Knowledge Management Explained in Five Disciplines
We welcome Tim Wieringa as a guest blogger to Green Chameleon.
Since 1999, my work has been related to Knowledge Management (KM). Already then, KM was a term that was not well recognised; at the time, we did not label our KM-related consulting services with Knowledge Management. Today I am holding an official position in Knowledge Management, still many people do not grasp the term and have a clear understanding of it. “Knowledge Management” seems to be fuzzy and not specific enough; it does not refer to daily (work) life topics.
In my comprehension, the field of Knowledge Management has a few clearly distinguished topics. With this article, I want to suggest that professionals in Knowledge Management should define a limited number of disciplines, that are concrete, easy to grasp, specific, and well-understood by people inside and outside the field of KM.
Here is a suggestion to split Knowledge Management into five disciplines.
One: Information Management & Search
This might be the classic part of Knowledge Management; the collection, storage, and distribution of information, documents, books, and intellectual property. Instead of information management, we could also call it document management and library management. Related to this is the topic of taxonomies, tagging, and other forms to classification.
Separately, but within the same discipline, I would like to mention the chapter of search; a rather large topic. Related to this is indexing and semantic categorisation.
Examples:
- knowledge libraries in large corporations that allow global access to documents across departments and subsidiaries
- social bookmarking tools that classify websites and allow other users to share them
- search engines that are indexing vast collection of documents and websites
Two: Collaboration
Knowledge does not only exist in final documents, books, website, etc. People are working together to create this information. People need to be engaged in conversations and encourage to share what they already know, in order to achieve more and to innovate. For me, this discipline has two major aspects: 1) establishing a knowledge sharing culture; provide management support, etc. 2) provide supportive collaboration tools; e.g. project management, task management, wiki tools.Examples:
- contact relationship management (CRM) tools that efficiently share and store relevant information to customers, suppliers, and business partners
- corporate wiki tools that allow the capturing of experts’ knowledge and allow collaboratively develop this knowledge
- project management tools that allow disperse teams to share information, have discussions, and manage tasks & deadlines
Three: Workflow Definitions
In my experience, when we design workflow definitions, or process definitions, and flowcharts for a series of job activities, then we can influence how information is captured, stored, and distributed. This might not be commonly understood as part of Knowledge Management, but workflows of customer complaints processes or order processing flow contain a lot of important information and knowledge. With the right procedures and processes, this knowledge can be captured and shared more efficiently.Examples:
- the right design of a costumer complaints process can ensure that the sales departments receives more information about the customers and the research & development department gathers important input on how to improve the products
- project management methodologies can include processes to capture project reports which are automatically shared in a knowledge library
Four: Networking
In collaboration, people are working together to share documented knowledge. More important than that is the exchange of tacit knowledge. Again, we need to engage people in conversations; typical platforms are communities of practice, forums, and social networking tools. The main aspect of networking is talking to each other; other elements are expert profiles, white pages, and connections.Examples:
- social networking platforms allow to publish a personal profile, exchange thoughts, and keep in touch with colleagues and friends
- in online discussion forums questions are answered by a broad community; the answers are then available for the entire community for future reference
Five: Training & Learning
This is another classic in knowledge management. I would assume that in most cases, knowledge is transferred by schools, trainings, and other form of learning platforms. Training and learning is a rather formal transfer of knowledge. Today, this is not a one way transfer anymore. In many areas, the lecturer is capturing experiences from the audience. Popular concepts are case studies, workshops, etc.Examples:
- corporate induction seminars gathers all newcomers in a company at one time and provide them an introduction at the same time; this could also be done with e-learning tools
- professionals in a specific field of interest gather regularly in conferences to exchange their latest findings and discuss about it
- training programs for ‘Efficient Meetings’ (just as an example) can be conducted in two parts: a) a brief introduction to the latest findings for this topic, b) a discussion among the participants on how these findings could be applied in their environment
Related Disciplines
Beside these five disciplines, there are other topics which are very closely related to Knowledge Management; topics that are necessary for Knowledge Management but might also be applicable in other areas. These disciplines are Psychology of Behaviour, Change Management, etc.Conclusion & Benefits
Most of these disciplines are very closely linked. For example, people collaborate on documents, or procedure are defined in network. Still, this separation could help to make dismantle the myths about knowledge management and make it more approachable.All of the five disciplines have the following benefits:
- enable and cultivate conversations between people
- streamline the flow of information in a structured and informal way
- efficient sharing of written knowledge and knowledge in the heads of people
- safe time in accessing a large amount of knowledge
- avoid re-inventing the wheel
Overall, Knowledge Management supports smarter decisions making and innovation.
If we separate Knowledge Management in these five disciplines, the outside world would have a clearer understanding of this field; because people are more familiar with these specific topics, the acceptance of KM could be higher.
8 Comments so far
- Atul
You have put it quite well. Especially insteresting is the idea of defining processes in a way where knowledge-sharing becomes a part of the process itself.
- nick milton
what you have missed from this list is the topic of reoutine learning from experience.
This will include after action review, retrospect, peer assist, baton passing, and lessons learned - processes by which new knowledge is gained from experience, used to improve process, and carried forward into improved practice.
This is a major focus of KM in project-based organisations and in the military, and is not covered by any of your 5.
Thank you Tim. I agree with your classification and find it useful for my KM consulting work.
- Naguib
Nice post. I just like it. I blogged (http://www.kmtalk.net/blog/?p=139#comment-1308) few days back on the similar topic- how to split KM into different worktasks, programs. Tim’s post has good explanations.
- Tim
@Christian, I like your suggestion for a discipline for Analysis and Statistics; it would mean, as you mentioned, to provide management input to make better decisions
@Nick, I agree with you that After Action Reviews (collecting & sharing experiences) should be part here. I see this task as a part of project management and I have included it in ‘Collaboration’. But it could also be in ‘Information Management’. In our company, we see AAR as the connecting point between collaboration and our library.
@Naguib, I have seen your blog and I am positively surprised how similar our thoughts are; we can’t be so wrong
Thanks a lot to all comments and readers.
- Ralph Poole
Hi,
In my experience it is point number 4, which you all networking, that is most important. The greatest amount of information is transferred and people learn more quickly when they talk with their colleagues. Codifying information is necessary, but then connecting the content to a real person with whom you can discuss results is essential.Morten Hansen wrote about this in his HBR article in 1999 called “What’s your Knowledge Stragegy”. It is essential to get the mix of conversation and document sharing right, in order to gain the most benefit from Knowledge Management
- Md Santo
I do agree with your five disciplines plus related disciplines if needed in practicing KM. But, I have suggestion derived from my own KM framework, called as Human System Biology-based KM system, that prior to implement a KM, we should know the “genome structure” of the organization. What so called “genome structure” here, is the “DNA pattern” of the organization. Here I use the term Enterprise DNA which is consist of two compulsory structures. First, the ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE providing the (genetic) information of the pattern of Content and the Contextual aspect. Second, the TAXONOMY – METADATA MANAGEMENT of the organization.
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Thank you for taking the time to put this together Tim!
I’m always asked how I’ve learned what I know and while I am completely comfortable discussing the finer points of knowledge management, I tend to lose my tongue with this question.
KM is indeed a highly multi-disciplinary field and a broad base of skills are essential to being successful at what we do.
For my part I would add some sort of Analysis or Statistical Discipline. I don’t think it’s necessary to be a “numbers person” but the ability to identify, explain, and present correlations (qualitative and quantitative) in all of the data and information we work with is valuable not only to improving our own understanding, but to demonstrating KM’s value proposition to the organizations with which we work (I’m all about the KM value proposition in 2010).
Posted on February 10, 2010 at 03:21 PM | Comment permalink