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Operationalizing Knowledge Management

Structure is just the skeleton. Organizations also have a physiology - the flow of information and knowledge is their life blood - and a psychology, representing people's values and how they think and act.

- Christopher Bartlett, Harvard Business School

Taking KM to the operational level involves a number of steps aimed at emancipating the knowl­edge creation process from the rigid organizational structure, ensuring that the right culture is in place, and supporting knowledge creation processes with requisite knowledge resources (knowl­edge base) and IT tools. On the structural level, the need of employees to associate freely around their areas of knowledge, by reference to practice or interest, unfettered by governance hierar­chies or departmental boundaries, should be accommodated. Mapping knowledge flows and undertaking the knowledge audit can provide guidance as to how COPs and the supporting struc­ture can be created. The CoP structure should be kept informal, as the most flexible of structures become stagnant and their purpose is defeated when formalized. To be effective, structural changes should incorporate the creation of new knowledge-related positions entrusted with sup­porting the knowledge creation process by focusing on KM-related functions (e.g., retrieval of knowledge resources and connecting members).

Structural changes address the skeleton or physical aspects of the organization, while culture addresses its psychology. Without a value system that encourages knowledge sharing, the struc­tural changes related to KM will remain dormant. Cultural values act as the motivational force that activates the new structure to produce change. For knowledge sharing to reach its optimal level, certain cultural values should infiltrate to the level of the individual employee. This is achieved partly by incorporating these values in the job design so that knowledge sharing becomes part of the employee'sjob and career development.

This leads us to the last step at the operational level - building the knowledge base and the IT infrastructure. In Bartlett's metaphor, this is the part where channels are put in place to permit the lifeblood of the organization to flow. To be effective, the architecture of the knowledge base and the IT system in general should enable and support the knowledge creation process. This process is different for every organization depending on its core or critical business processes. Regardless of the business process, however, the IT infrastructure should support KM in two major ways. The first is through building a knowledge base that enables employees to jump the learning curve and stay on the cutting edge in their area of knowledge. The second is providing technological and nontechnological tools that facilitate knowledge sharing and connect those who know with those who need to know, as elaborated further next. Following is a discussion of the changes needed to take KM to the operational level.

Augmenting the Organizational Structure& - Communities of Practice and the Freedom to Associate

Tunnel vision, departmental rivalry, and bureaucratic boundaries are problems that any organiza­tional structure suffers from, regardless of form (functional, market oriented, or matrix) or flexi­bility. These problems are incapacitating to any KM program in which collaboration, and cross-pollination of knowledge from different departments and perspectives are essential. Orga­nizational learning and knowledge creation occur through social networks that are not related to the organizational chart or departmental boundaries. These social networks evolve around those who know, and are maintained by the interest of their members, who see the value of sharing knowledge for job performance. To create and generate knowledge and to fill gaps identified in an organization's knowledge resources, it is important to allow employees to form knowledge networks around their areas of practice and interest, hence CoPs.

Employees form informal communities or networks all the time, where they refer to certain people for their knowledge, expertise, and trustworthiness. Even before the spread of the concept of CoPs, savvy organizations ventured to discover such networks in their quest for better per­formance and increased productivity. For example, in the early 1990s, Xerox sent an anthropolo­gist from the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to observe how technical reps do their job. The anthropologist noted that reps meet at the corridors and tearoom to discuss the challenges they encountered during the day and share their solutions and experiences. Traditionally, this would be viewed as a waste of time and more controls would be imposed to ensure efficient time man­agement and less talk in the workplace. Instead, the anthropologist recommended a supply of headphones to open "knowledge channels" for reps while on the job. The result was an improved rate of problems solved, in less time, and improved employee morale and customer satisfaction.

This led KM practitioners to champion the concept of CoPs and communities of interest (Cols) to allow such free associations between employees based on their knowledge needs. A CoP is a group of employees who come together voluntarily to share and develop knowledge in a common area of practice or interest. Cols are similar in concept but have a looser structure com­pared to CoPs. In some organizations, like BP and Siemens, management allows the free forma­tion of Cols that are later encouraged to become CoPs if the need for them persists, and demonstrable value is added. At Siemens, any group may propose the formation of a community, which is then guided through the community development process and provided with the sup­porting tools on the corporate intranet.

One of the main attractions of the CoPs is their independence from the formal structure of the organization. CoPs form and dissolve based on the value they provide to their members, and the organization as a whole, in solving problems and generating strategic knowledge. This inde­pendence ensures that CoPs are formed whenever the need arises for new knowledge creation in identified strategic areas. The voluntary participation also means that the continuing existence of CoPs will depend on the value (learning) they deliver to their members through mutual exchange and continuous learning. Being member driven and egalitarian is important for the success of CoPs. An interesting incident is the insistence of a Xerox's CoP on being self-ruled, rejecting close supervision by management. The CoP demanded to be "self-managed, only be accountable for results."30

CoPs have been used with great success by many organizations based on a common area of interest (Cap Gemini Ernst & Young), a common best practice (Ford), a common technological area (DaimlerChrysler and Siemens), common technological and strategic questions (BP Peer and Federal Groups), and common problems with a common pursuit of solutions (Xerox). In all of these cases, the CoPs are not incorporated into the formal structure, to stay free from bureaucracy and professional tunnel vision. CoPs, regardless of the reason behind their forma­tion, focus on a domain of interest and expertise that is strategically aligned with the objectives of the organization. An American Productivity and Quality Center (APQC) benchmarking study in 2001 found that, despite the absence of explicit/formal selection or strategic alignment criteria, CoPs are formed in the best organizations to respond to an important business oppor­tunity.31 The APQC found certain types of CoPs are common: best practices, innovation, help­ing, and knowledge-stewarding CoPs.

Innovation CoPs are cross-functional in nature and form to create new solutions and applica­tions for the knowledge they have. Helping CoPs focus on problem solving to support certain processes or teams. Best practices CoPs identify, validate, and disseminate best practices, while knowledge-stewarding CoPs focus on connecting people who need to know with the knowledge resources, and with those who know, across the organization. The types of CoP that an organi­zation adopts depends on its knowledge strategy and the purpose and desired outcomes for its use. More than one type may exist in an organization in which the business units have different knowledge strategies or business needs. Ford, for example, uses mainly one type—best practices CoPs - while Siemens uses more than one type, but mainly innovation CoPs for problem solv­ing and generation of new ideas. One of the robust uses of CoPs, however, is that employed by DaimlerChrysler, based on its CoP/codification knowledge strategy. DaimlerChrysler CoPs, the 'Tech Clubs," are focused on technological areas and cut across business units. Each one of these CoPs is responsible for content creation and management of a part of DaimlerChrysler's Engineering Book of Knowledge (EBOK), hence the codification component of the strategy. The success of Chrysler's CoPs, prior to its merger with Daimler in 1998, drove the creation of more CoPs, this time focusing on solving problems facing the postmerger integration and called Issue Resolution Teams (IRTs). Each IRT was headed by executives from both companies focus­ing on various business processes and cutting across functional departments and the various lay­ers of the new giant. Most importantly, the IRTs were concerned with enabling knowledge transfer and sharing among the engineers of the two companies, and integrating their knowledge systems.32

Another major component of structural change involves the creation of new positions to sup­port the KM program and strategy. In adopting new techniques, practices, and structures, many organizations found the need to revamp their recruitment design to create new jobs and career paths with the sole focus on managing knowledge and other IC. For example, Ford created a number of new positions to support its BPR program. These included a BPR deployment man­ager, and BPR specialists and managers. The U.S. Navy designed one of the most extensive career paths, creating a great number of positions with various responsibilities relating to infor­mation and knowledge, including knowledge engineers and specialists, as will be further explored in Chapter 6. Skandia has created the position of "Navigator Ambassadors," who facil­itate the use of the Navigator in the various subsidiaries and act as consultants for employees who wish to use the Navigator on the individual level. All these positions fall under the ambit of the knowledge intermediation concept. This concept contends that with the knowledge intensity of business and work processes, the function of finding knowledge, facilitating its transfer, and enabling its replication or application to new situations, new positions should be created to per­form knowledge intermediation. Knowledge intermediation comprises retrieving the knowledge from various sources in the organization, both explicit and tacit, as well as codifying that knowl­edge in a way that it can be replicated and transferred across the organization.

Structural changes, no matter how insightful and robust, will enable KM only if the culture is right. Chapter 10 covers the range of values that an organization's culture should foster, through formulating a shared vision based on the organizational identity. Effecting cultural changes, however, involves much more than identifying and promoting the right set of values across the organization. It involves implementing certain steps that mesh the right values into the way business is done. These steps are different for each of the ICM stages, and are over and above general cultural changes discussed in Chapter 9. These steps are outlined below for KM, and in Chapters 7 and 8 for innovation management and IP management respectively.

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