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Strategizing Knowledge Management: Vision And The Role Of Leadership

Problems cannot be solved at the same level of consciousness that created them.

- Albert Einstein

Einstein's statement cannot be truer when applied to organizational behavior. To motivate employees to collaborate in sharing and creating knowledge, a shift in the way the organization sees itself is crucial. An organization needs to have a strategic shift of vision where it recognizes itself as a knowledge organization. Neglecting this step will replicate the experience of many organizations in which leadership's commitment to KM boils down to changing the IT architec­ture. This is why a strategic shift in the vision of the organization to one in which it sees itself as a knowledge organization should be championed by leadership and communicated down to all levels of the organization from the start. To do that, an organization may also need to undergo an audit of its culture and values to ensure that the new knowledge-oriented vision is not stifled by an adverse culture. Though effecting a cultural change is among the first steps in implementing KM, it is a change needed at the operational level and will be discussed later in the chapter.

To cultivate a vision for the knowledge organization, leadership and top management need to acknowledge the role that knowledge and learning play in attaining the mission of their organizations. One of the most successful applications of KM is by British Petroleum (BP), where leadership reformulated the vision of the company as a knowledge machine by calling themselves the "big brain." And what happens in a brain? You guessed it - dynamic transfer of neural charges carrying bits of information and experience from the memory. The message communicated is that "Our work is to communicate and learn." Another example is Chevron Corporation. After recently decentralizing its operations, Chevron found that valuable knowl­edge would be lost if the corporation did not learn how to share knowledge. Chevron leader­ship articulated and promoted "The Chevron Way" as the strategic vision dedicated to build Chevron as a "first-rate learning organization." That was the first and most important step that fueled and directed its KM program.

Knowledge Audit and Gap Analysis

Following setting the right vision and the right mindset, leadership needs to take KM to the next step at the strategic level where it decides on the knowledge strategies that will enable it to achieve its goals. This step cannot be effectively undertaken without first carrying out a knowl­edge audit and a gap analysis to discover the knowledge resources that the organization has and lacks. To discover gaps, an organization should be able to assess weaknesses in both its explicit and tacit knowledge resources that will hinder it from attaining the desired competitive position. These gaps may also be identified by reference to the products that an organization aspires to introduce into the market in comparison with the products of the competition as a benchmark.

A number of approaches have evolved for knowledge audits and gap analysis: stock/inventory taking, mapping internal and external knowledge flows, and mapping knowledge resources. Under the first approach of inventory taking, the organization looks at the available knowledge resources (e.g., databases, information, experts, and best practices) and then assesses these by reference to their identified knowledge needs. Sometimes the knowledge audit is performed by reference to competencies and knowledge areas in which the organization competes or plans to compete.

The second approach focuses on mapping knowledge flows internally (within the organiza­tion) and externally (with customers and other partners). Maps are created by collecting infor­mation on who consults what (database), and who consults who (experts), to detect how knowledge is both applied and generated. The results are then depicted in a graph that shows how knowledge flows between individuals, departments, and from and to the organization. Gaps under this approach are defined as blocks in the knowledge flow or weak knowledge flows that adversely affect the knowledge creation process.

The third approach relates to depicting the state of knowledge resources at a given time by ref­erence to the business processes they support. Though similar in concept to the stock-taking approach, it differs in that the focus is on the knowledge resources available to support the spe­cific tasks and actions of the key business processes. They are designed to enable the organiza­tion to eliminate redundancies where the same action is supported by too many resources, and shift attention to those processes that are not adequately supported (see also about capital management).

Each of these approaches is designed to uncover a certain aspect of the state of knowledge creation and transfer in view of the business needs at a specific point in time. It is advisable to use a combination of these approaches to uncover both the state and flows of knowledge resources in an organization. Once the organization knows what it knows and needs to know, the critical knowledge networks and flows, and how knowledge resources are being and should be used to support critical business processes, it is time to strategize. The audit enables top man­agement to assess the strengths and weaknesses of their knowledge resources, by reference to the competitive position they want to attain, as well as assess the opportunities and threats that their resources present. Before leadership implements any of the knowledge auditors' recom­mendations, it is essential that they consider the knowledge strategy that would best fit their business needs and future vision.

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