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If Only We Knew What We Know: The Transfer of Internal Knowledge and Best Practice

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One of the exercises I conduct for consulting clients is quite simple but extraordinarily valuable. Here's how it works. I ask to meet with 5-10 key executives, with or without the CEO included. Each of those present, in rotation around the table, says to each of the others (one at a time): "Here is what you and your people could do to make my life much easier." The exercise continues until each executive has spoken directly to every other person. All this takes about 60-90 minutes. Invariably the response is, "I had no idea. No problem. We'll be glad to do it. Why didn't you mention this before?" Everyone is involved, either asking for specific assistance from everyone else, or, learning how she or he could provide it.

I mention this basic exercise to suggest what probably motivated O'Dell and Grayson to write this book. They focus on what they call "beds of knowledge" which are "hidden resources of intelligence that exist in almost every organization, relatively untapped and unmined." They suggest all manner of effective strategies to "tap into "this hidden asset, capturing it, organizing it, transferring it, and using it to create customer value, operational excellence, and product innovation -- all the while increasing profits and effectiveness."

Almost all organizations claim that their "most valuable assets walk out the door at the end of each business day." That is correct. Almost all intellectual "capital" is stored between two ears and much (too much) of it is, for whatever reasons, inaccessible to others except in "small change." O'Dell and Grayson organize their material as follows:

Part One: A Framework for Internal Knowledge Transfer

Part Two: The Three Value Propositions [ie Customer Intimacy, Product-to-Product Excellence, and Achieving Operational Excellence]

NOTE: Part Two will be even more valuable when read in combination with Treacy & Wiersema's The Discipline of Market Leaders.

Part Three: The Four Enablers of Transfer

Part Four: Reports From the Front Lines: Pioneer Case Studies

Part Five: The Four Phase Process: Or, "What I Do on Monday Morning"

In the Conclusion, the authors assert that "there is no conclusion to managing knowledge and transferring best practices. It is a race without a finishing line." They are right, now and especially in years to come. In the concluding chapter, the authors share ten "Enduring Principles" which should inform and direct the formulation of any plan by which to manage knowledge and transfer best practices. During implementation of the plan, everyone involved must be willing and able to make whatever adjustments may be necessary. Perhaps the authors would agree with me that an 11th "enduring principle" affirms that change is the only constant. Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out Senge's The Fifth Discipline and The Dance of Change as well as Isaac's Dialogue.

With regard to the exercise briefly explained in the first paragraph, one of its many value-added benefits occurs following the completion of the exercise when most (if not) of the participants begin to offer unsolicited suggestions as to how they can do even more to assist their associates. Four of the most powerful words in any organization are "I need your help." But first you have to ask for it.

"This is not the first book about managing of transferring knowledge and it is certainly not the last book about knowledge management (KM). There are many excellent books about knowledge management..., but we think our book is unique. Here's why: First,...It's a book about how to improve the performance of your organization...Second, this book is not based on theories or speculation. It is anchored in successes, mistakes, and real-life case studies. It is not a spiritual guide or a technology manual. The experiences, thoughts, insights, and conclusions herein are based on surveys, site visits, and design work with over seventy organizations of all shapes ans sizes...This book is primarily about internal transfer of best practices in organizations. That is, the transfer of best practices from one part of an organization to another part-or parts-in order to increase profitability or effectiveness...Finally, it is also a book about the transfer of knowledge, specifically, the effective management of knowledge inside an organization...This book will focus largely on 'internal benchmarking'-looking inside your own organization-and transferring best practices" (from the Preface).

In this context, Carla O'Dell and C.Jackson Grayson,Jr., in Chapter 4, write that "the internal transfer of knowledge is about finding out what you know, and using it to improve performance. It is about leveraging the value of knowledge you've already got. Whereas different companies adopt different approaches to finding and sharing internal know-how, they all seem to pursue one single strategy with great vigor: the transfer of internal best pactices", and then lay out a model that will guide the rest of the book. It has three major components:

1. The three value propositions- Companies must transfer knowledge and best practices to create value, and value is created by translating knowledge into action. But exactly what 'value' are we talking about? Thus, the first step toward profitable management of your company's knowledge asset is choosing the right value proposition.

* Customer intimacy- Increase revenue, reduce cost of selling, and increase customer satisfaction and retention.

* Product-to-market excellence- By reducing time-to-market, and designing and commercializing new products more quickly and successfully, we will increase revenue, retain market lead, and grow our profit margins.

* Operational excellence- Boost revenue by reducing the cost of production and increasing productivity, and raise performance to new highs.

2. The four enablers- The second step is creating the most supportive environment for transfer, by designing and aligning the enablers of transfer: culture, technology, infrastructure, and measurement.

3. The four-phase change process- The third step is change process would likely follow the following four phases: plan, design, implement, and scale-up.

Finally, they write that "Sure, companies have embarked on change efforts before. This one is diffrent. It's different because the improvement work is anchored in real-life practical knowledge-the know-how and intelligence other people within your own company have developed and used. It has worked for others. It can work for you. The key for making this work is threefold:

1. You've got to have a clearly defined purpose: the value proposition.

2. You've got to understand and leverage various organizational enablers, from infrastructure to technology, from measurement to culture.

3. You've got to have an organized way for achieving it: the four-phase process.

The reminder of this book is about these three components and the companies that illustrate their effective use."

Highly recommended.

"Where should our business unit start in our goal to use knowledge to create greater value?" I am often asked this question as a principal Consultant to the Corporate University of a Fortune 100 Company . The answer now is easy - and tangible - I hand them a copy of this book. O'Dell and Grayson have created a knowledge transfer book that is well researched, easy to read, practical and insightful. From the very first chapter where they report the key insight - that knowledge is both tacit and explicit - the book is a gold mine of information. Their clear explanations of what is and is not working in successful "knowledge transfer" companies makes the book immediately useful. Plain language descriptions of the six barriers that hinder transfer of know-how will strike a chord with all levels in the organisation. Showing people paragraphs like "We're different" and "Sorry - I'm too busy" generates an instant interest. The book presents lessons learned in the important aspects of people (culture), processes, technology and infrastructure. Pearls of wisdom like why a company should "understand first, measure second" are spread throughout the book. The constant references to other sources of information and to practices at well known companies make the book itself a best practice in explicit knowledge sharing. And O'Dell and Grayson have include one section that many of the best sellers do not - "Where to start Monday morning". I would like to have seen more on "tacit" knowledge sharing. Perhaps the book will inspire someone to build on a great foundation and publish something practical on that.

The authors of this book will not try to seduce you with another 'management recipe' or fad. Knowledge will ultimately become the only sustainable advantage for companies of the future. Unfortunately, most companies do not realize that they internally possess unexplored knowledge on their own human, customers, and structural capital. This book will clearly demonstrate on how to extract out and share our internal knowledge and best practice, so we can use them to create our value propositions. In addition to rich case analyses and stories, this book will also guide you to start your own knowledge program. Read this book and put it into action. Also recommended: The Knowledge-Creating Company by Nonaka and Takeuchi.

This book provides a terrific introduction to knowledge management and so much more. The authors have gone well beyond the theoretical treatment that most have provided on the subject and provide real world examples and processes for implementing knowledge management in your own company. The authors did not spend much time talking about applications that support KM, since the market is still growing, instead they touch upon the concepts that the software applications address. Although it was written in late 1998, the information presented is very timely and still accurate.

-- Highlights --
The first section of the book (3 chapters, 30 pages or so) get you up to speed on what knowledge management is and is not. It also addresses some barriers and benefits of KM.

The second section of the book makes you think about the reasoning behind a KM initiative. This should be standard management-type thinking, but I've found it to be often overlooked in today's IT environment. Why are we doing this? The authors give you three reasons (customer intimacy, time-to-market, and operational excellence) and tell you the type of data to focus on for each of the three reasons.

The third section talks about enabling the enterprise to effectively use a KM system. The authors note that it is vital for the processes to be aligned witht he strategy of the company and the job tasks people currently undertake. To that end, they look at the cultural, technological, infrastructure, and measurement requirements of the KM initiative.

The fourth section gives some case studies of Texas Instruments, Buckman Laboratories, and Sequent. The text refers to these case studies throughout the earlier chapters of the book and now gives them each a chapter to overview how they went about building a successful knowledge sharing infrastructure.

The fifth and final section of the book gives a framework for pursuing the sharing of knowledge and best practices. This is the "What do I do on Monday?" section, according to the authors. It gives a 40 page prescription for the planning, designing, implementing, and scaling phases of a knowledge management program.

The next several years will be very interesting in the I.T. arena. These authors were somewhat ahead of their time in writing this book. Companies across the globe have been storing knowledge in their silos for the past decade as they have taken products to market, built disconnected customer information systems, and as employees have given feedback on internal business processes. The coming business intelligence revolution will seek to organize that information and put it in the hands of people who can create value and grow the business based on the intrinsic knowledge it contains. This book provides a great framework for those who have to conceptualize, design, and build information systems to meet those needs.

As other books that talk about knowledge management (KM), this one starts with good definitions and examples of knowledge and management knowledge. The theoric estructure and the questionnaires that were sent to the companies as a way of evaluating the current situation of the organizations relating to these subject are the stongest points in this book. Besides the conclusions that, as many others studies about KM, are about the problems in the organizational culture, and that the tecnology alone is not enough to develop a KM project and that the top-level support is a must, authors make a very deep and important study about the transfer of best pratices ("the best KM strategy") and the way that KM must be woven into the corporate infrastructure

The key idea is powerful - that there are pockets or business activities within every corporation that have already figured out how to do something well, and no one else in the company knows if or where that knowledge resides. With knowledge management, as described in this book, that knowledge can be found and transferred to those who need it when they need it. The case histories make the process and the benefits come alive. The six barriers to knowledge transfer remind me of the seven "stalls" in THE 2,000 PERCENT SOLUTION: The Communications Stall - we're not getting the message across; The Disbelief Stall - you mean you don't already know that!; The Tradition Stall - we've never shared that before; The Bureaucratic Stall - I'd have to complete too much paper work to document that for others; The Misconception Stall - I don't think anyone else needs to know this; and The Unattractiveness Stall - If I share it with them, we won't look as good. I urge you to read IF ONLY WE KNEW WHAT WE KNOW, one of the best books out on this increasingly important subject. Then read THE 2,000 PERCENT SOLUTION. With your increased access to knowledge, you will develop 2,000 percent solutions for your business to make progress at 20 times the standard rate, get there 20 times more rapidly or gain 20 times the benefits.

This book focuses on making the case for a knowledge management system. If you're already convinced and need specific, measurable steps, try a different book.

This book defines the need to identify and share best practices inside the company, because winning is impossible without it. It realistically explains how hard this is to do, and teaches us how to look for and get the right information to help make the right decisions. As an added benefit, we are reminded to focus on the customer; that best practices are only best if they are important to the customer. This simple message is beautifully stated.

KM was a vague and fuzzy terminology for me, before i read this book. We had a KM subject as a part of the IT management course in Graduation and this book was suggested as a good reference to get insight and understanding. I found this book useful in giving a clear picture on KM - the concept underlying KM, the way to approach it, implementation methods, challenges, common pitfalls, lot of practical examples, success stories - all of this is covered. Another salient aspect is, the book is very easy to read - it doesn't thrown in too much of jargon or heavy-duty management stuff. This can be an easy read for anybody(the casual reader, the management junkie, student etc).

This book was written almost eight years ago. Much has changed due to the Internet revolution and the spawn of great IT tools. Even though the material of the book is still relevant (remember: IT is only a enabler and not be-all of KM), it would have been useful to have an updated version of the book with examples of implementation of KM in the current environment.

Here are some intresting excerpts from the book:
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-Knowledge is what people in an organization know about their customers, products, processes, mistakes and successes, whether that knowledge is tacit or explicit. It is dynamic - a consequence of action and interaction of people in an organization with information and with each other.
-Knowledge Management is a conscious strategy of getting the right knowledge to the right people at the right time and helping "people share and put information into action" in ways that strive to improve organizational performance.
-It's guaranteed that exhortation to "Share more!" will not work. It takes systems and systematic approaches like internal benchmarking, mapping the knowledge terrain, creating new practices, which costs time and money. That's why having a clear business case and a value proposition is important.
-Culture is important, because learning and sharing knowledge are social activities. They take place among people.
-while new technologies are making the transfer of practices and knowledge more affordable then ever before, companies that think that simply by developing an intranet they will make sharing happen are dangerously wrong.
-Technology is a catalyst for KM but no panacea.
-Business Values Drive Transfer benefits
-Having the right culture is critical
-There is no conclusion to managing knowledge and transfering best practices. It is a race without finishing line
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