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In one form or another, visionaries have been describing the ideal knowledge management environment for over 15 years.
The objective is to put the right information in the hands of the right people at the right time
In the ideal knowledge management environment:
There appear to be natural stages in the evolution of the technology needed to make this ideal environment a reality. First information exists in isolated islands around the enterprise, shared, to some extent, within teams or workgroups, but not beyond that. Then a more collaborative environment develops where individuals can choose to make their information generally available, across organizations. Then finally, the sharing becomes integrated and automatic. When I post my information it automatically becomes part of the enterprise's information store or knowledge base. It gets filtered and pushed to the right people and can also be found by others who did not receive notice.
Today's tools are well-suited for the second stage. Point products are available to help with gathering, organizing, refining, and disseminating information; but they tend to be technically challenging and there is no easy way to integrate them into a total system.
So while you are tempted, you might hold back and wait for technology to advance further before making large investments in knowledge management tools. But that could be a costly mistake.
Business success does not depend on technology. But it does depend on the adoption and application of technology. It's not what you have, but what you do with what you have that counts.
So what can you do with what you have today? And what can you do today that will prepare you to do more with what you'll have tomorrow?
Fifteen years ago, articles and speeches focused on the need to "bridge the islands of information," to tie together the information resources of corporations. Today, in many cases, the networking infrastructure is in place and tools are installed to make it possible to share information across enterprises; but the reality is often far less dazzling than the promise. Just because information can flow, does not mean that it will flow.
Technology can make large-scale collaboration and information sharing possible. But changes in human behavior are needed to turn the promise into reality.
Management may recognize the importance of company-wide collaboration and may make large investments in technology to make that possible.
But if ingrained habits, reinforced by the corporate culture, pull in another direction, and the company will continue to operate at an earlier stage, with islands of information.
If your people don't use today's groupware and collaboration products, you won't reap the benefits that you could right now. And you also won't be in a position to benefit from a seamless corporate information environment, when the products of tomorrow make that possible.
In other words, the human barriers to achieving the goals of knowledge management are far more significant than the technological ones; and they can and should be dealt with today.
Today, people still view information as a source of power and job security.
They are rewarded for being the "person in the know," rather than being the person who enables others. As a result, who you know often determines what you know, and corporations have many isolated islands of information, making it very difficult to see interdependencies, and to respond rapidly to problems and opportunities. This everyone-for-him/herself environment leads to duplication of effort, inefficient work patterns, lack of focus -- high costs and missed revenue. To change this behavior pattern, to take advantage of the creativity of the full diverse range of people and experiences in your company, you need to change the de facto recognition and reward system.
Interestingly, the Web can be both a medium for exchanging information and also a means for recognizing those who share information.
The first step is to make it easy for those who are inclined to share to do so. That means establishing policies that enable anyone to post company-relevant information on the internal Web.
It also means providing simple, easy-to-use tools, for these people to do their posting, and related training for those who want it. The software should make it easy to upload existing documents and make them available over the internal Web, with conversion to HTML happening automatically. It should also be easy for non-technical people to engage in on-line discussions, in response to posted documents, simply typing in their responses. This software needs to have some built-in security, so documents can be set to be viewable by all or limited to those who have a need to know. (SiteScape Forum provides that capability. It lets anyone upload documents in standard formats, without having to concern themselves with conversion. And it also lets you set up password protected areas, that could be open to a dispersed but pre-determined team.)
The second step is to make it easy for anyone to quickly find the information that they are authorized to see -- wherever it may be stored on the internal Web. (AltaVista Search Intranet software can index all the documents on a corporate Web, or whatever subset is deemed appropriate. You simply aim the crawler (the program that gathers the content) at those sites which you want included. And it is possible to run more than one copy of this program -- creating a general index for all users and also secure indices for use only by those with the special authority. The user interface is the same as that at the public AltaVista Search site -- providing extreme fast responses, and letting users of all degrees of sophistication to find what they want.
AltaVista Search can index the content stored in SiteScape Forum. And SiteScape Forum software also has the same search capability embedded in it, so when the content of a Forum grows large, it is easy for a visitor to search locally for whatever they want.
With these two pieces in place, over time, those employees who are inclined to share will add ever more content to the Web. And the more content is available on the Web, the more likely it will be that answers to pressing questions will be available there, for those who have acquired the skills and habits of searching.
Gradually, those who are adept at using the Web become valued by their colleagues, because of their ability to find information and to help others find it. These same people also become more and more recognized because the files that they posted and/or that they wrote are the very files that people are finding when they need information. And as forums become increasingly interactive, with replies and continued dialogue, rather than just posting of documents, the individuals who are most articulate and knowledgeable and helpful in these dialogue also become recognized.
To help speed up this natural process, a corporation can set up a coordinated effort to post documents on the Web, and also to encourage the use of Forums as an adjunct to regular meetings -- a place to post agendas, minutes, and lists of action items, with their followup. If this kind of behavior becomes common place at the highest levels of the corporation, it will likely be adopted at lower levels. Managers could also use the Web itself to encourage this kind of behavior -- creating Web pages, complete with photos and bios, for recognition/reward of individuals who are outstanding in the use of this new medium and in benefiting the corporation through their information sharing efforts.
Before a company can hope to create a seamless corporate-wide information/knowledge environment, it first needs to build a team-level culture.
In the past, a team was typically a department, a set of individuals all sitting near one another in the same building. Today, teams can include individuals from many different groups across the company and around the world. They also may include consultants, partners, or customers. In this case, you need to be able to create Virtual Private Networks, allowing individuals from home or on the road or from the premises of other corporations to securely connect to the team space on the corporate intranet. With tunnel software, individuals connected by phone lines to public Internet providers can establish an encrypted connection that goes through the corporate firewall and gives them access to the team space and the internal information resources that they need.
All parties can act as equal team members regardless of where they may be -- at home, at the office, or in a hotel room on the other side of the world. The electronic environment tends to foster a democracy of participation as well, focusing on goals and issues rather than personalities. The cogency of one's words weighs heavier in on-line deliberations than physical looks and presence, and sometimes even overcomes barriers of rank and status. In the ideal case, you can run cross-organizational on-line brainstorming sessions, where the outcome of the discussion is far more valuable than what any individual could have thought of alone. Also, the ability to connect to one another without the typical delays of phone-tag and setting up physical meeting space helps maintain continuity and moves projects forward quickly. (Experience seems to indicate that a given individual may end up attending just as many physical meetings as before -- which often is a matter of personality rather than necessity -- but the work of the team gets completed much faster.)
The difference between information and knowledge is people. Computers store and process and distribute information/data and people turn that into knowledge. Hence knowledge management is in part people management.
Yes, we do not yet have fully integrated knowledge management systems or tools that let the unsophisticated users accomplish whatever they want in the most intuitive ways. But today's systems for gathering and organizing and disseminating and refining knowledge are sufficiently robust that you can train people to make very good use of them. The very people who show initiative and the desire to share information -- the pioneers in posting and finding and interacting on the Web -- could and should be singled out for advanced training in these tools, because they are the ones most likely to share their learning with their colleagues, and also because these advanced training opportunities will serve as another tangible reward and recognition for their good efforts.
Once the tools are in place, and pioneers are using them regularly, and everyone is aware of them, you can begin to build communities within your company and with customers/partners.
A team is defined by an organizational structure or by a project. A community consists of people who have common topics and issues that they care deeply about and want to discuss. Over time these people develop relationships and loyalties, which can prove valuable when unexpected cross-organizational needs arise. And in any case, they learn from one another on a regular basis.
A business community can consist of employees, partners, and/or customers.
Once on-line collaboration begins to take off, you will find that certain topics and issues command attention and tend to lead to valuable business-related discussions. Also, certain individual will step forward and express themselves clearly and passionately on those topics. If and when that is the case, management can try to systematically grow these discussions into full-fledged self-sustaining communities. This takes some focus and commitment.
Someone has to identify the topics and the leaders; gather existing content and assemble it in ways to stimulate further discussion, and make sure that it is easy for interested people to find it. Systems people have to make tools and framework available and easy to use by the community leaders. And management has to free up sufficient time for the community leaders to devote to this project.
What would a business community look like. Imagine:
In other words, the Web is creating new opportunities along with new challenges. We can and should use the new Web-based information tools to help reshape our corporate cultures -- to convert personal knowledge to corporate knowledge, and to create an environment where personal advancement derives from sharing knowledge rather than hoarding it. That will in turn to enable us to get the most out of today's capabilities, while preparing us for the higher levels of sharing and cooperation that will be necessary to benefit from the more sophisticated knowledge solutions of the future.
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