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* This article is the property of Northern ATI and cannot be copied, published, or reproduced without the consent of Northern ATI.
Knowledge Management
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So, we are in the information age - and globalization is a reality. How do these two
forces affect you and your business? – They gradually but surely change the
competitive edges for most business. Thanks to the information age, your competitors
now have access to the same information and technology that you do. It is virtually
impossible to prevent them from copying and even improving on your product and
production methods. In other words, your technological advantages are only
short-lived. Now, thanks to globalization, consumers can choose from many vendors
offering the same products. The competition is fierce, driving down product prices.
Your technological advantages are neutralised, so the only way to increase margin is
to improve your processes: avoid previous failures (i.e. applying lesson-learned),
re-use previous experience, etc. Essentially, intellectual asset becomes the most
important competitive edge for businesses. Knowledge management is about managing
your company’s intellectual asset, turning your company into the knowledge company.
This is not just a vision, knowledge management initiatives have been implemented in
many companies, including British Petroleum, Mobil Oil, Chrysler, IBM, US Army – to
name a very few.
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- "Knowledge Management is about managing your company's intellectual assets"
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There are two kinds of knowledge:
• Explicit knowledge: this is the knowledge that can be written down. This ranges from things like your sale contacts list, your project documents, to every bits and pieces of data that reside in hundreds of different database in your corporation.
• Tacit knowledge: this is the knowledge that cannot be written down. It lies in your employee heads. Capturing and sharing tactic knowledge is extremely difficult. Often times, this knowledge is lost after an employee leaves the company. Quantitatively, tacit knowledge comprises the majority of knowledge. Qualitatively, tacit knowledge is usually much more important than explicit knowledge.
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The goal of Knowledge Management is to capture, maintain and share knowledge.
The important words here are "maintain" and "share". Capturing alone is not enough.
In order to leverage knowledge as your strategic competitive edge, the knowledge
must be maintained and shared among your employees. This means that do not expect
technology to solve the whole problem. Technology is just an enabler for your
knowledge management program. The difficult part is to change your corporate
culture to foster knowledge creation and knowledge sharing. This involves things
like training, coaching, Change Management, etc.
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- "The goal of Knowledge Management is to capture, maintain and share knowledge."
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Interested? Want to find out how you would go about implementing a Knowledge
Management initiative? Contact us. Northern ATI members
have been involved with many knowledge management projects. Our members are also
active researchers in this area. Our members have "been there, done that". We can
help you assess your knowledge management needs, and/or help you design and
implement a successful knowledge management program, from both a technology
perspective and change management perspective.
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