Knowledge Management KMS People

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Knowledge ManagementKMS People

• Rumizen, Melissie, The Complete Idiots Guide to
  Knowledge Management, Alpha (Pearson), 2002.
• Chapters R3 R8
• And Wenger, Etienne, Richard McDermott, and
  William M. Snyder, Cultivating Communities of
  Practice A Guide to Managing Knowledge, Harvard
  Business School Press, Boston, 2002. W1-W10

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• Chief knowledge officer (CKO) R3
• KMS staff (library analogy) (KPMG, Ernst Young,
  etc.)
• Executives' role (O'Dell's new book on
  executives' roles)
• Managers
• Consultants
• Others
• Communities of practice (CoP) - (see below)

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Communities of Practice (CoP) W1-10R8

• Organization - top down vs. bottom up
• volunteer organization structure
• Facilitator
• Expert
• Motivation

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Willem de Kooning, Composition, 1955
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R3 Whats a Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO)

• Why CEOs need CKOs
• Initiating the search for a CKO
• Establishing the qualifications for a CKO
• What do CKOs do?
• Locating the CKO in the organization

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CKOs

• About 80 are nontechnical
• Wide range of backgrounds
• About 50 are women

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Who is Responsible for KM?
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Who is Responsible for KM?

• Everyone
• CKO
• CoP leaders
• Knowledge experts
• Knowledge users
• Executives
• Managers
• Consultants
• KM staff

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CKOs

• Are evangelists they market the KM throughout
  the organization - passionately
• Perform knowledge audits
• Build support for its use - motivation
• Encourage knowledge contributions
• Encourage knowledge extraction (use)
• Enable and help organize communities of practice
• Practice change management

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CKOs are

• Evangelists
• Entrepreneurs
• Persuaders
• Communicators
• IT savvy (not really)

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The Least You Need to Know

• CEOs usually create the CKO position, in order to
  solve organizational problems and create new
  capabilities and must provide strong support
• CKOs can be hired either internally or from the
  outside. There are advantages and disadvantages
  for both.
• CKOs have many hats evangelist, entrepreneur,
  persuader, and IT realist
• CKOs need a good relationship with the CIO or
  someone in the IT organization
• CKOs may be located in the IT function, the
  corporate training function, the HR function, or
  as a stand-alone. Stand-alone is best.

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Vincent Van Gogh, Wheat Field Under Threatening
Skies, 1890
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R8 Communities of Practice-The Killer Application

• Characteristics of communities of practice (CoP)
• Role of the community coordinator
• Launching a CoP at SAP America

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CoPs

• Function like volunteer (charitable) groups
• Tend to be self-organizing
• Set own goals, etc.
• Leaders (coordinators) tend to rise to the top
  rather than be appointed
• Have lifecycles
• Exist as needed
• Bring together people that span traditional
  organizational structures a parallel structure
• Dont have specific deliverables except
  knowledge
• Require management support to thrive

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The Least You Need to Know

• CoPs are a newly recognized organizational
  structure, not another type of team or work group
• CoPs have three dimensions the domain,
  community, and practice
• CoPs have a life cycle
• The MOST CRITICAL success factor for a community
  is the community coordinator

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Wenger CoP

• Wenger, Etienne, Richard McDermott, and William
  M. Snyder, Cultivating Communities of Practice A
  Guide to Managing Knowledge, Harvard Business
  School Press, Boston, 2002. W1-W10

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W1 Communities of Practice and Their Value to
Organizations

• Key to success
• Knowledge is social as well as individual
• Knowledge is dynamic
• Social structures can be management tools
• How to cultivate CoPs?
• They grow
• Have life cycles
• Some require seeding some are spontaneous

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Creating Multiple Types of Value

• CoPs are a unique organizational structure
• They can
• Connect local pockets of expertise and isolated
  professionals
• Diagnose and address recurring business problems
  whose root causes cross team boundaries
• Analyze the knowledge-related sources of uneven
  performance across units performing similar tasks
  and work to bring everyone up to the highest
  standard
• Link and coordinate (seemingly) unconnected
  activities and initiatives addressing a similar
  knowledge domain

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Table 1-1, p. 16, part 1/2
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Table 1-1, p. 16, part 2/2
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Most Important CoP Benefit

• CoPs create value by connecting the personal
  development and professional identities of
  practitioners to the strategy of the organization
• CONNECTEDNESS!!!

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De Kooning, Whose Name Was Writ in Water,
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W2 Structural Elements of CoPs

• Small or big
• Long-lived or short-lived
• Colocated or distributed
• Homogeneous or heterogeneous
• Inside and across boundaries
• Within business
• Across business units
• Across organizational boundaries
• Spontaneous or intentional
• Unrecognized to institutionalized

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Structural Model

• Domain
• Community
• Practice
• A domain of knowledge, which defines a set of
  issues a community of people who care about this
  domain and the shared practice that they are
  developing to be effective in their domain

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Domain

• Creates common ground and a sense of common
  identity
• If well-defined, legitimizes the community by
  affirming its purpose and value to members and
  other stakeholders
• Inspires members to contribute and participate,
  guides their learning, and gives meaning to their
  actions

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Community

• Creates the social fabric of learning
• A strong community fosters interactions and
  relationships based on mutual respect and trust.
• Encourages a willingness to share ideas, expose
  ones ignorance, ask difficult questions, and
  listen carefully
• (learning is a matter of belonging as well as an
  intellectual process involving the heart as well
  as the head

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Practice

• A set of frameworks, ideas, tools, information,
  styles, language, stories, and documents that
  community members share
• The practice is the specific knowledge the
  community develops, shares, and maintains.
• In a long-term community, there is an expectation
  that all members have mastered the basic
  knowledge of the community.
• This allows the community to proceed efficiently
  (and effectively) with its domain

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Communities of Practice

• Are clearly very different from all other
  organizational structures
• Break free of silos (islands)
• How can you create CoPs?

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Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait with Loose Hair, 1947
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W3 Seven Principles for Cultivating Communities
of Practice

• Design for evolution
• Open a dialogue between inside and outside
  perspectives
• Invite different levels of participation
• Develop both public and private community spaces
• Focus on value
• Combine familiarity and excitement
• Create a rhythm for the community

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2/2
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Andy Warhol, Campbells Soup Can
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W4 The Early Stages of Development

• Planning and launching communities of practice

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Stages of Community Development (and
Developmental Tensions)

• Potential (discover/imagine)
• Coalescing (incubate/deliver immediate value)
• Maturing (focus/expand)
• Stewardship (ownership/openness)
• Transformation (let go/live on)

See Figure 4.1, p. 69)
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CoP Strategic Intent Examples

• Helping communities
• Best practice communities
• Knowledge stewarding communities
• Innovation communities
• More?

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Community Coordinator

• The most important factor in a communitys
  success is the vitality of its leadership.
• The coordinator helps the community focus on its
  domain, maintain relationships, and develop its
  practice
• He/she spends 20 50 of his/her time on it

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Community CoordinatorKey Functions

• Identify important issues in their domain
• Plan and facilitate community events
• Informally link community members, crossing
  boundaries between organizational units and
  brokering knowledge assets
• Foster the development of community members
• Help build the practice (including the knowledge
  base, lessons learned, best practices, tools and
  methods, and learning events)
• Assess the health of the community and evaluate
  its contribution to members and the organization

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Common Coordinator Failures

• Time
• Public versus private space
• Networking skills
• Technical knowledge

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Max Ernst, The Hat Makes the Man, 1920
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W7 The Downside of CoPs

• Can hoard knowledge, limit innovation, and hold
  others hostage to their expertise
• Example medieval guilds were often fortresses
  of knowledge as much as stewards of knowledge

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Communities of Practices

• May not be functioning well
• May not share knowledge and/or create subtle
  barriers to effectiveness
• Can become obstacles to learning!
• They are people-based organizations and can have
  any typical organizational problems

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Some Critical Problems

• Imperialism
• Narcissism
• Marginality
• Factionalism
• The good news is that problems can be addressed
  and fixed!

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Jackson Pollock, Stenographic Figure, 1942
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Wenger Images Not Used
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Andy Warhol, Butterfly