Making Knowledge Management Work for the Enterprise

by Karl M. Wiig, Senior Consultant, Cutter Consortium

The concept of knowledge management (KM) has been around for 25 years and is known to most business practitioners. KM, as practiced by competent enterprises and here, is defined as:

The systematic, explicit, and deliberate management of knowledge-related processes and intellectual capital (IC) assets and the creation of capabilities to build, renew, utilize, and safeguard knowledge to maximize the enterprise's knowledge-related effectiveness and returns from its IC assets -- operationally, tactically, and strategically. [1]

A basic premise for KM is that improved access and application of better knowledge results in better situation-handling, increased innovation, and a greater ability to achieve goals. For an enterprise to be competent, it must handle changes well, have resources to perform regular operational work well, and must consistently provide innovation that results in new products and services.

Knowledge Management Work

Knowledge work can be separated into operational, tactical, and strategic work.

Operational work focuses on creating and delivering goods and services. Examples include KM such practices as lifelong learning programs and expert networks to assist decision makers.

Tactical work interprets strategy operational requirements and focuses on securing needed resources. It supports operations by renewing and maintaining operational capabilities. It requires broad world, industry, enterprise, and methodological knowledge. Examples include KM-supported innovation to reduce bureaucratic procedures, time required to provide service, and employee turnover.

Strategic work is not well defined, and much of it deals with determining enterprise direction as conditions change. It requires broad world knowledge, specific industry knowledge, and knowledge of an enterprise's strengths, weaknesses, and characteristics. Strategic work requires methodological knowledge that can be supported by knowledge management. Strategic KM assists enterprise strategy with insights into how knowledge management can support or improve strategy. It also determines KM direction. Examples include the development of new approaches based on knowledge capabilities and the outsourcing of innovation to suppliers.

There is an increasing understanding of the complexity, utility, and business value of how proficient knowledge workers apply expertise to analyze and interpret situations to decide and deliver quality work. Early on, managerial emphasis on work procedures and methods was placed on observable work. Later, it included observable information and information flows. Focus now expands to include cognition and mostly invisible knowledge. Overall, enterprise performance and viability result from the aggregation of actions by people and systems. Individual actions combine with larger departmental and enterprise actions to create the consolidated behavior of the organization. The quality and extent of people's competence and the structural IC assets available to them determine the realized enterprise performance.

KM works with a "forward-looking" horizon to create new knowledge assets and knowledge-related capabilities ranging from knowledge harvesting, codifying, and embedding into knowledge systems to providing education and training, conducting R&D, and building knowledge-related infrastructure.

Not all KM initiatives are successful. Unsuccessful KM efforts often neglect to conduct competent KM diagnostics that require an understanding of the following: people engaged in intellectual work under varying conditions; business processes, operations, practices, tactics, and strategies; applicability of different knowledge-related initiatives and solutions; and KM diagnostics methodologies.

I welcome your comments on this Advisor and encourage you to send your insights to comments@cutter.com.

-- Karl M. Wiig, Senior Consultant, Cutter Consortium

Reference

1. Wiig, Karl M. "Enterprise Knowledge Management." White Paper, Knowledge Research Institute, Inc., 2007.