure
the integration of KM into employees’ job activities, into key processes, and
across communities of practice. KMOs should also lead
the development of formal programs that foster knowledge sharing and
innovation, define expectations for individual and community participation in
the KM program, and ensure participation and knowledge contribution by all levels
of experts (including executive management). In addition, they should create a
process to measure benefits and progress against program goals — including
competitive advancements, knowledge created, innovations, cost savings, speed
of response, development of experts, sharing, and participation — and then
communicate the achievements and shortcomings of the program. Finally, KMOs should manage relationships with external providers of
information and knowledge and negotiate contracts with them.
What are the qualifications of the people
currently filling these positions?
In a recent study conducted by Professors
Michael Earl and Ian Scott of the
• There
is no such thing as an average KMO: they come from a wide range of professional
backgrounds and organizational expectations of them differ.
• Most
KMOs know the businesses and cultures of their
corporations from personal experience, and all of them are established figures
in their organizations.
• All
of the KMOs are at least somewhat knowledgeable
about, and are fully comfortable with, information systems and technology
(though only a few have spent most of their careers in these fields).
• Almost
all KMOs are in their mid-thirties, suggesting that
significant business and industry experience are required.
• Most
KMOs have direct access to the CEO, the President or
the chief executive of a major autonomous business unit.
Interestingly, many KMO positions that are
created are justified more on the basis of intuition than logic. Most
organizations appear to have taken a leap of faith in creating the position,
believing that the potential for high gains offset the risks of implementing
the position. Because knowledge management is an emerging field, books,
conferences, conventions, and input from multi-sectoral
business organizations often constitute the only training KMOs
have, and none have predecessors from whom they can seek guidance. Many KMOs start out as management consultants or college
professors, with some having backgrounds of both
engineering and business management.
Critical Success Factors
Earl and Scott have also identified five
critical factors that mitigate KMO success. They found that KMOs :
• Need
ongoing support from the CEO or the President in order to win the trust and
support of the senior executive team and line managers as a whole,
• Need
“slack” to get the problems solved. This translates to multiyear funding, pilot
testing to try things out, and time to prove the value of knowledge management,
• Need
a clear appreciation that organizational members differ in their knowledge
needs and their ability to contribute to the knowledge pool,
• Need
an ability to tolerate ambiguity. Knowledge itself is vague, and it is usually
difficult to quantify the results of a knowledge management effort.
• Must
show early visible results from their efforts.
These factors suggest that the KMO must first be
an effective leader. That is, a KMO must be able to form good working
relationships with the CEO or the President and with operation, information,
and financial officers, as well as with line executives. Doing so allows KMOs to participate in strategy development from the start,
rather than after the fact, which gives them a jump-start on change
initiatives.
Knowledge management experts Tom Davenport and
Larry Prusak have argued that the person occupying
the KMO position should have four personal characteristics to ensure success:
• Deep
experience in some aspect of knowledge management, including its creation,
dissemination, or application
• Familiarity
with knowledge-oriented organizations and technologies (computer softwares)
• Display
of a high level of knowledgeability directly related
to one’s professional stature
• Comfort with (and, ideally,
personal experience with) the primary processes of the business
A recent study of KMOs
by the consulting firm finds that the majority of KMOs
have most of these attributes. They also found that many persons occupying KMO
positions come from planning, developing and training teams and possess one of
three main backgrounds: information technology (IT), human resources, or a core
business function. Their common strength appears to be their understanding of
the organization and its business drivers, combined with an ability to take a
holistic view of the company and to understand the mix of hard and soft skills
necessary to create, sustain, and utilize the knowledge base.
Others have argued that the primary critical
success factor for a KMO is the ability to create an environment that is
supportive of learning. To do that, the KMO must be able to disabuse workers of
the notion that corporate learning is simply training,
and especially classroom training. In other words, the KMO must be able to
convince workers of the value of learning through shared experiences. This
sharing of experience can range from on-the-job-training to the use of
role-playing and computer simulations. Implicit in this is the notion that the
KMO must be able to inculcate the notion that learning is a group activity in
which knowledge is shared. That is, people and teams must be made to work and
learn together. Teams must also work together and learn seamlessly, not only in
their units, but with others throughout the whole corporation. This requires a
collective learning commitment, one in which people invest their discretionary
energy in the vision of the corporation. Here conditions for KMO success include :
• A
corporation that sees learning as critical to its business strategy, not just a
nice thing to have
• An
environment that recognizes that there is a collective intelligence through-
out the organization
• A
top management commitment to embed and integrate learning in all business
processes.
Managing
different forms of knowledge
A KMO’s view of
knowledge management depends on his or her attitudes about explicit knowledge
and implicit knowledge. Explicit knowledge is defined as knowledge that
can be expressed formally using a system of symbols and can therefore be easily
communicated or diffused. It is either object based or rule based. It is object
based when the knowledge is codified in strings of symbols (e.g. words,
numbers, formulas) or in physical objects (e.g.
equipment, documents, models). Object-based knowledge may be found in such
items as product specifications, patents, software code, computer databases,
technical drawings, and the like. Explicit knowledge is rule based when the
knowledge is codified into rules, routines, or standard operating procedures.
Organizational members perform their work and
make sense of their world using implicit knowledge as well. Implicit
knowledge is knowledge that is uncodified and
difficult to diffuse. It is hard to verbalize, because
it is expressed through action- based skills and cannot be reduced to rules and
recipes. Implicit knowledge is learned through extended periods of experiencing
and doing a task, during which the individual develops a feel for and a capacity
to make intuitive judgements about the successful execution of the activity.
Implicit knowledge is vital to the organization, because organizations can
learn and innovate only by leveraging the implicit knowledge of its members.
Despite its being uncodified, implicit knowledge can
be and is regularly taught and shared. It can be learned by example.
Implicit
knowledge becomes substantially valuable when it is turned into new
capabilities, products, or services.
It is important to note that implicit knowledge
serves an important role in the innovation process. It facilitates problem
definition, problem solving, and predicting the outcomes of potential
solutions. However, it is often problematic to express implicit knowledge in a
manner that others understand; hence, formal intellectual exchanges as well as
apprenticeships should be used to tap implicit knowledge.
KMOs preoccupied
with explicit knowledge typically promote the use of technology to enable
information distribution and sharing. Technologies that KMOs
can employ in the explicit knowledge management process include text storage
and retrieval systems, expert systems, Lotus Notes groupware, and Intranets.
Interestingly, KMOs taking an explicit knowledge bent
often admit that implicit knowledge may ultimately be more important to the
organization. Indeed, in a study that observed the success and failures of more
than 100 knowledge management projects, it was observed that one factor that
may limit the success of knowledge management programs is an overwhelming focus
on explicit (as opposed to implicit) knowledge.
KMOs who emphasize
implicit knowledge typically spend a great deal of their time enabling,
facilitating, and promoting informal dialogues. These KMOs
appear to accept the premise that managing implicit knowledge means accepting
chaos, ambiguity, and uncertainty, and they feel that capturing implicit
knowledge is expensive, because it can be revealed only through conversations.
For these KMOs, technology cannot be a driving force
in implicit knowledge management because it lacks the media richness of
face-to-face conversations (though some KMOs do
promote video conferencing, since it enables nonverbal communication).
Problems
managing different forms of knowledge
In their book, The “Knowledge Creating Company”,
knowledge management pioneers Nonaka and Takeuchi
argue that organizational knowledge creation is a process that organizationally
amplifies the knowledge created by individuals and crystallizes it as a part of
the knowledge network of the organization. They contend that there are two sets
of dynamics that drive the process of knowledge amplification:
A.
Converting implicit knowledge into explicit
knowledge
B.
Moving knowledge from the individual level to
the group, organizational, and inter organizational levels
Nonaka and Takeuchi
therefore see implicit knowledge and explicit knowledge as complementary
entities, and they present four modes in which organizational knowledge is
created through the interaction and con- version between implicit and explicit
knowledge:
1.
Socialization. Sharing experiences creates
implicit knowledge, taking such forms as shared mental models and technical
skills.
2.
Externalization. Triggered by dialogue, implicit
knowledge becomes explicit during a period of collective reflection through the
sharing of metaphors, analogies, models, or stories.
3.
Combination. This is the process of combining or
reconfiguring disparate bodies of explicit knowledge that leads to the
production of new explicit knowledge. This is a common form of knowledge
transfer that typifies the learning in schools and instructional programs.
4.
Internalization. This is the process of learning
and socializing by repetitively doing a task so that the explicit knowledge of
the applied principles and procedures becomes absorbed as the implicit
knowledge of the individual’s style and habit.
Implicit
knowledge may be informally shared through rich communication devices, such as
metaphors, analogies, models, and stories.
Although it has been noted that implicit
knowledge is personal and difficult to codify formally, Dr. Chun Wei Choo states in his book, The
“Knowing Organization”, that implicit knowledge may nevertheless be informally
shared and revealed through the use of rich communication devices such as
metaphors, analogies, models, and stories. Through a process of combination,
testing, and refinement, Choo says that implicit
knowledge is progressively transformed into more explicit, tangible forms, such
as innovations, enhanced products or services, or new capabilities. Through
this process, a work group may also develop new knowledge by absorbing
knowledge from outside the group or organization, or conversely by transferring
its own knowledge to other departments or organizations. Hence, Choo believes that knowledge conversion is as much a social
as a technical process and that the pace and scope of the knowledge
mobilization process depends on the culture of the organization. That is, the
cultural knowledge influences behaviors such as the
sharing of information, willingness to experiment, and working with outsiders.
Although dialogue, narratives, and other sharing
activities are suggested as vehicles for implicit to explicit knowledge
conversion, these processes are also time-consuming. Indeed,
From experience, the authors agree that
knowledge maps are insufficient. Moreover, the use of dialogue and narratives
cannot be circumvented because they are so essential to the transformation of
implicit knowledge to explicit knowledge. However, these processes must be more
focused to enable more efficient knowledge exchange. Otherwise, many KMOs will continue to avoid dealing with implicit knowledge
because the knowledge sharing and conversion processes are too cumbersome,
chaotic, and expensive to manage, thereby frustrating the KMO’s
need to show visible results from his or her efforts. The obvious question is,
“So how can KMOs make knowledge transfer more
efficient?”
KMOs should employ
knowledge exchange protocols to help improve the knowledge exchange process.
Knowledge exchange protocols are procedures that help structure implicit
knowledge sharing so as to yield a reasonably rich narrative while also
enabling efficient implicit knowledge encoding without negating its leverageable value. Simply put, KMOs
need to use techniques that structure, restrict, streamline, and focus
narratives in order to speed up the knowledge transformation process. If the
reader shares or is persuaded by these ideas, additional support can be found
in the work conducted by researchers Vimla Patel,
Jose Arocha, and David Kaufman, who examine knowledge
management activities in the medical community. Patel and his colleagues argue
that advances in learning are often dependent on making implicit knowledge
explicit and thereby amenable to conceptual change. In the same vein, prior
learning may be reinforced if implicit knowledge made explicit is reaffirmed.
Their investigations provide clear evidence of the existence and the nature of
implicit to explicit knowledge conversion in the medical field and the
importance of structure in enabling this process.
For example, physicians have evolved specific structuration techniques that help in both knowledge
exchange and its conversion. Students learn the SOAP protocol (subjective
–objective — assessment — plan), which is an important component of the
clinical teaching process. SOAP is used to structure both the clinician-patient
encounter and the resultant documentation in the patient’s medical record
(where the clinician’s implicit knowledge is made explicit). Formal medical
review processes use SOAP documentation to evaluate clinician assumptions
underlying action; as a result, implicit knowledge comes into focal awareness
and scrutiny.
KMO use of similar protocols to structure the
implicit to explicit knowledge conversion process is important in order to make
the knowledge-transfer process more productive and efficient. Therefore, the
authors suggest that such protocols, which they term knowledge exchange
protocols (e.g., SOAP), are transferable structural aids that can potentially
facilitate and improve KMO knowledge management efforts.
What is critical is to understand that knowledge
exchange protocols are not simply a vehicle for enhancing technical knowledge
conversion issues. They represent a “how to” for promoting and facilitating
learning and sharing in a way that very much reinforces the KMO’s
goal of fostering and enabling an effective knowledge sharing culture.
Knowledge Management Officer, A
New Shift
Knowledge management as a discipline and the KMO
as a new executive entity are both evolving. Clearly, there are inconsistencies
in KMO roles, responsibilities, titles, and training. Moreover, there are even
some concerns as to the need for having KMOs in
knowledge management efforts.
Indeed, a recent article in Computer world
contends that many firms feel that having a KMO is the wrong way to harness
corporate know-how. Instead, some firms prefer a more grassroots approach, in
which a team of knowledge management experts works closely with or even as part
of the business units. KMOs were supposed to straddle
business and information technology functions with a mandate to convince
workers that it is good to share information and to work with IT to build
applications to support such sharing. The problem was that companies found that
putting more control of knowledge management in the hands of end-users
themselves made it an easier sell. The article cites as evidence a study by
Earl and Scott have argued that appointing a KMO
is one way of galvanizing, directing, and coordinating a knowledge management
program. However, they also feel that it is unlikely
to be sufficient in itself, nor is it likely to be universally necessary. They
concede that some organizations are investing in aspects of knowledge
management without appointing a KMO. They believe that knowledge management,
like total quality management, will become embedded in organizations and
knowledge will become an obvious imperative source of value creation and
competitiveness. In this scenario, all members of firms will own and drive
knowledge management and, hence, the importance of and need for a KMO might
decline.
Contingency theory is useful in explaining
company preferences relative to the need for and adoption of KMO positions.
That is, in mature, knowledge sharing organizational cultures, the KMO function
may not need to be formalized as a distinct management position. However,
because of the relative newness of the concept, many organizations are somewhat
less knowledge management mature. In these firms, knowledge management probably
comprises a large agenda, and progress will take time. Under these
circumstances, the KMO can act as a driver, leader, or coordinator of a
knowledge management effort, serving to keep up momentum, while also
facilitating efforts to distill, codify, and share
learning about raising the firm’s knowledge capabilities.
Some argue that the KMO’s
position is constrained by its inability to resolve issues concerning implicit
to explicit knowledge conversion. Indeed, as previously discussed, most KMOs emphasize either an explicit or implicit focus. But
this strategy is based more on pressures to produce demonstrable results than
on the logic of facilitating organizational “knowing.” Both Choo
and Nanaka and Takeuchi contend that such
compromising tactics necessarily compromise the effectiveness of knowledge
management efforts. They argue that implicit to explicit knowledge conversion
is the very essence of the knowledge creation and amplification process.
Therefore, if a KMO sidesteps this issue, the KMO is inevitably compromising
the long-term success of the knowledge management effort itself. However,
better techniques need to be developed to help the KMO improve the efficiency
of the implicit-to-explicit knowledge transfer process.
The success of a KMO inevitably depends on
finding ways to prove the worth of the enterprise. The CEO or the President,
the firm’s culture, and the personality of the KMO will shape any knowledge
management effort, and therefore the outcome is likely to be as distinct as a
fingerprint. In the end, it may not matter who or what leads the knowledge
management effort as long as the effort is done and done well.
References
1.
Choo, C.W. (1998). The Knowing Organization.
2. Cole-Gomolski, B. (1999). “Knowledge ‘Czars’ Fall from Grace.” Computerworld , (33:1),1,13.
3.
4.
Earl, M. and Scott,
5.
Herschel, R. and Nemati, H. (1999). “CKOs and
Knowledge Management: Exploring Opportunities for Using Information Exchange
Protocols. Proceedings of the ACM SIGCPR Conference .
6.
Nonaka,
7.
Patel, V., Arocha,
J., and Kaufman, D. (1999). “Expertise and Implicit Knowledge in Medicine.” In
Implicit Knowledge in Professional Practice. Sternberg R. & Horvath, J.
(Eds.)
8. TFPL. (1998). “What Is a CKO — A Concept or a Team?” TFPL’s Knowledge Management Research, interim report. 1-3. http://www.tfpl.com/consult/what_is_a_cko.htm.