Knowledge Management: A Guide for Your Journey to Best-Practice Processes [Paperback]

Cindy Hubert (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2000

As one of the titles in APQC's Passport to Success series, this book provides readers with a comprehensive understanding of the components of a successful knowledge management program. Based on years of research examining leading-edge organizations--and supported by examples of best practices and tips from actual practitioners--this book will guide readers through their own knowledge management endeavors. It provides mechanisms to gauge current status, understand the components of a successful knowledge management initiative, and determine how to proceed.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

The American Productivity & Quality Center (APQC) is a world-renowned resource for process and performance improvement for organizations of all sizes and industries. APQC works with organizations to improve productivity and quality. We provide the tools, information, and support they need to discover and implement best practices and obtain results in dozens of process areas.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

APQC defines organizational knowledge as "valuable information in action," with value being determined through the eyes of the organization and the recipient. If people don’t have a context for the information or understand how to use it, the information is not valuable and therefore cannot be considered knowledge. Today's organizations have a wealth of information and data embedded in them, but that information doesn’t become knowledge unless a human being or group of people can add context to it and put it into use.

Most scholars agree that knowledge comes in two forms: tacit—which includes experience, know-how, skills, and intuition and is most often embedded in the individual—and explicit—which is information you can easily put into words or pictures or that is easy to articulate and communicate. Both are essential to an organization and must be captured and shared for others to benefit.

Knowledge management, then, becomes the conscious strategy of putting both tacit and explicit knowledge into action by creating context, infrastructure, and learning cycles that enable people to find and use the collective knowledge of the enterprise. As we discovered in our first study on knowledge management in 1996—and have reinforced through subsequent studies and research—the process usually involves several of the following stages or subprocesses in the use of knowledge: create, identify, collect, organize, share, adapt, and use.

WHY MANAGE KNOWLEDGE?

The simplest way to explain why most organizations want to manage their knowledge is that it is a means to achieving their mission, whatever that may be. Among those factors influencing the increasing proliferation of knowledge management are market forces such as: the need for speed and cycle-time reduction; revenue growth; competition for customer relationships; lost knowledge from turnover, hiring, downsizing, and restructuring; the fact that knowledge has a higher margin than product; and globalization.

Other reasons for managing knowledge have to do with infrastructure capabilities, including: the rise of powerful network, communication, database, and collaborative technologies; the understanding of tacit and explicit knowledge; and change management and process skills.

By exploring the "why" factor with the organizations we've studied, we've arrived at six major strategies for knowledge management:

Knowledge Management as a Business Strategy: This strategy is evident in organizations that feel strongly that knowledge management and sharing are key to their ability to compete and grow.

These organizations often see knowledge as their product and pursue knowledge management because they firmly believe it will have a significant, positive impact on the profitability of the enterprise. Consulting firms are one example.

Transfer of Knowledge and Best Practices: This is the most widespread strategy. It focuses on systematic approaches to the reuse of knowledge and the transfer of best practices, with the goal of using this knowledge to improve operations, products, or services. Sharing this tacit and explicit knowledge enables an organization to operate more effectively and efficiently.

Customer-Focused Knowledge: This strategy focuses on capturing knowledge about customers; developing and transferring knowledge and understanding of customers' needs, preferences, and businesses to increase sales; and using the knowledge of the organization to solve customers’ problems. It recently has come to include enabling customers to access the organization's knowledge to find solutions to their problems on their own.

Personal Responsibility for Knowledge: Organizations operating under this strategy believe that people are the engine of knowledge and should be supported in, and responsible for, identifying, maintaining, and expanding their own knowledge. They also are expected to understand, increase, and share their knowledge assets. These organizations realize that their employees are their most valuable asset and need to be able to use their knowledge—both personal and that of the collective enterprise—to benefit the customer and the company. There also is a trend toward making teams and communities of practice responsible for critical bodies of organizational knowledge.

Intellectual Asset Management: This strategy emphasizes enterprise-level management of intellectual assets such as patents, technologies, operational and management practices, customer relations, organizational arrangements, and other structural knowledge assets. Effective exploitation of these valuable assets can help the organization increase its competitive advantage. There is an emerging movement to measure the value of organizational knowledge assets.

Innovation and Knowledge Creation: This strategy emphasizes innovation and the creation of new knowledge through basic and applied research and development. The development of unique knowledge and expertise increases the organization’s competitive value.

No matter what your organization's reasons for managing knowledge, one statement rings true: Ensuring that the right people have the right knowledge at the right time simply makes sense.

Product Details

• Paperback: 67 pages
• Publisher: Amer Productivity Center (January 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1928593224
• ISBN-13: 978-1928593225
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,184,633 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Cindy Hubert is the executive director of APQC's Advisory Services, which provides individualized and collaborative approaches to solve business problems and address strategic needs.

Over the past 15 years, Hubert and her team have worked with more than 350 organizations to provide assessments, strategy development, project management, transfer of best practice design and implementation, and metric and best practices research engagements using APQC's KM methodologies. She recently led the development of APQC's Levels of Knowledge Management Maturity and KM Capability Assessment Tool, which is used by organizations across the world to guide, develop, and execute their KM strategies and approaches. She also pioneered efforts to introduce measurement and innovation techniques to KM.

Hubert has co-authored with Carla O'Dell a number of KM publications including APQC's KM Passport to Success Series. She writes frequently for leading journals and magazines and speaks at conferences worldwide.

Hubert has worked with a variety of industries including oil and gas, manufacturing, pharmaceutical, government and military, retail, nonprofit, and consumer products. Her background includes developing KM strategies, approaches, and supporting measurement systems and integrating with process management and performance improvement initiatives; process redesign; quality programs; and large-scale change efforts supported by training programs, communication strategies, measurement, and competency models. Prior to being named executive director of custom solutions, Hubert served as the director of KM and learning.

Hubert has also served as an instructor at Rice University's Executive Education Graduate School of Management. A graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, Hubert received a bachelor's degree in business administration and marketing.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars An Approachable Introduction, April 18, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Knowledge Management: A Guide for Your Journey to Best-Practice Processes (Paperback)

This guidebook defines many of the terms surrounding knowledge management and then outlines the major strategies that companies use when describing themselves as a "learning organization." I found the reader assessment helpful. With a discussion of the core components (the value proposition, culture, structure, roles, IT, approaches, and measurement), it's also useful in quickly educating coworkers on the potential value of KM.