Knowledge management strategies

1. Knowledge Management:
An Overview and Strategies
that Work

2. • Knowledge management (KM) comprises a range of strategies and
practices used in an organization to identify, create, represent,
distribute, and enable adoption of insights and experiences. ...
• The way a company stores, organizes and accesses [valuable] internal
and external information
KM Definitions

3. • 1995 (Nonaka) The Knowledge Creating Company
• An increasing proportion of today’s wealth creating industries are
knowledge intensive.
• It is estimated that more than 70 per cent of work is information or
knowledge related.
• There is increasing value in intangibles
• Growth in markets for trading of knowledge assets.
• High fees paid for star performers.
Fad to Fundamental

4. • If value lies locked inside peoples’ heads, how can it effectively be
turned into corporate knowledge and more widely diffused and
exploited?
• KM improves the flow of information around the organization;
• Makes information available when, and where, needed;
• Uses information to add value (e.g., increased productivity, better
customer service, improved business processes and
products/services)
Communication is the Basis

5. • 2 main strategies work:
• 1. The better sharing of existing knowledge; avoiding reinventing the
wheel
• Intranets with databases and/or directories of best practices and
expertise
• Mapping processes
Strategies that work

6. • 2. Creating new knowledge and converting it into products, services,
or processes
• Focus on better/faster innovation
• More difficult than strategy 1, but greater return
• Knowledge sharing = incremental improvement
• Knowledge creation = large leaps
e.g., Jaguar
Strategies that work cont.

7. • Customer knowledge
• Knowledge in processes
• Knowledge in people
• Organizational memory – decision diaries, after meeting reflections,
AAR’s. etc.
• Knowledge in relationships
• Knowledge assets: 4 categories 1. human capital 2. customer capital
3. structural capital 4 Intellectual capital
Knowledge Levers

8. • 1. Establishing a sense of urgency
• 2. Creating the guiding coalition
• 3. Developing a vision and strategy
• 4. Communicating the vision
• 5. Empowering employees
• 6. Making short-term ‘wins’
• 7. Consolidating change and making more change
• 8. Anchoring the change into the organizational culture
Leading Change