AND IF YOU HAVEN'T HIT THE BRICK WALL YET, LET US HELP YOU AVOID IT!
Supporting exceptional KM and KCS results since 1999, including the Air Force, Veterans Affairs, EMC, Novell, Altiris, Compaq, SolarWinds, and other organizations. Experts at building strategies that ensure sustainable, scalable success.
KM ConsultingIf you don't have the right strategy for your Organization's Knowledge Management initiative, the odds of meeting your objectives are slim. Capitalize on our extensive experience successfully building a complete strategy for sustained success.. We have helped organizations that include Novell, Veterans Affairs, U.S. Air Force, EMC, SolarWinds, Altiris, and others. Altiris, for example, increased every KM metric by 300% to over 1,000%.
|
KCS Consulting
KCS Consulting - Knowledge Centered Support has enormous potential to transform your customers' support experience. But without a deep understanding and extensive experience implementing KCS, few organizations reach that potential. Save money and frustration. Do it right the first time, or fix whatever is inhibiting that potential. In most cases we can get you on track in less than 60 days at a fraction of the cost of mediocrity. A complete strategy for sustained success.
|
Mgmt. & Staff TrainingWe provide a broad spectrum of training courses, including Train the Trainer, to equip your managers and core team with the knowledge and skills they need to succeed. Once you have an executable strategy for sustained success, you have to have a holistic training program to maximize your results. Almost any trainer can impart information, but for KM and KCS to succeed, you have to change perceptions, attitudes, and inspire confidence in your strategy and outcomes. This is where KnowledgeTraks excels. We have a track record of 25 years of success.
|
Train the Trainer
We have developed a style of training that engages all the senses, and is designed to not just increase knowledge, but more importantly, to change perceptions and attitudes. We have trained trainers in many countries, turning average trainers into champion trainers. We are happy to provide all the training you and your staff need, but if you are a large organization, it is often necessary to build an in-house training team that allows you to sustain and scale your training long after we have gone, inspiring the experienced, and accelerating new hires competency and success.
|
When you are considering selecting any kind of management consultant, there is only one factor that really counts. Results. All the other qualifications might indicate the ability to help you succeed, but the only one you can count on is a long track record of success.
As knowledge management (KM) consultants, we have a long history of not just results, but extraordinary results. We specialize in KM and KCS, but to do that successfully we have to be proficient in many areas. We are Knowledge Centered Support (KCS) experts, but as you work with us, you will realize that KCS cannot reach a fraction of its potential unless you have a deep understanding of higher-level KM.
There are many components to successful knowledge management, but the first, and in some ways most important, is an executable strategy. This is one of our key skill sets - developing a strategy for your knowledge management implementation that is based on a solid track record of success.
A strategic plan should:
With a strategy in hand, you will ensure you are actually implementing Knowledge Management. KM has many sub-disciplines that are often confused with KM itself. Without successful KM, though, these seldom achieve the results expected. Focusing on one component of KM without actually implementing real knowledge management is one of the first common mistakes.
One example of these sub-disciplines is Content Management or Enterprise Content Management (ECM). ECM is an essential part of many KM initiatives, but without the full complement of knowledge management components, success will be seriously impeded.
Other disciplines that are often part of KM include PMBOK, change management, knowledge transfer, KMS, and others. Keep reading and you’ll see what KM is and how these other disciplines become synergistic parts of it when done correctly. We have nearly 20 years of experience working in the KM/KCS field, in 20 different countries, with many top fortune 500 companies, as well as many smaller, but great organizations. We have also worked with the government and the military. Take a minute and check out the page, International, on this site.
If your organization is struggling to make Knowledge Management (KM) work, you’re not alone. The enormous potential of effective KM is nearly impossible to overstate. But it is just as easy to underestimate its difficulty. Compared to almost any other discipline, successful KM is hands-down the most difficult. This is the first challenge of KM. Nearly everyone underestimates the difficulty and so dedicate inadequate energy, time, and resources.
Following are some of the lessons I have learned about KM and Knowledge Centered Support (KCS) from nearly 20 years of helping organizations implement them. KCS, an important sub-discipline of KM, focuses KM on enhancing customer support services. As such, the mistakes made implementing KCS tend to be the same as overall KM.
A definition of KM: “Knowledge management is the deliberate and systematic coordination of an organization’s people, culture, technology, processes, and structure, to add value through reuse and innovation. This is achieved through discovering, capturing, sharing, and applying knowledge as well as feeding valuable lessons-learned and best practices into organizational memory to foster continual learning.”
But what is “knowledge?” Here is an excellent starting point provided by Neil Fleming.
Organizational knowledge is the collective knowledge of everyone connected to the organization. This includes employees, of course, but also should include customers, partners, and vendors. Knowledgeable and intelligent employees are not enough to build a flexible, innovative, adaptive knowledge organization. Their knowledge must be easily accessible and usable. This requires a solid business strategy based on becoming a knowledge organization, and a focused effort on effective knowledge management.
So back to understanding knowledge. It is generally divided into either Explicit or Tacit. Tacit knowledge is the most difficult to document and share, but is also the knowledge nearly impossible for competitors to copy or acquire. According to Peter Ducker, “It is the only competitive advantage of any organization.” Tacit knowledge is difficult to transfer to another person by writing it down or verbalizing it.
A map of Boston is explicit knowledge. But knowing how to drive a car in heavy traffic to arrive at a specific destination in Boston, and how weather might affect your drive, and how to use GPS while you drive, are more tacit kinds of knowledge. Other examples are how to speak a language, play an instrument, or build friendships. Even experts at these skills have a difficult time explaining or passing on their mastery.
One study indicates that as much as 80% of an organization’s knowledge is tacit and as little as 20% is explicit. So clearly, any strategy that does not focus on making tacit knowledge available and useful is missing the mark. This is a major mistake we see on a regular basis. One example. A client (who shall remain unnamed) asked me to participate in the sessions they had set up with a vendor just to make sure they were asking the right questions. In this case, they were looking at investing two or three million, U.S. dollars, and they wanted to make sure they made the right decision.
In the very first session (about 3 hours long), as hour two ended I asked the vendor rep when they were going to show the functionality of creating a new article. They focused the entire first two hours on the incredible ability the system had to mine and index any directories or repositories, and turn the information it found into articles (information that would be almost entirely explicit knowledge). This was very exciting to the client team.
When I asked the question, I was confident I knew the answer. And it was what I expected. He admitted that the “create” functions were a little weak, but that was more than made up by the mining features, and went right back to showing how that worked. After the vendor rep left, the client team asked me what I thought.
I answered with a question (I know, sometimes a little annoying, but sometimes necessary). My question was, “what percentage of all the useful knowledge that exists in your organization is currently documented in any kind of written form that this tool could find and index?”
No answer for a few minutes, but as the VP I was working with (a sharp and honest individual) gave his answer. Everyone agreed that he was probably correct within 5 or 10%, and was probably being optimistic. His answer?
“Maybe 25%, but probably less.” My point was obvious. As exciting as the mining and indexing was, at the MOST, it would maybe collect 25% of the knowledge they needed documented. And for the other 75%, the part that is the real challenge, it was going to be even more difficult with this particular tool. I’ll end the story there and not tell you what they eventually decided, but you can probably guess.
Here is a list of some of the common mistakes we see organizations consistently make.
If you continue to see knowledge management and KCS as just “getting” your people to write articles, you will never experience what it is like to work in a true knowledge-centric organization. The energy and increased sense of team; the strong individual sense of being a valuable contributor; the shared confidence that we can handle anything the world wants to throw at us, and handle it well; you have to experience these to really understand. Check out the page with Case Studies and Testimonials to read what past clients say about that experience.
There are a number of papers on this website that go into more detail, and I invite you to read the ones that might apply to your situation. And, of course, call and let’s talk about your situation and how we might be able to contribute to your success.
As knowledge management (KM) consultants, we have a long history of not just results, but extraordinary results. We specialize in KM and KCS, but to do that successfully we have to be proficient in many areas. We are Knowledge Centered Support (KCS) experts, but as you work with us, you will realize that KCS cannot reach a fraction of its potential unless you have a deep understanding of higher-level KM.
There are many components to successful knowledge management, but the first, and in some ways most important, is an executable strategy. This is one of our key skill sets - developing a strategy for your knowledge management implementation that is based on a solid track record of success.
A strategic plan should:
- Cover an appropriate time frame- enough time to realistically reach goals, but not so long that momentum is lost. (We see more companies giving themselves too MUCH time than not enough. There is a window of opportunity. Miss it and you make the transition much, much harder.)
- Be based on an accurate assessment of past performance and baselines, but pointed to future outcomes and goals.
- Identify and incorporate any external factors that will likely affect outcomes (usually we find that organizations have only identified the obvious, and usually less important of these factors.)
- Evaluate alternatives by considering multiple scenarios, but only those proven to work. (Why waste resources and time on a strategy we have proven does not work, or that components of it do not work? You will waste more money and resources than you will ever pay us to do it right.)
- Detail what you won’t do – just as important as what you will do. (You're people will trust us because we have done it successfully before, therefore will be willing to stop doing things that will sabotage your results.)
- Ensure it is a high-level overview, don’t get stuck in the weeds. (This is a strategy, not a project plan, although we will help you build that as well.)
- Define tangible next steps to ensure it is feasible and executable. (Unless you have done this before, there is very little chance you will know what those next steps are.)
- Establish how progress will be measured and who is accountable. (Metrics are a critical component of success, and most organizations are measuring the wrong things, ignoring the critical ones.)
- Must be revisited throughout the implementation. (We will help you set up a monitoring system to make sure you stay on track.)
With a strategy in hand, you will ensure you are actually implementing Knowledge Management. KM has many sub-disciplines that are often confused with KM itself. Without successful KM, though, these seldom achieve the results expected. Focusing on one component of KM without actually implementing real knowledge management is one of the first common mistakes.
One example of these sub-disciplines is Content Management or Enterprise Content Management (ECM). ECM is an essential part of many KM initiatives, but without the full complement of knowledge management components, success will be seriously impeded.
Other disciplines that are often part of KM include PMBOK, change management, knowledge transfer, KMS, and others. Keep reading and you’ll see what KM is and how these other disciplines become synergistic parts of it when done correctly. We have nearly 20 years of experience working in the KM/KCS field, in 20 different countries, with many top fortune 500 companies, as well as many smaller, but great organizations. We have also worked with the government and the military. Take a minute and check out the page, International, on this site.
If your organization is struggling to make Knowledge Management (KM) work, you’re not alone. The enormous potential of effective KM is nearly impossible to overstate. But it is just as easy to underestimate its difficulty. Compared to almost any other discipline, successful KM is hands-down the most difficult. This is the first challenge of KM. Nearly everyone underestimates the difficulty and so dedicate inadequate energy, time, and resources.
Following are some of the lessons I have learned about KM and Knowledge Centered Support (KCS) from nearly 20 years of helping organizations implement them. KCS, an important sub-discipline of KM, focuses KM on enhancing customer support services. As such, the mistakes made implementing KCS tend to be the same as overall KM.
A definition of KM: “Knowledge management is the deliberate and systematic coordination of an organization’s people, culture, technology, processes, and structure, to add value through reuse and innovation. This is achieved through discovering, capturing, sharing, and applying knowledge as well as feeding valuable lessons-learned and best practices into organizational memory to foster continual learning.”
But what is “knowledge?” Here is an excellent starting point provided by Neil Fleming.
- A collection of data is not information.
- A collection of information is not knowledge.
- A collection of knowledge is not wisdom.
- A collection of wisdom is not truth.
Organizational knowledge is the collective knowledge of everyone connected to the organization. This includes employees, of course, but also should include customers, partners, and vendors. Knowledgeable and intelligent employees are not enough to build a flexible, innovative, adaptive knowledge organization. Their knowledge must be easily accessible and usable. This requires a solid business strategy based on becoming a knowledge organization, and a focused effort on effective knowledge management.
So back to understanding knowledge. It is generally divided into either Explicit or Tacit. Tacit knowledge is the most difficult to document and share, but is also the knowledge nearly impossible for competitors to copy or acquire. According to Peter Ducker, “It is the only competitive advantage of any organization.” Tacit knowledge is difficult to transfer to another person by writing it down or verbalizing it.
A map of Boston is explicit knowledge. But knowing how to drive a car in heavy traffic to arrive at a specific destination in Boston, and how weather might affect your drive, and how to use GPS while you drive, are more tacit kinds of knowledge. Other examples are how to speak a language, play an instrument, or build friendships. Even experts at these skills have a difficult time explaining or passing on their mastery.
One study indicates that as much as 80% of an organization’s knowledge is tacit and as little as 20% is explicit. So clearly, any strategy that does not focus on making tacit knowledge available and useful is missing the mark. This is a major mistake we see on a regular basis. One example. A client (who shall remain unnamed) asked me to participate in the sessions they had set up with a vendor just to make sure they were asking the right questions. In this case, they were looking at investing two or three million, U.S. dollars, and they wanted to make sure they made the right decision.
In the very first session (about 3 hours long), as hour two ended I asked the vendor rep when they were going to show the functionality of creating a new article. They focused the entire first two hours on the incredible ability the system had to mine and index any directories or repositories, and turn the information it found into articles (information that would be almost entirely explicit knowledge). This was very exciting to the client team.
When I asked the question, I was confident I knew the answer. And it was what I expected. He admitted that the “create” functions were a little weak, but that was more than made up by the mining features, and went right back to showing how that worked. After the vendor rep left, the client team asked me what I thought.
I answered with a question (I know, sometimes a little annoying, but sometimes necessary). My question was, “what percentage of all the useful knowledge that exists in your organization is currently documented in any kind of written form that this tool could find and index?”
No answer for a few minutes, but as the VP I was working with (a sharp and honest individual) gave his answer. Everyone agreed that he was probably correct within 5 or 10%, and was probably being optimistic. His answer?
“Maybe 25%, but probably less.” My point was obvious. As exciting as the mining and indexing was, at the MOST, it would maybe collect 25% of the knowledge they needed documented. And for the other 75%, the part that is the real challenge, it was going to be even more difficult with this particular tool. I’ll end the story there and not tell you what they eventually decided, but you can probably guess.
Here is a list of some of the common mistakes we see organizations consistently make.
- Culture Is “Task Oriented” instead of “Knowledge Oriented” and there is no focus on changing and managing the culture
- Lack of adequate executive support and involvement
- KM and KCS are seen as “Projects” instead of a permanent change in how you do business, so there is too much focus on project management (PMBOK) instead of knowledge and people management.
- Too focused on tools, ignoring needed changes in roles, metrics, incentives, processes, management approach, training, etc. (the right KMS/tool is critical, but it is never enough for success.)
- Deep changes in organizational structure are usually required and managers are afraid they may not have the ability to manage successfully in a new structure under new rules. They don’t know how to manage all the changes required, so they focus only on the ones they are comfortable with (usually the least important ones, unfortunatey)
- Not aggressive enough on schedule – there is a window of opportunity to create momentum. Don’t waste it.
- Don’t focus on real-time Capture, Modify, Publish, and so articles are quickly irrelevant and out-of-date, losing their value, and losing your momentum. In today’s world, knowledge is changing so quickly we cannot manage it the ways we are used to. We have to think in terms of real-time everything.
If you continue to see knowledge management and KCS as just “getting” your people to write articles, you will never experience what it is like to work in a true knowledge-centric organization. The energy and increased sense of team; the strong individual sense of being a valuable contributor; the shared confidence that we can handle anything the world wants to throw at us, and handle it well; you have to experience these to really understand. Check out the page with Case Studies and Testimonials to read what past clients say about that experience.
There are a number of papers on this website that go into more detail, and I invite you to read the ones that might apply to your situation. And, of course, call and let’s talk about your situation and how we might be able to contribute to your success.
How to Get Extraordinary KM and KCS Results!
|
|
Photo courtesy of: Tom Fuhriman (Owner/CEO of KnowledgeTraks Consulting Services).
Taken at Sibu island in the South China Sea off the coast of Malaysia! |