The Knowledge Manager's Handbook

A Step-by-Step Guide to Embedding Effective Knowledge Management in your Organization

Nick Milton, Patrick Lambe

• Publisher: Kogan Page
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780749484613
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Informationsmanagement

WINNER: CILIP's Knowledge and Information Management Award 2019 - Information Resources Print CategoryThe way an organization manages and disseminates its knowledge is key to informed business decision-making, effectiveness and competitive edge. The Knowledge Manager's Handbook takes you step by step through the processes needed to define and embed an effective knowledge management framework within an organization. This second edition now includes clear guidance on the best practice requirements from the first ever internationally recognised standard for knowledge management, ISO 30401: 2018, as well as content on the impact of AI and data analytics. Nick Milton and Patrick Lambe work through each stage of creating and implementing a knowledge management framework for an organization's specific needs, based around the four essential aspects of knowledge management: people, processes, technologies and governance. With updated international case studies from organizations of all sizes and sectors, along with user-friendly templates and checklists to help implement effective knowledge management procedures, The Knowledge Manager's Handbook is the end-to-end guide to making a sustainable change in the knowledge management culture.

Part One

Orientation to knowledge management implementation

Executive summary

Chapter 1 will give you a rapid overview of how to define KM in practical terms for your organization. It stresses the importance of taking a holistic, balanced approach to KM, and will help you figure out when the KM implementation is out of balance. Chapter 2 sketches out the pros and cons of different KM approaches, and identifies the main phases of KM implementation. This chapter provides a roadmap to the rest of this book. Chapter 3 identifies the most common implementation pitfalls to avoid.

01

What is knowledge management?

Introduction

This chapter tackles, as best it can, the thorny topic of what knowledge management (KM) actually is, and what it entails. It contains the following elements:

• a definition of KM, and a comparison with other disciplines;
• the six main components of KM;
• a translation of KM into business terms;
• the supply chain as an analogy for KM;
• the essential elements of KM;
• KM as orchestration.

Definition

There’s a saying that if you put five knowledge managers in a room, they will come up with seven definitions of what KM is. This is apocryphal, but it reflects reality. There is a lot of debate and confusion about the nature of KM, none of which is helpful to you as you attempt to implement it within your organization. Hence, your first step, together with your line manager and the steering group for the KM implementation programme, should be to come to a common definition and understanding of what ‘knowledge management’ means in your organizational context.

Our view is that KM is the latest in a range of management disciplines, and is the discipline with knowledge as its focus. The ISO Knowledge Management Standard, ISO 30401:2018 defines KM as ‘management with regard to knowledge’ (ISO, 2018). So ‘knowledge management’ (or KM) represents a way of managing work, paying due attention to the value and effect of an intangible asset, namely, knowledge.

Knowledge is one organizational resource among many. For centuries, organizations have managed their visible assets and resources, such as money, people, property and equipment. More recently organizations have been addressing their intangible assets, such as information, reputation, intellectual property, customer relationships, the diversity and talent of their staff, their ability to work safely and sustainably, and now their knowledge.

Knowledge management is therefore just the latest management discipline dealing with intangibles. Risk management, quality management, customer relationship management, brand management, reputation management, talent management, safety management – all deal with intangibles, and the implementation programmes for these analogous disciplines can all provide a model for implementing KM. Look at the discipline closest to KM that is already embedded in your organization and ask, ‘How did we implement this? How are we sustaining this? What lessons are there for the KM programme?’

In the industrial sector, probably the closest analogue disciplines for KM are safety management and risk management. Neither of these disciplines involve the management of tangibles – neither safety nor risk are things you can pick up, weigh and put in your pocket. They are about how you manage your organization so that safety and risk are given priority, and so that people’s safety behaviours and risk behaviours change. This is exactly what we are looking for from KM. So if your organization has, in the past, successfully introduced risk management and safety management, then you should be greatly encouraged, as KM can then follow a proven implementation path.

KM can also be placed within the same governance framework as the other disciplines. You can position it within the same structures and expectations, and you can review it using the same review processes; the stage reviews of the project management framework, for example. In other words, you can (and should) embed KM within ‘normal work’. How are the other disciplines sustained? Do they have a company policy? Support staff? Roles embedded in the business? KM will probably need something similar. This does not mean that you reproduce the frameworks from other disciplines, but it does mean you can learn from them. Any analogue discipline that has successfully been embedded is a learning opportunity for your KM implementation.

Tip

Find the people who were responsible for implementing the latest new management framework in your organization (eg risk management, quality management, diversity management, or safety management) and conduct a learning session with them. Probe for the things they did that were successful and ask for their advice. Find out the things they tried that did not work, work out why they did not work, and discuss how you might avoid these pitfalls yourself. Focus on what was needed to fully embed the framework.

The seven main components of knowledge management

Looking at KM as ‘intangible asset management with knowledge as a focus’ may help us align it with other management disciplines, but does not particularly help us understand in detail what KM entails, and what it could look like in your organization.

Surveys conducted by Knoco in 2014 and 2017, with responses from over 700 knowledge managers from around the world, explored this issue by asking the respondents to prioritize, from a list of 11 potential KM approaches, the ones that they focused on as part of their KM implementation (Knoco, 2017). Table 1.1 shows which elements were given highest priority.

Table 1.1 Survey results showing the priority given to different elements of KM

Knowledge managemen...