KM 3.0 Part III: The KM process

Introduction

The most important part when implementing a knowledge management system is having a well-defined strategy.

If you don't know why you want a KM system or what you want from it, you probably won't succeed (and probably shouldn't even try).

Your strategy will influence your process, and your process will influence your choice of technology (and vice versa). The combination of these factors will determine how successful your KM system will be.

Please note that the strategy, process, technology and knowledge may be different for different parts of the organization. Your KM strategy for projects may be different for your KM strategy for various departments and the organization. Each department may also need their own individual KM strategy according to their needs.

The process

A simple knowledge management process:
- Collect
- Cultivate
- Distribute
- Apply

The basic process is very simple, but as always, the "devil is in the details". What should you collect, how should you collect it, which technology/tool should you use etc are important details that will determine if your collected information is useful or not.

Managing knowledge means working toward the tasks of collecting, applying, distributing and cultivating knowledge effectively.

Collecting information

Capture vs. store: The traditional ways of capturing information (phone, mail, meetings) are being replaced by the web (web articles, blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook etc).

We are also moving from storing our information in our memory, notebooks and yellow notes to storing most of our information electronically using tools like MS OneNote, PpcSoft iKnow, Sharepoint and the web.

An increasing amount of information is automatically captured and stored for you on the web ("in the cloud") using various tools and services. Having more separate places to capture and store also means having more places to search when you need to find something again.

Quantity vs. quality: Collecting information has a cost (a person must spend time to collect the information).

Collecting lots of knowledge without sharing and using it is worse than worthless - it has a high cost and increases information overload.
Collect "know how" and/or "know who" - both are important, depending on context. "Who" is easier to collect and update, but "how" is often more useful. You could start collecting the "who", and if a person is often contacted for help then s/he should share the "how".

Cultivation information
You collect information and cultivate it to transform it into knowledge. Once collected and transformed, you organize and refine the knowledge to make sure it stays relevant over time.

New knowledge may cause old knowledge to become obsolete, and it should then be removed (or at least marked obsolete).

You need a responsible person to cultivate and maintain knowledge using a "librarian" or by letting people "own" their contributed knowledge.

Updating knowledge once a year is a very different strategy from updating knowledge weekly. The process for collecting and distributing will also be very different.

Distribution (share)
Knowledge has to be available to the right people, in the right place, at the right time.

Distribution is a process both for sharing directly with others and for making knowledge available on a "need to know basis". You may use various social media tools to share directly, while a powerful search may help people find what they need when they need it ("self-service").

Distribution may be direct, indirect, real-time, delayed, one-to-one or one-to-many. Different tools have different distribution patterns and should be selected depending on the context, target and urgency. If the information is only relevant to your project, it should not be distributed to the department ororganization.

It is important to note that distributing directly to people will increase their information load, and may lead to information overload. In addition, as more information is distributed, it becomes more difficult to actually find what you're looking for.

Distribution is not part of the personal knowledge management process, and it makes the process much more complex as it means collecting and cultivation knowledge for others. You intuitively know what you need, but how do you determine what the 15 other people in your department need ? And how do you cultivate and refine the knowledge into a format that is useful to them ?

Applying knowledge
If the knowledge is not used, there is no point in collecting, cultivating and distributing the knowledge either.

Actually using the knowledge is the most important step, but it depends on the collect, cultivate and distribute steps in the process. You should first figure out what knowledge people need, then create a strategy, process and technology roadmap to help people get what they need to get their job done.

As knowledge workers get more specialized, this step is becoming increasingly more difficult. In "the old days" people were told what to do, and then they did it. Today, each individual must figure out what to do themselves, and also how to do it. Modern knowledge workers must personalize the process to fit their own needs, and the personal knowledge management process is becoming increasingly more important.

The process at a personal level - PKM

"Personal knowledge management (PKM) refers to a collection of processes that an individual needs to carry out in order to gather, classify, store, search, and retrieve knowledge in his/her daily activities"
- Wikipedia

Every knowledge worker should learn to collect, cultivate and apply knowledge ! Once they have learned how to do this for themselves, you may add the sharing aspect of knowledge management. People should see the usefulness and value of collecting knowledge for themselves first in order to understand the usefulness and value of sharing (some of) their knowledge.

The term Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) has two main dimensions:

Personal management is a systematic approach to manage oneself - typical problems are time and task management, work-life balance and personal learning and productivity.

Personal knowledge focus on the use of methods and tools to help you work better with knowledge - for example how to file ideas to be able to retrieve them when needed and how to recall previously learned knowledge faster.

For knowledge management the focus is on personal knowledge. If you are not able to collect knowledge for yourself, how are you supposed to be able to do it for others ?

The world is changing quickly, new techologies and tools emerge all the time, and the amount of information is rapidly increasing. It is therefore very important that you have a core set of tools that are stable and easy to use to help you manage the increased complexity and information overload.

You need to be able to collect, cultivate and distribute (share) knowledge yourself, you need to know how to use the various tools, and you need to get your job done ! PKM tools are the stable core tools that will help you manage all the other tools, processes and technologies that are always emerging, and always changing.

The organization should select a few standard tools depending on your needs, and the requirements are simple:

It must be very easy to collect, cultivate and find useful information.
It must be very easy to contribute with useful information.

Part IV: A practical KM system