Category Archives: Management

Knowledge, Management

Knowledge Management

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User – friendly accessible information has a significant impact on people’s performance on the job. A recent review also highlighted the distinction between information/explicit knowledge and personal/ implicit knowledge. Explicit knowledge is much easier to collect, store and access than tacit or implicit knowledge. The latter can be shared more effectively through inter-personal interaction and learning experiences. The purpose of this paper is to prompt an examination of the performance improvement opportunities associated with more effective knowledge management.

Any knowledge storage system is a snapshot of the creator’s knowledge at the time and is reliant on regular updates to maintain currency. It also tends to be configured by the creator rather than the user.

People need to determine what knowledge should be acquired, stored and made accessible and they need to deal with explicit and tacit knowledge in distinctly different ways. Any organisation’s knowledge management approach has significant impact on the effectiveness of learning and development.

Knowledge management works best when the users are involved in the design and configuration of storage and retrieval systems. While IS/IT groups work with platforms and architecture, entrusting design and usability to them is akin to entrusting the design of a public building to the timber supplier and builder.

A knowledge management framework needs to address the following aspects:

  • Acquisition and creation of knowledge
  • Storage and organization of explicit knowledge
  • Distribution of knowledge
  • Application of knowledge
  • Extraction and performance using knowledge
  • Sharing tacit knowledge

The key challenge facing organisations is how to manage the explosion of knowledge so that individual and group performance is enhanced through applied knowledge and ultimately so that customers and stakeholders benefit.

Introduction

A recent review included a finding that perhaps the biggest impact on people performance could be made through access to user – friendly information available in real time on the job. Information is that which can be recorded, stored and accessed at will.

Knowledge Management groups often refer to this as “explicit knowledge” as opposed to what only an individual knows – “implicit knowledge”.

Complexity and rapidly changing needs, particularly at the customer interface, rely on customer service people having access to accurate information in real time while interacting with the customer.

The future is likely to be one in which the customer, and any other user, will configure, and interact with, the information they personally require.

This paper describes knowledge management in a way that can be discussed using common language and then potentially applied to individual and business performance.

Types of Knowledge

Common wisdom seems to describe two main types of knowledge; explicit and tacit or implicit. This distinction came from Polanyi in “The Tacit Dimension” 1960, and was popularised by Nonaka and Takeuchi in “The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation, 1995.

People seem to gain knowledge through context (experiences) and understanding. The more experiences, the more knowledge is built and inevitably the more understanding is developed. The better they understand the subject matter, the more they are able to weave past experiences (context) into new knowledge by absorbing, doing, interacting, and reflecting.

This distinction is important due to the range of actions associated with them. Generally, much emphasis has been placed on people’s “implicit knowledge”. This has led to the assumption and a range of actions in many parts of the business that people need to “know” or learn and remember vast amounts of information. This in turn has led to a proliferation of training products designed to teach people everything they need to know i.e. learn or remember. This series of assumptions is plainly erroneous. In fact, “learning” the content of a knowledge base then relying on memory of that content to answer customer enquiries, for example, cause obvious problems such as a service officer recalling out of date information that has since been updated in the knowledge base.

Explicit knowledge

Explicit knowledge (i.e. information) can be articulated into formal language, including grammatical statements (words and numbers), mathematical expressions, specifications and manuals. Explicit knowledge can be readily processed electronically, transmitted or stored in databases although without applying tacit knowledge explicit stored knowledge can be meaningless.

Tacit or implicit knowledge

Tacit knowledge is personal knowledge gained through learning, individual experience and involves intangible factors, such as personal beliefs, perspective, and values. Tacit knowledge is hard to articulate with formal language. It contains subjective insights, intuitions, and hunches.

Integration of explicit and implicit

Before tacit knowledge can be communicated, it must be converted into words, models, or numbers that can be understood by others. This represents the integration of knowledge and the very natural transition of implicit to explicit and then, when accessed by others, on to implicit. For example, the trainer applies their implicit knowledge by running a training session; the participant accesses the explicit learning activity and internalizes the experience to form their own view or new implicit knowledge.

There are at least two dimensions to tacit knowledge:

  • Technical Dimension (procedural): This encompasses the kind of informal skills often captured in the terms know-how or experience. For example, a specialist develops a wealth of expertise after years of experience. But a specialist often has difficulty articulating the technical or scientific principles of his or her area of expertise. Often, when they master the area they stop thinking consciously of the steps they are going through while performing. Highly subjective and personal insights, intuitions, hunches and inspirations derived from bodily experience fall into this dimension.
  • Cognitive Dimension: This consists of beliefs, perceptions, ideals, values, emotions, talent and mental models so ingrained in us that we take them for granted. Though it cannot be articulated very easily, this dimension of tacit knowledge can shape the way people perceive the world. Often, past and present frameworks assist us in making sense of abstract ideas.

Data is organized into information or explicit knowledge by combining it with prior knowledge and the person’s own motives. This is normally done to solve a problem or make sense of a phenomenon. For example, website statistics are chunks of data but without a context, prior knowledge and a need, the data does not represent useful knowledge.

Tacit knowledge is dynamic, that is, it is constantly changing as people receive new inputs, such as learning, feelings and experience, and as people grow with each new experience and learning opportunity.

Due to the complexity of tacit knowledge, most is not captured by documents; rather it only resides within the creator. In many cases, the knowledge is not shared – it stays within the creator, in which case the “flow of knowledge” stops.

Knowledge Management “System”

A Knowledge Management system, which may be as simple as a story or as complex as a million-dollar computer program, captures a snapshot of the creator’s knowledge. In the case of a story, the knowledge is passed onto others by means of a verbal “snapshot”. In the case of a computer program, it resides in a database that may be utilized by others. It is only a snapshot as further experiences and learning within the creator may change the knowledge, while the snapshot remains the same.

Others may make use of the snapshot by using the story or tapping into the KM system and then combining it with their prior knowledge. This in turn forms new or modified tacit knowledge. This knowledge is then applied to solve a personal or business need, or explain a phenomenon.

Depending upon the KM system and the novelty of the situation, a snapshot of this new knowledge may or may not be entered into the system. The information has changed but the snapshot of the knowledge in the KM system has not. This inherent flaw can mean that users mistrust KM systems. Other factors that impact on the effectiveness of KM systems include:

  • The most valuable employees often have the greatest disdain for knowledge management. Curators can badger these employees to enter what they know into the system, even though few people will ever use the information.
  • The managers of these systems often know a lot about technology, but little about how people actually use knowledge on the job.
  • Tacit knowledge is extremely difficult to capture into these systems, yet it is often more critical to task performance than explicit knowledge.
  • Knowledge is of little use (at least to most organizations) unless it is turned into products, services, innovations, or improvements.
  • Knowledge management systems work best when the people who generate the knowledge are the same people who store it, explain it to others, and coach them as they try to implement it. These systems must be managed by the people who are implementing what is known, not those who understand information systems and technology.

Younger generation employees are fluent exponents of knowledge management and user owned and configured, intuitive and collaborative media. They expect to be able to pull knowledge in a variety of forms for their immediate use. They tend not to react as well to knowledge being pushed at them. Social networking sites come closest to this form of medium. This represents a subtle yet significant shift in how knowledge management will be considered. For example, Google Wave is “a personal communication and collaboration tool” and is a taste of what the future holds. It is a web based computing platform that will merge e-mail, instant messaging, wiki and social networking in real time.

Knowledge Management Framework

A knowledge management framework needs to include the following aspects for both tacit and explicit knowledge:

  • Acquisition and creation
  • Storage and organization
  • Distribution
  • Application
  • Extraction and performance
  • Sharing

Knowledge Acquisition and Creation

Knowledge acquisition is the gathering of knowledge. Gathering all organizational knowledge is an impossible task so determining what needs to be gathered is vital. Also, while it may be tempting to try to store personal or tacit knowledge, the value in these “war stories” or “memoirs” is largely in the telling and discourse rather than any direct application on the job, as it is the telling that helps people to make sense of the current situation. However, both tacit and explicit knowledge may well be developed as a result of these interactions. For example, the project life cycle may include a brainstorm session at the outset in order to tap into tacit knowledge and then develop an explicit scope of work.

Another example is that an organization may have offices scattered around the country and may find that an enormous amount of its knowledge is tied up in emails. So, it may be useful to implement a system that allows strategically important email to be saved in a data repository that can be called upon by others when needed.

Artifacts derived from knowledge creation are facts, concepts, processes, procedures, and principles. These, in turn, are used to help create knowledge in others. So, the artifacts themselves will be able to be stored in computers, but are not knowledge themselves, although they can be used in the generation / formation of new knowledge.

Knowledge Storage and Organisation

Much explicit knowledge is still stored in paper based documents, such as books and manuals. However, this makes it hard to update, distribute and access. Paper based storage systems also lack dynamic storage and search systems. For example, an individual’s work space and day to day resources can be categorized in a number of ways to suit his or her needs, while a manual is generally organized by chapters (the search engine is the table of contents) and key words (the search engine is the index).

Knowledge bases are the modern equivalent of a library of manuals. They tend to be more aligned to the achievement of set tasks but are still configured by the creator rather than the user. It will be useful to consider storage and organization from a user’s perspective.

Knowledge Distribution

A mechanism, such as an intranet or internet, allows the stored knowledge in the repository to be quickly disseminated throughout an organization. Bob Metcalfe, the inventor of ethernet technology, has a law named after him — Metcalfe’s Law, “the asset value of a computer network increases exponentially as each new node (individual user) is added to it.” This is because each new user brings along a wealth of new linkages and resources, so the total network value grows far richer than the mere sum of its parts. This is what gives the Internet its power. Gilder’s Law – the total bandwidth of communication systems will triple every 12 months – describes a decline in the unit cost of the net, which in turn allows more information to be distributed over the net. The key change in knowledge distribution is the extent to which users configure and pull knowledge rather than have it pushed to them.

Knowledge Application

 This is the actual use of the knowledge and is generally measured by its effectiveness and usefulness. It is knowledge that is simply relayed rather than enhanced. Thus, if bad information is going in, incorrect knowledge and understanding will be created by users when they use it in their interactions. In most instances, the users and the knowledge drivers should be one and the same, that is, the users not only withdraw the information, but they could also input the information. To insure that good information goes in, it is vital to involve the users from day one in the planning, design, and building of the system. It needs to mimic the way the users perform their tasks. If they find it clumsy and hard to use, they will not use it. This form of knowledge is most readily provided via electronic media for users.

Knowledge Extraction and Performance

Unlike knowledge application, this aspect should result in enhanced benefits to the individual, and ultimately, the organization. For each benefit, different approaches can be used. This table shows approaches suitable for improving performance by extracting and applying knowledge. For example, if an organization needs knowledge to be applied to innovation, brain – storming is a useful approach.

Innovation

Chat
Brainstorm
Conference
Network

 Responsiveness

Problem solve
Strategize
Coordinate
Customize

 Productivity

Reuse
Discover
Optimize
Mine

 Competency

Read
Browse
Study
Apprentice

Importantly, knowledge can serve as a context for the assessment of performance such as a customer interaction, which in turn, allows the observer to act. To determine whether performance is appropriate, an observer has to “attach meaning to it,” i.e. to perceive and interpret it. Once perceived and interpreted the observer may evaluate whether the performance is appropriate and whether action is required.

And secondly, the role of knowledge in generating appropriate actions is that it serves as a background for articulating possible courses of action, for judging whether courses of action will yield the intended result and for using this judgment in selecting among them, for deciding how actions should be implemented and for actually implementing actions, as well as for making adjustments during the course of the action.

The knowledge background required for sound judgment tends to be developed over time as a result of many experiences and, while applying explicit “bites” of information, is largely tacit.

Knowledge Sharing

Knowledge sharing in organizations is often achieved through one on one or group interactions. While explicit knowledge creators in organizations may hope that their content is applied as intended, without the sense making of interaction, knowledge can be ignored, misinterpreted or applied inappropriately.

There are a number of ways that knowledge is shared. In general, they include:

  • From tacit to tacit — Sharing experiences to create tacit knowledge, such as shared mental models and technical skills. This also includes observation, imitation, and practice. However, “experience” is the key, which is why the mere “transfer of information” often makes little sense to the receiver.
  • From explicit to tacit — Embodying explicit knowledge into tacit knowledge. Closely related to “learning by doing,” through practice and experience Normally, knowledge is verbalized or diagrammed into documents or oral stories.
  • From tacit to explicit — The quintessential process of articulating tacit knowledge into explicit concepts through metaphors, analogies, concepts, illustrations or models. Note that when we conceptualize an image, we express its essence mostly in language.
  • From explicit to explicit — A process of systemizing concepts into a knowledge system. Individuals exchange and combine knowledge through media, such as documents, meetings, and conversations. Information is reconfigured by such means as sorting, combining, and categorizing. Formal education and many training programs work this way.

Organisations need to create environments in which tacit and explicit knowledge are recognized as being valuable and different and that each requires a different approach.

Leadership, Management

Leadership

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Leadership – October 2010

The theory, practice and development of leadership are seriously flawed. The flaw is that there is no such “thing” as leadership. We have attributed a status to this concept and associated behavior, actions and attributes and it is these that have falsely provided some solidness.

However, when I really consider leadership, I struggle to articulate anything more than vague truisms and inspirational qualities. Many have tried to tie it down – the trouble is, there is no “it”. “It” does not exist. Billy Connelly said, “What you believe is true for you”. This seems to apply to the leadership movement. If you believe leadership is this or that, then it is true (but only for you).

We have studied those greats identified as effective or successful leaders. We have analysed what they do and what they seem to be. At best, all we can come up with is a view of what it is believed those individuals do and have. The key thing is that they are individuals, with no capacity to replicate themselves. The most reputable gurus seem to agree that leadership is in what we are, more than in what we do. And, what we are is a collection of unique memories, experiences, values and a non replicable self that can never permeate or be handed on to, or inserted into another. Logically, the most reliable way to gain what so called leaders have and do would be to be their offspring.

What about all the qualities and behaviours of great and effective leadership? For every quality and behavior, we can find an equal and opposite one that disproves the rule.

Adolf Hitler galvanized a nation to accept and commit unspeakable acts that still provoke outrage and ongoing academic focus. Bill Clinton was internationally lauded as great yet he lacked integrity, morality and fidelity, attributes commonly associated with effective leadership.

So, we then talk about leaders being of their time – situational. They emerge as circumstances suit their particular strengths and capabilities.

Churchill was apparently a man of his time. He swept into power when Britain needed a “bulldog” and was just as rapidly swept out when Britain appeared safe. His leadership seemed to have a context for success that the public recognized – however, they did not trust him to transfer that success to a more settled, less critical time.

Were Mao Tse Tung, Gandhi and Mandela also leaders of their time, situation and context, unsuited to a changed environment? They seemed to emerge, pushed to the fore by either a grateful and eager following or perhaps as a result of a vacuum.

Would they have been leaders in a different time and place? If not, we could assume that the leadership qualities of those leaders are not transferable.

Leadership is a figment and bereft of any substance. Individuals may emerge and succeed in a context due to their suitability for that particular circumstance. Their innate capability succeeds at that moment. However, we cannot ascribe a set of attributes and behaviours or capability as leadership and expect that the individual who aspires to the same will succeed in any other set of circumstances.

The natural aspect of leadership to address another time is that of “followership”.

Russell Ness
Director
Ness Consulting
www.nessconsulting.co.nz
Ph. 027 434 3127

Ideas, Knowledge, Management

Work/Play/Lifestyles and The Viable Performance Environment

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The Integration of Flexible Employment Arrangements and Physical Space

“Respect Your Elders”. Kurt Vonnegut

As well as being a sound sentiment and increasingly attractive as our own years advance, the idea that ancient and enduring wisdom can inform modern practice is attractive. Respect for the understanding people had about themselves before psychology, is deserved.

When we consider growth, fresh approaches and new, exciting ideas arising from the rich wisdom of the past, it is interesting to note the research pointing to the trend towards independent and more flexible employment arrangements. As a designer it is even more interesting to ponder on the work environments that will need to be designed to support such a movement.

Ostensibly the move to independent and flexible work arrangements is cost and technology driven. It is easy to understand why organisations, driven to find and eliminate unnecessary overheads and make more use of telecommunication and IT solutions would increasingly explore such avenues.

However there may be far more primeval drivers. This trend may in fact be more about it being instinctively natural and satisfying to operate more flexibly and in tune with the other facets of our lives.

“99% of children are born geniuses, it’s only what we do…” Buckminster Fuller.

As organisations and individuals increasingly laud personal responsibility and management accountability, successful accomplishment or outcome is valued over task completion or time on the job. The responsibility for the entire “how” rests increasingly with individuals who deliver the “what”. Organisations that have got to grips with the principle of accountability are providing values based policy frameworks of guidance then outcome challenges for their people. People, now, are clear that the outcomes for which they are accountable explicitly link to business objectives.

With less prescriptive work instruction individuals naturally begin to flex into their preferred patterns of work/living.

The demarcations between work, home and play often merge as people write their own position descriptions. Those for whom traffic, parking, office politics and dress standards hold little attraction will make choices.

Equally, employers perceptive enough to realise that people taking responsibility for all facets of their lives and focussed on achievement are rare and valuable will be keen to support this flexibility.

“…Of the great leader, the people said they did it themselves.” Lao Tsu.

Is the concept and practice of intrinsically motivated people in control of their own destiny an invention of the cost conscious corporate or treasury policy mongers? I prefer to think that when we have the capacity and space to choose, we choose imaginatively, ethically and instinctively. The idea of individuals acting independently in the workplace is ancient, and the environment that will support interdependence of enterprises and individuals is primordial. This environment taps into our deepest commitment to values, principles and instincts.

Enterprise values principles and goals do not guarantee the commitment and behaviour of individuals. Rather, individuals will understand and respond to their own deepest commitments. Enterprise philosophy will enable rather than force alignment when it is ethical, consistent and human. This is a prerequisite for new millenium viability. Individuals with whom it is attractive to do business will increasingly exercise their options. The enterprise that reinforces just such an independence of spirit through explicitly linking individual responsibility to viability is then engaging its resources in the creation of the environment for excellence of the future.

“Losing implies learning. Losing in a curious way is winning.” Richard Bach.

Just as regeneration requires the richness of the past, nothing has been lost in the process that has led to our current thinking. It is not a matter of regarding previous ways of working as wrong. They were always right at the time. The learning and development of ideas has created an increasingly fertile source of inspiration for the right environment. Such an environment will only be limited by the imagination of its creator. In the past, necessity determined design. Now the preferences, personality and lifestyle of the individual may be key determinants.

Patterns of the past may provide clues to the prototypes. Even if we go back before the accommodation over the general store and the travelling farrier working off the back of a wagon, flexible and independent work/lifestyle choices were made.

The environment conducive to individual performance and satisfaction needs to be cognisant of the need for individuals to exercise discrimination and flexibility, inherently desirable attributes of any human resource.

This will necessarily involve individuals and employers enabling choice and flexibility of physical environmental and contractual arrangements. The challenge for both parties then becomes to define the options. For the individual it means understanding their own performance, the influences on it and gaining clarity about preferences associated with achievement and satisfaction.

The self-awareness search this need for clarity prompts is a key input. It separates the mature, responsible individual from the victims.

“A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread-and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!”

Omar Khayyam.

Most of us will quite naturally seek and if necessary create for ourselves the environment in which we know we will excel. Even in our homes we gravitate to the room or area best suited to the activity.

In any day we may need a combination of spaces including relaxed informal, quiet, private, workstation, food preparation and social/eating. The awareness of these life/work style environments and the subsequent discrimination needs to be encouraged in the workplace.

Those with power alone don’t need status,
And those with status alone don’t have power.

 Previously, satisfying the need for comfort and different work zones was a privilege of those for whom choices went with power, seniority and status.

Executive offices would often provide many of these zones of use with casual seating, meeting tables, whiteboards, bars, small kitchens and even private bathrooms. Inevitably this strengthened management layer demarcations, caused accommodation space and cost blowouts and further squeezed the less senior into less attractive and spacious surroundings. The lack of choices this provided ensured people become less responsible and more dependent on the command and control structures. This at a time when employers were demanding initiative, flexibility and adaptability.

There followed in some quarters a swing to open plan arrangements. This solution looking for problems sought to address space effectiveness, fit out costs and the need for increased communication and teamwork. The result has been tiny “offices” with no privacy and high levels of noise. The impression is of a modern day sweatshop with a tedious uniformity and little creative design input.

“The key innovations usually come not from the centre of the industry but from the fringes…” C.K. Prahalad

Many workplace designers are still captive to user-unfriendly drivers. The equation tends more toward square metres per person relative to seniority, status and tradition than towards optimal performance.

Designers providing leadership are looking at the choices people are making about their life/work styles and bringing about exciting developments.

There are opportunities to pursue cost effective work environment design when the elements of preference, optimum performance, contractual arrangements and technology are integrated.

The resulting designs will be different, frightening at first and fascinating because we’ll recognise the familiar and comfortable feel of them. They will be environments that we’d like to take home with us and that we may in fact feel came from home.

“80% of performance opportunities reside in the environment”

Gery Rummler

As we increasingly see the modern home incorporate an office so the modern office will incorporate elements of the home. As the home is an environment in which we feel comfortable and familiar, so the office will be also. As we require flexibility of design and the freedom to choose our preferred employment arrangements and environment, designers will consider that flexibility a prerequisite in their designs.

Expect to see the vital elements deemed to determine optimum performance reflected not only in increasingly flexible employment relationships but also in workplace design. For example;

  • Modern IT and telecommunications solutions do not require fixed lines so phones faxes and computers on desks are limiting and in some cases unnecessary
  • Half of the work force will soon be independent, needing little or no floor space
  • Innovative furniture design is providing relatively low cost, attractive, flexible and people friendly solutions to the various work style needs
  • Greater daily interaction for many people is enhancing the effectiveness of relationships and consequently performance
  • The choices provided encourage personal responsibility and therefore feelings of achievement, satisfaction and intrinsic motivation
  • Weaker artificial demarcations between management layers creates the opportunity for robust, direct and mature relationships

When these new truths are design possibilities, imagine the result.

“…could you and I with Him conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Thing entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits – and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart’s desire!”

Omar  Khayyam

If we are to “re-mould” our work arrangements nearer to our “hearts desire”, how might it look and feel?

One way to view this is to imagine being a bird soaring high in the thermals above the Kalahari.

The patterns of movement etched over time as the bush people and animals live in harmony with the environment tell a story. The natural confluences are where creatures come together to eat, socialise, drink and travel. Even favourite hunting trails are obvious.

Look more closely and the best relaxing, viewing and sleeping spots appear worn into the living rock. Private spaces in a village surround open communal areas with protective features. Once safety and survival criteria are satisfied, personal physical comfort is paramount. This observation of life in balance is invaluable when considering modern design.

If we transfer that thinking to home design we can begin to understand architectural movements and styles.

Office design lags behind. For example, how many staff refreshment and relaxation areas are sited at the hub of the floor? Yet where do people generally relax and interact? How many times have you seen valuable interaction taking place in a busy, narrow corridor or cramped staff tea bay? It seems that when designers recognise that these interactions are natural and valuable, designs will reflect our life/work styles. Then when flexible contractual arrangements are overlaid, the possibilities increase exponentially.

“Those who will stand for nothing will fall for anything.” Gandhi.

It is the responsibility of individuals to gain awareness of their preferences for the environment in which they will best perform, identify the options and consequences and then assertively exercise their choice. It is the responsibility of employers to create the environment in which individuals can take responsibility and choose. Not only will the work environments of the future be less costly in dollar terms; their inherent comfort and flexibility will make them less costly in human terms. Most importantly individuals taking responsibility for their own performance and achievement will have created them.