AI requires KM - quote

A quote from a CIO Dive article "Skills required of a successful 2020 IT service management professional"


Knowledge management capabilities

Many self-service technology initiatives have failed in recent years due to the neglect of knowledge creation and nurturing. The same may be true of any new technology initiatives if the appropriate knowledge groundwork isn't created today.

AI and knowledge management are two sides of the same coin. Essentially, machines learn as human beings do through experience and through education, the latter in this case being "available knowledge."

Without effective knowledge management capabilities, organizations and individuals will struggle to succeed with AI and other cutting-edge initiatives.

What did Jack Welch say about KM?

It's always interesting to see what CEOs say about KM. Here's Jack Welch.

Jack Welch, the famous CEO of General Electric, did an excellent job of summarising the business vision for Knowledge Management, when he made this statement in the GE 1996 annual report.

“Our behaviour is driven by a fundamental core belief; the desire and the ability of an organisation to continuously learn from any source, and to rapidly convert this learning into action, is it’s ultimate competitive advantage”

That's a really clear description of Knowledge Management (continuously learning from any source, and rapidly converting this learning into action), and a great link with the business driver  (ultimate competitive advantage).

Is "Ultimate competitive advantage" a bit strong? Are there other advantages, such as market strength, or brand leadership?

Probably not - even organisations that have been in uniquely competitive positions still need to focus on knowledge management. Knowledge management is big at Microsoft, despite their near monopoly in the business software and operating environment market. De Beers have had a near monopoly of the world diamond market, but have also invested in knowledge management. You need to manage knowledge to be competitive, and to remain competitive, and to keep your monopoly in a rapidly changing world.

So if you are asked about the value Knowledge Management brings, then remember Jack Welch. KM is not about better taxonomies, or  new portal, or about "getting people to be more social". It's about building a company that continuously learns, from any source, and turns that knowledge rapidly into action.

Learning - actionable learning - is the only continuously renewable business resource, and therein lies the ultimate competitive advantage that Jack Welch was talking about.

Max Planck on Knowledge

Image from wikimedia commons

"Experiment is the only means of (creating) knowledge at our disposal. Everything else is poetry - imagination"
Max Planck

Knowledge transfer requires interactions between people (quote)

Picture from www.public-domain-image.com

“Successful knowledge transfer involves neither computers nor documents but rather interactions between people.” 

Tom Davenport

Those companies that don't adapt to understanding knowledge as a force of production more important than land, labour or capital, will slowly die, and will never know what killed them".

Larry Prusak, KM guru

Understanding decisions, understanding knowledge

“Decision making is a knowledge-intensive endeavour ... To understand decisions and decision making, we need to understand knowledge and knowledge management” 

It's your decision, by ljphillips34 on Flickr

(Holsapple, C. W. Decisions and Knowledge, Handbook on Decision Support Systems 1, International Handbook on Information Systems F. Burstein and C. W. Holsapple, eds., pp. 21-53: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2008.)

KM underpins project execution excllence (quote)

Image from wikimedia commons

“The focus we put on work processes and knowledge management underpins all of our project execution excellence.”

Alan Boeckmann, Chairman, Fluor Corporation

Linking the islands of knowledge (quote)

"The best way to adapt to a fast-changing business environment is by linking the islands of knowledge that exist throughout the organization. Incorporating all the knowledge and perspectives within your organization helps you create the future.”

Edna Pasher, KM consultant and pioneer

KM mentioned in the prime minister's New Year address

It's not often that you hear Knowledge Management mentioned in the New Year address by the prime minister.  But this year ....

Image from wikimedia commons

The Prime Minister in question is not David Cameron, but Dr. Hon. Timothy Harris, Prime Minister of St. Kitts and Nevis.  According to this report in the Kitts and Nevis observer, Dr Harris said, as part of his address,

"The year 2016 promises to be a bright and prosperous one for the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis. It is expected to be a period marked by continued growth, development, continued advancement, and general improvement in our domestic affairs, our human condition, our placement on the world’s stage, and our overall competitive advantage realised through trade, investment, knowledge management and national productivity".

Way to go, Prime Minister Harris. At last a national leader who recognises the link between knowledge management, competitive advantage, and prosperity.

HG Wells on Knowledge Management

H G Wells by Kieran Guckian on Flickr

An immense and ever-increasing wealth of knowledge is scattered about the world today; knowledge that would probably suffice to solve all the mighty difficulties of our age, but it is dispersed and unorganized. We need a sort of mental clearing house for the mind: a depot where knowledge and ideas are received, sorted, summarized, digested, clarified and compared 

H.G. Wells
Author of "War of the Worlds"
1940

Responsibility quote

Public domain image from wikipedia

“An individual without information cannot take responsibility;


An individual who is given information cannot help but take responsibility.”

Jan Carlson - Former Chairman, SAS Airlines

Sharing knowledge is an unnatural act (Davenport quote)

(Taken from an article by Tom Davenport in 1996)

Sharing and using knowledge are often unnatural acts. 

"If my knowledge is a valuable resource, why should I share it? If my job is to create knowledge, why should I put my job at risk by using your knowledge instead of mine? We sometimes act surprised when knowledge is not shared or used, but we would be better off assuming that the natural tendency is to hoard our own knowledge and look suspiciously on knowledge that comes from others.  

"To enter our knowledge into a system and to seek out knowledge from others is not only threatening, but also requires much effort -- so we have to be highly motivated to undertake such work. If the knowledge manager adopted this principle, we would not assume that the installation of Lotus Notes will lead to widespread sharing, or that making information available will lead to its use. We would realize that sharing and usage have to be motivated through time-honored techniques--performance evaluation, compensation, example. Some companies are beginning to employ those techniques.  

"The Lotus Development Corporation, now a division of I.B.M., devotes 25 percent of the total performance evaluation of its customer support workers to knowledge sharing. Buckman Laboratories recognizes its 100 top knowledge sharers with an annual conference at a resort. ABB ASEA Brown Boveri Ltd., the Swiss-Swedish conglomerate, evaluates managers not only on the results of their decisions, but also on the knowledge and information applied in the decision-making process".

KM quote day 5

Photo from Flickr by Pedrick

We are shifting to a kowledge-based economy. Expect turbulence, surprises, chance. Thats what revolution brings.

Alvin Toffler

KM quote day 4

Knowledge sharing by on Ewa Rozkosz Flickr

Human beings have an infinite ability to create knowledge. Add the convenient fact that unlike conventional assets, knowledge grows when it is shared, and you have the most powerful features which will change how we manage in the Knowledge Era

Karl Eric Sveiby

KM quote of the day 3

Photo from Flickr by Create-Learning.,com

“Sharing knowledge occurs when people are genuinely interested in helping one another develop new capacities for action; it is about creating learning processes.” 

 Peter Senge

KM quote of the day 2

“Knowledge management will never work until corporations realize it’s not about how you capture knowledge but how you create and leverage it.” 

 Etienne Wenger

KM quote of the day

“Knowledge management is something many companies are sure they need, if only they knew what it was.”

–Mary Lisbeth D’Amico

(I am in China this week and with limited access to the Internet, so I have a series of KM quotes for you rather than a set of thought pieces)

Peter Senge on KM and org learning

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending a seminar with Peter Senge at the World Bank. Here are some of the things he said about KM and organisational learning. 

No organisation is a learning organisation, but every organisation must learn or die.

Knowledge is the capacity for effective action

Learning is a process that enhances the learners capacity to produce desirable outcomes.

All learning occurs in a social context.

In any learning process you can be 100% sure that you will fail

Learning is a process of disciplined mistake-making

An environment of safety is crucial to learning

Knowledge Management often (mis)defines knowledge as "know-about", and confuses it with "lots of information". There is no "capacity for effective action" in a database.

Learning (in the Arts) is through the development of theory and method

(To be a learning organisation is to live with the fact that) "we want to be an organisation that recognises its incompetence and stupidity"

There is no learning process without doing something, specifically doing some thing collectively

The working team is the fundamental learning unit

There is no objective truth - everything has a bias

There is no "subjective view" because all views are subjective

All things that are said, are said by someone (and therefore subjective). The only important thing is, does it make us more effective?

The industry that as made the most progress with organisational learning is the software industry, because software development is so complex that nobody can predict an outcome

Organisational learning is about the cultivation of discipline

The quickest way to undermine shared understanding in an organisation is the rapid movement of people

(Peter also praised Oxfam as a learning organisation)

The big question in KM, according to Tom Stewart

"One flaw in knowledge management is that it often neglects to ask what knowledge to manage and toward what end.

"Knowledge management activities are all over the map: building databases, measuring intellectual capital, establishing corporate libraries, building intranets, sharing best practices, installing groupware, leading training programs, leading cultural change, fostering collaboration, creating virtual organizations - all of these are knowledge management, and every functional and staff leader can lay claim to it.

"But no one claims the big question: why? 

Tom Stewart in The Case Against Knowledge Management

See also the Knoco approach to KM strategy - where "Why" (Business driver)  and "What Knowledge" (Critical Knowledge Areas) are two of the core questions.

Siemens CEO on KM

"Between 60% and 80% of the value added we generate is linked directly to knowledge - and the percentage is growing. As a result, one of our company's first priorities is to network and manage our internal knowledge so that we will be even more efficient and provide even greater benefits to our customers.

"There aren't too many problems that one of our business segments hasn't already solved. Whether it is installing a complete metropolitan subway system, constructing a pharmaceutical plant on a turnkey basis or putting up an office tower with the latest building management and communications technology  you can bet that at least one of the 450,000 Siemens experts in at least one of the 190 countries where we are active has tacked the job before

"Our ultimate goal is to ensure that all of our people can access the company's enormous pool of knowledge"

Dr Heinrich von Pierer
President and CEO
Siemens

In Davenport and Probst, 2002