Holistic Knowledge Management:
Organisational Culture and Emerging Tools
Dr Madanmohan Rao
Editor, “The Knowledge Management Chronicles”
http://twitter.com/MadanRao
The Knowledge Journey
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Existing knowledge
– Traditional knowledge (indigenous) in societies
– Organisational knowledge (classic KM)
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New knowledge
– Organisational innovation
– Entrepreneurship, startups
The “8 Cs” of Success in the
Knowledge Era
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Connectivity
Content
Community
Culture
Capacity
Cooperation
Commerce
Capital
The “8 Cs” of Success in the
Knowledge Era
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Connectivity
– Connectivity, bandwidth, devices, platform, interfaces,
standards, portal
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Content
– Archives, assets, databases. Creation, codification,
classification, archival, retrieval, tracking
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Community
– Knowledge-exchange communities, evolution of
communities, support
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Culture
– Trust, support, learning organisation
The “8 Cs” of Success in the
Knowledge Era
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Capacity
– Roles, organisational support, training, HR
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Cooperation
– Between units, with customers/partners, industry, external
institutes (eg academia)
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Commerce
– Commercial and other incentives, pricing of knowledge
contribution, ranking and usage
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Capital
– Investments into KM practice, RoI metrics
Case Studies
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Private sector
– IT: Infosys, Perot/Dell
– Consumer products: EurekaForbes
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Government / public sector
– Ministry of Finance, Singapore
– JTC, Singapore
Infosys
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Motto: "Learn Once, Use Anywhere"
Central KM group, KM steering committee
Knowledge editors
Incentivisation scheme: Knowledge Currency Units
(KCUs)
KM Maturity (KMM) model
More than 99% of polled respondents expressed the
belief that KM is very essential for the company
Winner of MAKE Awards (India, Asia, Global)
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“In this journey, a key lesson we have
learnt is that unless people are able to
see and experience the direct benefits
of KM, no amount of incentives, rewards
or recognitions are likely to elicit
sustained enthusiasm, participation and
involvement."
Kris Gopalakrishnan
COO & Deputy Managing Director
Infosys
What we did so far…
KM @ EurekaForbes
“The most important challenge in this economy is
creating conversations.”
Ravi Arora
KM Head, Tata Steel
Ministry of Finance (MoF), Singapore
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2007: Appointment of Directorate Knowledge Activists
Focus on email as a communication and documentation
tool
Vendor: Third Sight
2008: finalised taxonomy
2010: Launch of MOFi, the MOF Intranet Portal
Next steps: suggestions/innovations, social media
MoF ad: Can you find the 0 amongst the Qs?
QQQQQQQQQQQQQQQ QQQQQQQQQQQQQ
QQQQQQQQQQQQQQQ QQQQQQQQQQQQQ
QQQQQQQQQQQQQQQ QQQQQQQQQQQQQ
QQQQQQQQQQQQQQQ QQQQQQQQQQQOQ
QQQQQQQQQQQQQQQ QQQQQQQQQQQQQ
QQQQQQQQQQQQQQQ QQQQQQQQQQQQQ
QQQQQQQQQQQQQQQ QQQQQQQQQQQQQ
QQQQQQQQQQQQQQQ QQQQQQQQQQQQQ
QQQQQQQQQQQQQQQ QQQQQQQQQQQQQ
QQQQQQQQQQQQQQQ QQQQQQQQQQQQQ
KM Tools: The alphabet soup
Abstraction, agents, authoring systems, blogging, case
based reasoning, categorisation, clustering, competitive
intelligence, content management, collaborative
filtering, knowledge mapping, knowledge portals,
knowledge visualisation, metadata, microblogs, neural
networks, podcasting, search, semantic nets, social
networks, story templates, taxonomy, text mining, topic
maps, twitter, validation, wiki, workflow. . . . . .
The Three Kinds of Knowledge
(Max Boisot)
Experiential (what do I see/hear/feel now)
 Narrative (what can I say/write about this)
 Abstract symbolic (what stable durable content
can I extract from this)
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Social Media and KM Impacts
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Increased the population of experts available (internal +
external)
Improved creation + validation of expertise (speed,
quality)
New collective + unstructured + narrative knowledge
“Force multiplier” for collaboration and innovation
SEO + SMO
Trends: mash-ups and apps
Social Media: Challenges
Social networking fatigue
 Need to move from ‘busy’ metrics to ‘engaged’
metrics
 Going beyond tactical benefits to strategic
benefits
 Moving from ‘social business’ to ‘better business’
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Drivers of KM
Globalisation
 Shorter product lifecycles
 Increasing economic/political uncertainty
 Attrition
 Growth of outsourcing
 Social media, new IT tools
 Information overload
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Knowledge Roles
Boundary spanners, roamers, outposts,
knowledge project managers, stewards,
coaches, trainers, councillors, counsellors,
officers, integrators, administrators, engineers,
librarians, synthesisers, reporters, editors,
learning officers, CKOs, directors of intellectual
assets, CIOs, anecdote manager . . . . . . . . . . !
KM Metrics: Assessing Impact
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Technology/Activity
– Number of emails/blogs, transactions, database size
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Process
– Time taken to complete a task, number of steps
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Knowledge
– Knowledge assets created, communities of practice
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People
– Empowerment, risk-taking, innovative attitudes
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Business
– Lower costs, faster innovation, higher profit margins
KM: Sectoral Advantages
Media: management of multimedia content,
smooth workflow, delivery of content on multiple
devices at user end, CRM
 Government: Retention of expertise from retiring
employees, one integrated citizen interface for egovernment services, better response to
citizen/business queries
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KM: Sectoral Advantages
High-tech manufacturing: Reduced time to
market, time to repair; learning from customer
inputs and suggestions; project/product
management
 Banking/finance: New product development,
customer/activity profiling, reducing costs,
harnessing new technologies
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Issues for Mature KM Practices (10 years)
Benchmarking at regional/global levels
 Driving KM at a national level, across
organisations/sectors
 Winning global awards
 Thought leadership: books, case studies (eg.
Infosys, Siemens, McKinsey, Buckman Labs,
World Bank)
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Issues for KM Practices at an
Intermediate Stage (5+ years)
Phasing out rewards; knowledge behaviours are
well-established
 Assessing social media (internal and external)
 External metrics for assessing KM effectiveness
 Compete for KM awards at the national/
regional/global level
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Issues for Early Stage KM Practices (1-2 years)
Scaling: “horizontal” or “vertical”
 Identifying appropriate incentive schemes for
relevant knowledge behaviours
 Evolution of KM metrics (largely internal)
 Organisation-spanning initiatives
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Questions?
Email: madan@techsparks.com
Blog: http://km.techsparks.com
Tweets: http://twitter.com/MadanRao