Conversations with David Skyrme
Struggling with KM Strategy

David Skyrme
Entovation International and David Skyrme Associates, Ltd
Highclere, England

Editor's note: This is a synthesis of the "Conversations with David Skyrme" held in October, 2001 as part of the AOK STAR SERIES. Each month one of our four discussion groups enjoys the visit of a KM luminary as guest moderator. During the course of 11 months, the STAR SERIES will have delivered the best "conference" of the year to the desktops of AOK members around the world for a fraction of the cost of a physical conference and with the convenience of continuous education that is at the right place at the right time. Please Join AOK and participate in these knowledge exchanges as they happen in the future.

As always, when we present long documents we provide a table of contents with anchors to the subject matter you choose. Just click on the titles below:

• Introduction of David Skyrme
• Why We Need KM Strategies
• Where Does KM Fit in Strategic Planning?
• KM Strategy Below the Corporate Glass Ceiling
• Fast Tracking by Focusing on Real Business Issues
• Connecting How K is Created, Shared, Commercialized
• Managing People Who Have Knowledge
• Reaching Beyond People Who are "On Side."
• Manage/Control? Knowledge Worker? Good Luck
• Leverage Exit Interviews to Collect Key Knowledge
• If KM Fits Mission, Then It's a Natural Strategy
• People as Pawns or Knowledge Resources?
• Final Responses; Summary
• Bravo and Job Well Done!

David Skyrme's summary of key points in this dialogue:

1. You can do KM without a KM strategy - but it can help to gain commitment and extra resources.
2. KM strategy should be part of the wider organization and business strategy - but it often isn't, and it may take 2-3 years to get it that prominent.
3. A good strategy will cover both the 'hard' (technical, information, process) aspects and the harder 'soft' aspects (people, culture, communities).
4. It should be based on a good audit / analysis of knowledge needs, knowledge assets and knowledge uses - but with a focus of "knowledge for what?" (Hopefully to contribute to some bottom line business objective).
5. A KM strategy must not become 'shelfware' - it must be brought to life, be dynamic and flexible; it must be well communicated and marketed as part of organizational change and transformation.

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  Introduction of David Skyrme

I am very pleased and honored to present to you David Skyrme, strategic analyst and management consultant with extensive knowledge and experience of information and knowledge management as guest moderator for the AOK STAR SERIES for October. He is the namesake of David Skyrme Associates, Ltd., of Highclere, England, about 55 miles (85 kilometers) west of London, and Entovation International's very active associate.

David blends deep analytical insights with practical management experience. Combining the skills of thinker, analyst, synthesizer, communicator, project manager and innovator, during his career he has been responsible for introducing new thinking, new products and services, new methods, and new initiatives. David's hybrid career embraces consulting, part-time writing and academic activities.

Since completing a first class honors degree and doctorate at Oxford University David Skyrme has held a number of marketing, analyst and management roles in a 25-year career in the computer industry, many of them senior roles in Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). While there, he created and managed Digital's UK Market Intelligence group, setting up processes for analyzing computer industry trends, and creating a knowledge centre.

David publishes and presents regularly on a wide range of strategic information issues, including knowledge management, strategic impact of IT, innovation, networked and learning organizations, hybrid managers, market and global intelligence systems, information resources management (IRM), Internet business strategies, virtual organizations and teleworking.

He is best known today as a leading authority on knowledge management, including being featured as a 'guru' by Information Age. In 1997, he coauthored Creating the Knowledge-Based Business, described by practitioners as "required reading" and "the bible of knowledge management". This was followed in 1998 by Measuring the Value of Knowledge, described by Bipin Junnarkar, when Director of Knowledge Management at Monsanto, as "an outstanding contribution to the field of intellectual capital measurements". Recently published is his book Knowledge Networking: Creating the Collaborative Enterprise, Butterworth-Heinemann (1999).

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  Why We Need KM Strategies

Jerry Ash, AOK chief executive: To begin the discussion, David, I want to say I am very pleased you have chosen the opening thread "Struggling with Strategy" because it focuses on your day-to-day work of helping KM enthusiasts make the business case for KM and then develop a relevant action plan.

I am becoming more deeply convinced that those two steps are critical not only in assuring the success of individual KM projects, but in demonstrating the practical value of KM itself.

We get the most out of real life stories, and so I ask you from the outset to share with us some of the lessons learned while working with your clients; and, I need to tell you that we are as much interested in learning from failed practices as from so-called best practices. "Struggling" (at least to me) implies a battle, and we all can certainly relate to that.

David Skyrme: Thank you for your introduction to this discussion on 'Struggling with Strategy.' I called it struggling, since I see many otherwise bright people wrestling with the problem . . . and until recently I did not think it was a problem!

It quickly became apparent that it was, however, when I recently talked to a group of government KM managers and specialists about making the business case for knowledge management (you summarized the highlights of this talk in an earlier Digest). From the ensuing discussion I realised that many of their managers (senior policy makers and service delivery managers) were still very skeptical about KM . . . after all this time!! And perhaps, rather than getting on with it, they seem to ask "where's the strategy" - a delaying tactic, perhaps?

It may be useful to take a step back and think why we need strategies. I was once a strategic planning manager and had to justify my job, so perhaps I am qualified to give some insights. Here are some reasons:

1. To allocate resources to better achieve corporate goals. If you have an agreed strategy then you are more likely to allocate your funding and people in line with it. Otherwise pet projects tend to get approved and you reach crunch points when several projects are all competing for the same resource
2. To test and clarify people's thinking. It's one thing to have a strategy, but to take it forward to a strategic plan, you have to have thought about resources and interdependencies.
3. To avoid awkward precedents. A salesperson clinches a sale that causes organizational upheaval in order to a) reschedule the production line; b) develop a new product in negative time; c) appease other customers - you know the story.
4. To turn top level aspirations and vision into reality. Many senior managers have habit of saying what they want done, and not understanding the ramifications of implementation.

I'm sure you can add some of your own - please share them with us. The bottom line is to be more systematic about your overall approach and use of resources in pursuit of good results. Typically, strategies are the agreed starting points for action. A KM strategy is no different. It shows the way forward to how KM will contribute to organizational success. Yes - you can do KM without a strategy, but how do you get the level of investment and commitment required? Yes - you can have a good KM strategy and still fail in its implementation. I've seen both situations and we can talk about them later.

But first it would be good to hear from AOK readers about the value (or otherwise) of developing a KM strategy. Who is currently in this situation? Who has asked for a strategy and why?

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  Where Does KM Fit in Strategic Planning?

Jerry Ash: Perhaps many are confused about KM Strategy because they (we) don't know where it fits. Sometimes I think KMers think of KM as a strategy in itself - the goal or objective rather than the tool for reaching organizational goals and objectives. I hear myself saying it - "KM is a strategy." But then it occurs to me that KM can't be a free-standing strategy; rather, it should be part of the overall strategy of an organization - a strategic resource. Then I wonder: "What part?"

At The Forbes Group, we emphasize four steps in what we prefer to call strategic management. Strategic planning is only one of the four steps:

Step 1: Strategic thinking.
Step 2: Strategic planning.
Step 3: Strategic implementation.
Step 4: Evaluation and feedback.

Followed by a repeat of Step 1 in a never-ending circle that simply does not allow for a plan to gather dust on a shelf.

It is a logical progression from the goals and objectives of the organization to the strategies for achieving them and the implementation plans and tactics required to carry them out. I doubt if the goals and objectives of an organization will ever be "to be a knowledge-driven organization." Rather, it will be to use knowledge as a means of achieving the real goals and objectives. But before the organization can get to that line of thinking, it must first have discovered the value of knowledge.

Here are some of the ways I think KM can become an integral part of all four steps of the strategic process:

• Strategic Thinking: Research. Assessing the future effects of outside forces on the organization. Uncovering hidden internal resources. Gathering information and opinions from important constituencies to give an eventual plan a solid basis for decision making. Learning how one might improve corporate performance by coordinating the multidisciplinary resources of the organization. An excellent place to build a better understanding of KM.
• Strategic Planning: Translating the research into a vision of the future and identifying what the organization needs to do today to achieve that vision tomorrow. Again, the knowledge resource will rise in this step.
• Strategic Implementation: As these strategies begin to take shape as detailed programs and budgets, the work plan may well include many of the KM processes. Here, KM is not a "strategy," but a tool for carrying out strategies.
• Evaluation and Feedback: Based on knowledge, data, lessons learned and human judgment - the very heart of continuous knowledge management.

So, it occurs to me that inserting KM into the Strategic Management process is a natural sister to some of our previous discussions about focusing KM on the "strategic success factors" of an organization. Only, here, we are talking about involving KM on the front end of the "big picture" -- thinking, planning, implementing -- not (as we previously talked) attaching it as a "tag-along" after the organization's goals, objectives and metrics have already been established.

I'm convinced! The KMer ought to join the strategic planning team immediately! What about you David? Are you convinced?

P.S. I also think "strategic planning" has gotten a bum rap precisely because it has been carried out as a single step, rather than the four-step approach The Forbes Group uses. Just a plan is just a waste of time and money and space on a dusty shelf. KM fits the broader approach very well!

David Skyrme: A few observations on your comments on where KM strategy fits.

One of the ultimate measures of success of a KM strategy or a KM initiative is that it is indeed an integral part of the strategic planning process. After all the organization's overall strategic plan addresses corporate goals and how they are to be achieved. It usually also links into the budget which is the allocation of resources - finance and people - to core activities. But most strategic plans omit perhaps the most valuable resource - knowledge.

However, this rarely happens up front. In fact I know of no organization that has added a knowledge dimension to its core planning process before some implementation of KM has taken place - anyone out there know differently?!

Usually KM starts as a series of projects or a broader initiative that is funded from various pots, such as an existing budget line. As it moves into its second year, and needs more funding, it may be part of someone's functional budget, and the KM activity mentioned as a core task, but not so well integrated into the plan that every strategy line and everyone's functional plan has a knowledge component.

What usually happens - and this part of the embedding of KM into an organization - is that the KM strategy demonstrates how better knowledge processes can contribute to the corporate plan. Indeed, a KM strategy without such a linkage is likely to fail.

Overall, I see it as a 3-5 year educational and embedding process to get KM:

a) broadly written into strategic and operational plans and b) an everyday part of strategic thinking and action.

In a current client situation, the CKO has been in post a year, a formal strategy is now being written, and the earliest KM will be written into the corporate strategy will be the next planning round, and that probably only after it beds down and gets widely accepted, say another planning round after the next one, i.e., three years at the earliest.

If anyone out there has a fast track example that betters 2-3 years - I'd love to know how they achieved it.

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  KM Strategy: Dreams from Below the Corporate Glass Ceiling

Clare Robson, Health Intelligence Manager, IC & IT Department, North Wales Health Authority: As part of an e-letter for the British Medical Journal in February 2000, I was asking the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK "Why are we still waiting for the Chief Knowledge Officers & their strategies for managing knowledge?"

The scepticism towards KM, shown by senior government managers (which was referred to in David's earlier posting), is making life for budding knowledge managers, such as myself, working below the corporate executive ceiling very difficult. http://www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/320/7228/160#EL1

There is still no sign of knowledge management related posts being advertised within the NHS. Health Librarians are the professional group most closely associated with KM particularly within the context of the National Electronic Library for Health. Within my own organisation, KM now appears under the remit of the Director of Finance & Information - though this is very much a token gesture. I have managed a few brief exchanges of information relating to KM, between myself and those residing above the corporate ceiling. This has been like a roller coaster ride.

For example, 12 months ago, I wrote a research paper in response to local strategic developments proposing "The development of a Knowledge Management Strategy" which would unite the key corporate strategies and development plans for North Wales Health Authority. Unfortunately I am still waiting for a response to this proposal and my dream of having a real-life struggle with a KM Strategy. An enquiry from myself about intellectual capital rights actually resulted in a meeting with the Chief Executive during which I was encouraged to further develop my ideas on a book related to KM. My recent request for funding for a PhD related to KM was declined in favour of a management course (for which applicants need no formal qualifications).

Back to dreaming about developing a KM Strategy from below the Corporate Executive Ceiling; I think my approach to developing a KM Strategy would be:

• Adopt the "think big, start small and deliver quickly approach." - Use the "big picture" and tools such as the TFPL KM skills map (a PDF file) to put KM into context.
• Use a formal Project Management Approach to implement the KM Strategy and to link KM activities to existing business activities.
• Keep the KM Strategy constantly updated and progressively sophisticated from modest beginnings.
• Move forward in a controlled yet proactive and pragmatic manner.
• Devise a KM Benchmarking system to measure and demonstrate progress in key KM areas, e.g., the KMPG KM Framework Assessment Exercise.
• Set up a KM Projects Support Unit.
• Create KM roles largely as overlays to existing roles.
• Use the same KM techniques and software corporately and amongst partner organisations wherever possible.

David Skyrme: With reference to Clare's posting about her struggles 'below the glass ceiling':

I found this a plea from the heart from someone (Clare) who is clearly an enthusiast about knowledge management, but who seems to have more than her fair share of top management skeptics. Normally I reckon a team of senior managers splits three ways:

• one third are pioneers: they are experimenters and change agents and will try anything once (as long at it makes sense), but not all will bear with you a second time round (but you can plead about learning from mistakes etc.)
• one third are pragmatists: if something will save them time, make their life easier, bring kudos etc. they'll go for it
• one third are antagonistic, i.e., they will be brought into the 21st century screaming and dragging their heels - change is for someone else.

It does seem that Clare is not confronted with such a benign three-way split (more like 10:20:70?). That makes it even more of an exciting challenge!!

First, I would try and work closely with the one or two people who are 'on side' and try and find what motivates the sceptics. Often it is some external pressure - in the case of the UK public sector, factors like value for money, performance measures, records management, modernising government. Each may result in some central government dictate which requires that local public bodies have to take note. There will be 'champions' appointed and budget allocated to conform with government guidelines. These are often the focal points where KM can be introduced. As in all 'change interventions' you have to find an appropriate lever to push.

Clare asked in her open letter: "Why are we still waiting for the Chief Knowledge Officers & their strategies for managing knowledge?"

Don't wait. Just do it. Hopefully what the letter achieved was other people in similar situations popping out of the woodwork with similar frustrations. If so, you have a wider Community of Practice that collectively could make a difference that no single individual within their own health authority could do. Her letter gives pointers to some work that has taken place, but highlights the major challenge - faced by most knowledge initiatives - of changing ("nothing less than a revolution" in Clare's words) the culture. My own opinion is that if all the pockets of good work done in different health authorities could be joined up and shared amongst the enthusiast community, that will be a step towards changing the culture - do something, show people how it benefits them and the organization, reinforce positive behaviours (e.g., knowledge sharing) and challenge negative ones (e.g., knowledge hoarding).

Clare adds: "There is still no sign of knowledge management related posts being advertised within the NHS."

This is interesting since I recently spoke at a health managers conference and several people had "knowledge manager" or "knowledge management project manager" in their job title. In a topic as new as this, it is likely that posts don't get advertised. After all, to advertise a post you have to have job descriptions and assess where it is on a pay scale and career path, and sometimes personnel departments can't cope with jobs that don't fit. The answer is to create your own. In my own corporate career I had 11 jobs in one company. Other than the first one which was an advertised post, all the rest were posts partly of my own creation. How many of the NHS knowledge managers that exist actually applied for it through an advertised post? - not many I would guess. However, I take the point that lack of advertising for such posts shows that knowledge managers are not yet a recognized profession, but if enough librarians called themselves knowledge managers, perhaps it might be seen as such!

Although Clare is disappointed about lack of response to her 'research paper' what she has achieved is some high level visibility: "An enquiry from myself about intellectual capital rights actually resulted in a meeting with the Chief Executive during which I was encouraged to further develop my ideas on a book related to KM."

This could be an avenue to keep open to help leverage her work further down the organization. I do sense, however, that there is something about the means of communication how people respond that are the way to get things done in Clare's organization.

I always recall a comment given to me some time ago by a business manager who read one of my internal reports proposing a new initiative. He liked the ideas and concepts etc. but he said:

"David, with busy managers there are only two things that will make them act - pain or gain. Where's the pain or gain in this proposal?"

This is an important insight that has helped me through my subsequent consulting career. It all comes down to motivation. What will people get enthusiastic about? How will they take on board new ideas? We are entering here into the realms of industrial psychology. Some people like written reports, others like hearing someone speak, especially an enthusiast, others like simple pictorial visions. Many people value suggestions from peers and outsiders, more than they do from insiders (send you manager to a KM conference!). Others, of course, take no notice until they feel the pain - the boss complaining once again about poor results, a nagging from the chief executive "What are we doing about knowledge management?" etc. This leads to a more general consideration for any of you preparing a KM strategy. Ask yourself - and answer honestly:

• Why should anyone care?
• Who does care?
• Who can do something about it?

Finding your champions and leverage points could save you a lot of time and frustrations later.

Clare has some good suggestions for moving forward, to which I have added some personal observations:

• Adopt the "think big, start small and deliver quickly approach." - it always pays to have an opportunistic eye open; whatever your big picture, if you see something where KM can help, get in there;
• "Use the 'big picture' and tools such as the TFPL KM skills map to put KM into context" - in my own experience tools like this come later, once you decide what needs doing, you can then figure out who is best qualified to do it.
• "Use a formal Project Management Approach to implement the KM Strategy and to link KM activities to existing business activities." - this is so organization dependent. Many public sector organizations think this is too formal, although the PRINCE2 methodology is now widely used. In a current situation, I am saying to the line managers, I can do a business case in three days, but if you want a formal PID (Project Initiation Document) then that will take two additional days. It's all a question of "how things get done around here" (i.e., the prevailing culture)
• "Keep the KM Strategy constantly updated and progressively sophisticated from modest beginnings" - agree, although it should probably be formally reviewed once or twice a year (by a steering committee or executive board).
• "Move forward in a controlled yet proactive and pragmatic manner." - this is crucial. Note the proactive. Every successful KM manager I know is an enthusiastic advocate and good communicator. They go out and seek opportunities.
• "Devise a KM Benchmarking system to measure and demonstrate progress in key KM areas" - this usually comes later. Again much depends on the maturity of the organization in terms of measurement systems. If EFQM (European Quality Foundation Model), BBS (Balanced Business Scorecard) or similar systems are in place, this is easier to do. Otherwise just devise a few simple measures to track progress. Make sure you cover inputs (knowledge resources, skills), processes (the various KM activities), outputs and outcomes (impact on business results)
• "Set up a KM Projects Support Unit" - assuming, of course, you have projects to manage. What I think is being alluded to is to establish a core of KM competency. In the early days this might literally be an informal community of practice. Over time, it may turn into a networked KM team adequately resourced and budgeted.
• "Create KM roles largely as overlays to existing roles." - yes, but make them explicit. For example, many people overlook the importance of knowledge editor and knowledge linker (broker) roles. They need not be in people's job title (though it helps) but need to be part of people's job descriptions.
• "Use the same KM techniques and software corporately and amongst partner organisations wherever possible." - yes and no. Most important is to share
  good practice and experience.

This is a useful list, but you do have to prioritize what is important and what will make a difference. There are probably other things to consider as well. Let's hear yours.

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  Fast Tracking by Focusing on Real Business Issues

Graham Westwood, President, Domain Knowledge Inc., Toronto, Canada: Your comments on Fast Track KM have struck a chord. We have been doing just that for about a year now. Compaq Corporation, for example recently launched a Project Management Office that went from conception to full deployment in about 120 days. The PMO office integrates their best practices with a clearly defined processes and full access to all necessary infrastructure elements (project templates, forms, documents etc.).

According to Compaq executives, the system has reduced management's time burden on projects by about 50 percent. More significantly, the system enables Compaq execs to kill off poorly conceived or non-focused projects before they consume any real resources. The savings to date according to "well placed" sources are already in the millions.

The key was that we focused on solving a real business issue. How to deal with the growing complexity of a project management with limited resources? KM was not even mentioned by itself. The knowledge became embedded in the day to day practices. However, now that they have seen a hard example of the benefits of integrating KM into their processes, it has opened the door to other projects.

The process we follow is well aligned with the work of Jeffrey Pfeffer of Stanford University who wrote the "Knowing-Doing Gap." His book is all about the difference between talking about doing something, planning something and doing something. He singles out the "cult of knowledge management" for forgetting that knowledge is only useful if it is acted upon. Michael Stankosky, lead professor of Knowledge Management of George Washington University follows a similar line. He believes that most KM is a side show (in both meanings of the word). It needs to become the main event - and that will only happen when KM is embedded into the daily operations of an organization.

We have many other examples of how large organizations are fast tracking KM. The common theme is that we are addressing immediate hard issues with clients (risk management, strategic planning, budgeting etc.). KM is a powerful pull through - stealth KM if you like. We are pointedly avoiding the soft "touchy feely" issues that so many consultants are compelled to dwell upon. Today's agenda is all about doing and results.

David Skyrme: I think Graham and I are agreeing about the balance of hard and soft. It is also absolutely right that a KM strategy has to deliver results that impact the bottom line. Where we may disagree slightly is that I do not believe that you have to make an ROI case a priori. In fact, I know several successful KM ventures where this was deliberately not done. Senior executives took "a leap of faith." Actually they understood the contribution of knowledge. They do not want detailed ROI - they know they can be 'fixed' (when I was a planner I used to ask my MD what 'return' he wanted to satisfy the finance people on the board - 20 percent, 40 percent, 60 percent - I could build a case to meet any target within reason!!).

What these kind of senior executives want is anecdotes of where it has helped. They seek indications of what competitors are doing. They want to see people with passion who can drive the agenda forward. They believe it will work and that in the early days it is probably not realistic to 'prove' benefits in advance. After all, how many organizations really have a good baseline e.g. accurate time reporting of where people - one of the most expensive resources - spend their time? I cite some interviews with CKO's and KM project leaders in how they justified KM in their organizations (from my report Measuring the Value of Knowledge'):

• "Our programmes are action focused, not financial" (GlaxoWellcome, pre SmithKline merger)
• "We determined that it was better to have committed knowledge workers than try to measure the benefits directly. We do, however, use benchmarking" (Anglian Water)
• "There was no quantified financial justification. We had a very clear commitment from the Chief Executive" (ICL)

However, you have to judge where your senior executives are coming from. But remember - most innovators move forward through the execution of great ideas - not writing business plans.

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  Connecting How K is Created, Shared, Commercialized

Debra Amidon, founder and chief strategist, Entovation International: Of course, I appreciate the 'strategy' focus as I have always believed that we are talking about building and implementing knowledge strategy, not KM per se. Your query reminds me of the early days as we developed the focus inside Digital. David will remember this well. The Knowledge Exchange staff in 1982 was extremely successful in their dual goals: (a) organizing the material we had into a knowledge base accessed by the bench engineers and (b) managing (and mining the insights thereof) the conversations among experts both inside and external to the firm. We knew we were successful when we were ready to shut down the system and our colleagues from Europe and around the world claimed it was one of their best resources to manage the company from abroad.

Nonetheless, we took the agenda to the executive suite - Office of the President actually - and developed the management architecture (i.e., performance, structure, people, process and technology) with mathematical equations. This was discussed in detail in my own Star session. Note: Many of the fine architecture used even today do not embody all elements - economics, behavior and technology (i.e., not one at the expense of another).

We knew it was the right management strategy and premiered it at DECWORLD in 1991. Thereafter, I observed seven Digital Vice Presidents - some of the company's finest - try to take on the agenda and drive it corporate wide - all failing. WHY? In some respects the leadership was taking on by those who didn't truly comprehend the agenda; and it just became a political football. In other respects, it was seen as a nice thing to do - not a matter of company survival (which it was); and so it was easy to relegate to a lower priority when things got real tough. Digital never did figure out how to IMPLEMENT the knowledge strategy - which was proposed as a function of 'innovation' and not 'knowledge' per se.

And so we need good examples to emulate. I don't believe that there are any successful models that haven't taken 3-5 years to fully deploy. But we do have examples from each aspect of the Knowledge Value Proposition: Leif Edvinsson (Skandia) from the Intellectual Capital Measurement perspective; Hubert Saint-Onge (Clarica) from the Behavior/Learning Organization perspective and Kent Greenes (British Petroleum) from the Technology perspective. And I doubt there was anyone that succeeded so quickly and robustly as Steven Denning (The World Bank). Leif, Kent and Stephen have all gone on to other companies to apply their talents.

Hubert is still at Clarica and not only has he successfully managed the Knowledge Strategy (and he has figured out the power of using that terminology rather than KM); he has helped evolve the transformation of the company-as-a-whole (from what was previously called The Mutual Group). But even he got his early learnings from driving the knowledge focus inside another company (CIBC - Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce).

Perhaps we can look at what may be some of Hubert's critical success factors from an external strategist point of view:

1. His intervention was called the Knowledge Capital Initiative. It is company wide and I believe he provides a frame for the dialogue, manages the conversations among parties across functions, business units and other stakeholders in the company, such as customers.
2. He fundamentally understands the value of tacit knowledge (i.e., Nonaka's concepts) and how to put it into practice - notably the first knowledge practitioner to do so.
3. He documents and publishes regularly - electronic and hard copy form - an Update called "Developing a Knowledge Strategy at Clarica" and treats it as a living document - not something to be shelved. The Table of Contents includes: Executive Summary; The Business Rationale (e.g., Challenges, Benefits, the Met Life Acquisition, Business Outcomes and Measuring the Impact); The Vision (e.g., Objective, An Organization Perspective) a Business Perspective); Blueprint (e.g., Principles, Key Components Conditions for Success, Connections, Governance and Organizational Framework); Implementation (e.g., The Implementation Approach, Building the Infrastructure, Supporting Specific Business Initiatives, Reinforcing our Customer Relationships, Costs and Benefits); and Questions & Answers).
4. He understands the essential focus of driving strategy (rather than strategic planning) as a function of leadership, not plans . . . or even a planning process. And his leadership extends far beyond the corporate walls within his nation and the knowledge movement-at-large.
5. He is an avid learner - and not afraid to admit so. More importantly (and from my own bias of innovation strategy, of course), he is an innovator - putting into practice his learnings as real-time as he can. None of his presentations are the same for he is always picking up new insights and embedding them in his models and practices.

In short, an architecture is just a beginning; it enables the identification of the factors that need to be managed. However, only when you make the connections between HOW knowledge is created, shared and applied or commercialized (i.e., the innovation process itself) does the vision of a knowledge strategy get realized. Many knowledge leaders are beginning to recognize this point and converting themselves to innovation strategists or Chief Innovation Officers, not CKO's. In other words, the focus may not be the content as much as it is the process itself; and innovation IS the business. The process is not relevant unless it is an integral part of the business strategy. For details of the difference between strategic planning and strategy.

Perhaps David, you can share - from our work together - how you have seen the movement evolve to the focus of innovation that operates on the level of the enterprise, the national economy and society-as-a-whole. Is a common language and shared vision emerging?

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  Managing People Who Have Knowledge

Bob Parden, professor, Santa Clara University, California: In my teaching, I find it easier to speak of the management of people who have knowledge. Knowledge is in their heads, and difficult to isolate.

David Skyrme: Bob rightly emphasises the people angle. I describe knowledge management as a two pronged approach - managing information or explicit knowledge which is held in systems, documents and databases, and managing the environment in which people are motivated and can share their knowledge. In fact many people says is 'knowledge management and oxymoron, since you cannot manage what's in people's heads (see for example my article 'Knowledge Management: Oxymoron or Dynamic Duo?') A colleague Nick Willard describes the essence of knowledge management as managing information, managing people and managing (knowledge) processes.

It's nice to see - as I have in two rare cases recently - a KM strategy put an emphasis on the people aspects - developing the right culture, nurturing communities, creating sharing events etc. But we should not overlook the value of good capture of knowledge into an explicit form - the database entry, the 'how-to' guide, the primer, etc. The best is a combination of both, bearing in mind the best way in which a particular individual learns - whether by reading, listening, watching, doing etc.

Graham Westwood: I have some difficulty with Bob Parden's contention that we should talk about managing people who have knowledge as opposed to managing knowledge. The whole point of this exercise is to move from the tacit to explicit - from intellectual capital to structural capital. Organizations must codify their DNA and put it to use. Stuff in people's heads is of limited value. I refer to this as the business genome project.

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  Reaching Beyond People Who are "On Side."

J. Paul Cripwell, Cripwell Associates, Canada: I read your response to Clare several times and think it is an excellent precise. My only concern is that the majority of people who are reading this are "on side." How can we get the skeptics amongst the senior managers and executives to see our understanding?

David Skyrme: There's a simple answer and a long one. The short one is "show the bottom line benefit" and/or "show how it helps them individually."

I don't have time to go into the long one here, but here are a few pointers:

1. Remember my point about pain or gain from the first day? What is it that keeps your skeptics awake at night? What business issues are causing problems?
2. Now look at ways in which better KM can address those problems. There are numerous cases and examples of how KM has played a part in addressing most common business challenges - customer service, new product development, marketing etc. I sat in a general management meeting recently and at the end of an hour or so, listed nearly 20 potential KM opportunities just based on the discussions I heard.
3. Find allies in the skeptics line of command who can be enthusiast, champions or helpers.
4. Work out a small pilot project that does not take a lot of money but perhaps only time (if the real benefits do need significant investment, then look for proof of concept in the form of a system demo or a pilot workshop/course etc.)
5. Put the skills and energy in to make it successful.
6. When it is successful, you can tell people about it, but better still, let your internal champion and helpers get the credit and let them tell everyone - including their previously sceptical boss - about it.

This is of course highly simplified. You have to look at the context of each case - the business issues, the politics, the people, the systems etc. and work out a viable intervention.

There are very few sceptics who fail to be converted if KM can be introduced relatively painlessly and make them more successful. A key part of strategy is the art of finding the 'quick win' so you can get the follow on investment for the major infrastructure and culture change.

I'll just give you one example from my experience. A director of one organization - the arch skeptic - said to me "this KM fad is nonsense. It will only be real if it helps real people doing real jobs". So I asked him to point to people he regarded as doing real jobs. It turned out that his operations manager was one, juggling lots of priorities and allocating resources. I worked with her to find out particular challenges where KM could have good leverage. I interviewed several front-line people in the department. One problem they all had was lack of access to a decent customer database. I found resources elsewhere which provided parts of the solution. I asked the ops manager "If you had an up to date customer database with this information in it, would this be worthwhile?". In the end, by putting in a bit of central admin and systems effort (nothing complex, we just used Access as I recall, not even a Contact Management System), we showed what was possible. The sceptical director saw the possibilities. He called it a customer database. I called it the embryo of a customer knowledge base. I pointed out this was only a demo, and that the real thing would need investment. Guess who was pushing hardest for KM investment when I presented my consultant's KM strategy to his board?

And I should say - as with any other project - that managing expectations is another key skill for the KM strategist. I didn't deliver an all singing, all dancing CRM system. I painted the vision, backed up by realistic scenarios of how it benefits front line people (together with quotes from them and some statistics on wasted time and evidence of customer dissatisfaction from a survey) and showed a 'demonstrator'.

I hope this helps, but I'm sure there are other AOK KM specialists out there who have been successful in similar situations. Tell us about your successes.

Roll over any skeptics - KM delivers!!

Graham Westwood: I find David's comments quite insightful. I agree that hard and soft aspects of KM are compatible, in fact necessary for each other. My point is that as far as strategy is concerned it may be better to lead with the hard aspects (i.e., tangible programs with real measurable ROI ) than to focus on the soft side. I find it much easier to lead senior executives to the KM trough when they have already drunk significant ROI juice from a business project that was laced with KM principles.

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  Manage/Control? Knowledge Worker? Good Luck!

Dr. Lori Paserchia, MD, eHealth Professional : I've been a lurker on this list from the start since I'm new to the KM/Knowledge Strategy field. I've learned a great deal from the many experts who share their experiences and thoughts. Thank you! <smile> I intend to return the privilege when possible.

That said, I disagree with the statement "management of people who have knowledge." I see management as the control of something. We manage inanimate objects (e.g., budgets, projects, job positions). Knowledge, on the other hand, resides solely within humans. The creation, dissemination, and application of knowledge therefore depend on human relationships, which are based on effective communication (in a nod to an earlier, excellent post about the "human tool" by Yvonne Buma), and mutual respect and trust.

Consequently, I believe in the leadership of people who have knowledge. Perhaps some view this as a small point, but it makes a world of difference to me as I try to work with people, both my supervisors and those who report to me. Good luck trying to control a knowledge worker worth his/her paycheck (or any person with a healthy degree of self-esteem).

David Skyrme: Dr. Lori Paserchia argues that you cannot manage people, because that implies 'control.' It's all how you interpret the word 'manage.' I think that you can manage resources - people as well as knowledge. Naturally the style of management is different and also context and culture dependent. In my role as a manager I have tried to act as a motivator and coach rather than micro-manage every activity that a person does. On the other hand, there are times when you do need to control more, because some people like more structure or are underperforming. There again, its how you interpret the word 'control.' In systems theory it is measuring a deviation, then doing something about correcting it. And the something might be to get a professional to recognize that their work is inadequate and then help them to succeed. All that said, I did write a chapter in a book a year or so ago called 'From Knowledge Management to Knowledge Leadership,' stressing the characteristics of a good knowledge leader. So at least Lori and I do speak roughly the same language.

But to be pedantic, Lori says:

"Knowledge, on the other hand, resides solely within humans."

This is a very narrow view of knowledge. In the very next posting Graham Westwood takes the almost opposite view: "The whole point of this exercise is to move from the tacit to explicit." Knowledge exists in many 'manifestations' (to use a word of Karl Wiig's) in a wide spectrum from highly explicit and undisputable, through explicit to implicit to tacit and deep tacit (where it cannot even be articulated into explicit form). I reiterate what I said earlier - that managing knowledge is a balance of two strands - managing explicit knowledge through systematic processes, and managing the environment to nurture knowledge networking between people; plus I should mention the conversion both ways, not just from tacit to explicit as Graham says, but from explicit to tacit (going from the cookbook to the actual cooking).

Nonaka and Takeuchi's knowledge spiral is one of the very few fundamental concepts of knowledge management. In leading up to it, they argue that new knowledge and new value is created through four types of knowledge conversion:

• tacit to explicit (externalisation) - Graham's favourite route
• tacit to tacit (socialization) - Lori's relationships and communications
• explicit to tacit (internalization) - learning by doing
• explicit to explicit (combination) - 'cutting and pasting'

I have found this model works for me (and my clients). I believe that a good KM initiative has to look at all these value-adding paths. Interestingly, I've just been reviewing a KM strategy today and one of the key main thrusts is 'knowledge in relationships" which echoes Lori's point of "The creation, dissemination, and application of knowledge therefore depend on human relationships."

Moving onto another point. I asked the question: "What's makes a good KM strategy"? I'm sure some of you are already sending in your answers to this one - yes?! I have a few points of my own, but I am prompted to give one now, since I was in a meeting today watching a couple of managers trying to get to grips with the 50 page KM strategy document written for them by some consultants (very good ones actually). However, sometimes less is more. While it is good to cover all angles - the people (relationships), processes, technology, HR policies, etc., a good strategy will focus on a few well chosen objectives, and few key activities/projects to get there. Yes - there may be 50 or even 100 strands of activity that need doing, but to get buy-in and understanding I'm a firm believer in focus and clear presentation - of highlighting the key activities and subsuming all the others under just a few major headings. It's very difficult trying to remember a 50 point action plan. It's much easier to remember seven key points (even easier to remember three or five!), where each may have seven key subactivities (that those close to that activity can remember) than it is to remember a list of 50 (or 49!).

After all, as any military strategist will tell you, concentration of resources is what wins. The same is true of any business strategy. You only have limited resources. It's therefore better to do a few things well than a lot inadequately. So, those of you who have written strategies, what were your few key strategic thrusts? Answers on a postcard please!

Jerry Ash: Not that Dr. Lori Paserchia needs me to defend her, or that I think I'm in any way capable of debating with David Skyrme, but I can't help make a few heartfelt points.

The root of knowledge is knowing. And knowing is a human function. And so in its most fundamental form I agree with Lori. All knowledge comes from the human mind. Period. It may take on other forms later, be passed around and back and forth, but it starts with thinking. That's what we do - personally, and individually.

So, here we go into a potential argument among three reasonable people who disagree when in fact they are all three "right" and all three agreeable to the points of the other. I think there's some logic in there somewhere.

The problems with my arguments are that they are - well - fundamental. Simple. By themselves, correct. Maybe indisputable. But knowledge outside its primal shell gets more and more complex and begins to take on a life of its own - even outside the individual mind. In fact, my most favorite "knowledge" is the collaborative kind. First, I know, and you know, then we know, and collectively we create "new knowledge" together, born, if you will, "en vitro." But not artificially. Developed outside the individual mind using human parts but outside the human host.

All these forms that knowledge takes and the routes they travel - they are the wide range of responsibility of a Knowledge Manager. And, yes, I'm as comfortable as David with the true meaning of management, but always nervous about the political correctness, the public relations of it all. Still, it's interesting to me that as hard as we try ... we just can't seem to avoid the word "management." KM is what it is but it is much more than any of us can express.

Oh, gosh. There I go being philosophical. So I ask myself, what does all of this have to do with the price of products at the loading dock? Well, we mustn't get buried in philosophical debate, but how important is it ­ David - to connect our strategies to the correct vision, philosophy, perspective of knowledge, its value, its husbandry (as in animal husbandry - am I digging another political pit?), and the end result? And if it's important, to whom?

Paul Cripwell: "Stuff in people's heads is of limited value."

What a wonderful, interesting and complex statement. To me this statement underlies a fundamental dichotomy in the KM world. There is the hard side of KM that attempts to electronically encode, systematize, store and retrieve huge amounts of knowledge for use by others. Then there is the soft side of KM that attempts to work with people and the knowledge they embody. (With recognition to Lori, who brings up the meaning of management.)

When it comes to KM I believe we should be working both sides of this dichotomy.

In the world of information overload is it more important to find the information or to find the person that has the information. Which is easier to accomplish? Which is easier to codify into a knowledge structure?

David Skyrme: I'm not sure I can add much to what Paul and Jerry said.

I agree with Paul that you have to work both sides of the dichotomy ­ the hard and soft factors - or what I call the hard and harder factors.

I agree (partially) with Jerry when he says KM has to be linked to concrete business goals and strategies rather than big picture theories and abstract benefits.

Holistic is the word that comes to mind when thinking of these things. You need to consider all aspects - hard and soft, theory and practice - and for some people, big picture vision has an appeal and 'pull' more than numbers on a spreadsheet. Charismatic people can get others motivated whether they have a solid business case or not. I have often worked alongside visionary managers - and they often used me as their 'reality check' or 'vision translator' - or as one boss used to say "this is where the rubber hits the sky." Sometimes I err on the visionary side, and another mentor of mine calls herself the lead balloon (to bring me down to earth). This raises the question of what mix of people you should aim for in a KM team.

One tendency of managers is to hire people in a similar ilk to themselves. The more adventurous manager/leader will take some risk and deliberately hire people with different skills, perspectives and personality profiles (check out the work of Meredith Belbin) - often leading to what Dorothy Leonard Barton calls 'creative abrasion.' But if we all agreed with each other all the time, wouldn't it be a dull place?

I ran an AAR (After Action Review) yesterday and started with a warm-up session where participants listed the team's key achievements. "Putting the fun into functionality" was the one I liked best.

Paul Cripwell: To a Futurist, RIP is not the End

Before you think this is a death notice, RIP, does not stand for Rest in Peace.

In one of my earlier lives as a consultant we had annual meetings where we discussed the future, SWOT analysis etc. One member came up with the acronym, RIP, standing for Raw Intellectual Power.

Your latest posting reminded me of these sessions when you talked about knowledge beginning in the human mind. It was these "RIP sessions" that really demonstrated this phenomenon.

Think back to working sessions you have had in the past. Did you ever notice an intangible energy in the room? I have experienced this on many occasions and find it truly exciting and exhilarating.

Such sessions are true RIP.

Just thought I would pass it along.

David Skyrme: Re: Paul and RIP (Raw Intellectual Power)

"Think back to working sessions you have had in the past. Did you ever notice an intangible energy in the room? I have experienced this on many occasions and find it truly exciting and exhilarating."

Such situations are almost natural in some companies, where there is an innovative culture and a quest for discovery and learning. In others, there is a noticeable lack of energy. Looking at 'settings' is an underrated part of KM Strategy. What types of meetings are held that generate such energy/ Are what some companies call think tanks and workshops really that, or another form of boring meeting?. Several ingredients seem to underpin success:

1. A stimulating challenge: "come up with ideas to stop laying off 1,500 people because of the economic downturn";
2. The right environment - plenty of space to think, walk about, get a breather, break out into huddles, stick flip charts etc. (I usually look for interesting country houses, and look for a room which in table / U style is rated by the hotel / conference centre at twice the capacity of the number of participants says is the capacity of the room - I've even used a Thames river boat!);
3. Appropriate socialization - dinner, drinks afterwards (I've even combined such a meeting with a team barbecue at one of the team members homes;
4. Good facilitation - often the brightest brains are those who have no sense of process - they exchange exciting knowledge but don't have anything concrete to leave the session with: "we had a good time, but I can't remember the outcome."

So think of those meetings: "do you remember what the outcome was?" "do you remember the feeling and atmosphere, was it exhilarating?" - only if you can answer yes to both questions can you claim that you achieved RIP-OFF (Raw Intellectual Power - Orchestrating Fantastic Futures).

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  Leverage Exit Interviews to Collect Key Knowledge

David Skyrme: One thing that an astute KM worker does is be receptive to new ideas and learning. In reviewing the strategy I've just been advising on, I felt that the authors had covered the ground well, and listed short and medium-term activities (quick wins and infrastructure building/culture change). But I kept thinking - is it clear who does these things? Some are new ways of working which will have to be embedded into everyone's work patterns. Others are things for specialists, such as librarians, to do. The danger, of course, is that as soon as KM specialists get appointed, others see doing knowledge management as no longer their job! So the thing to do is to have technique leaders who will introduce new methods and coach others. Interestingly, I found the AAR session I ran earlier this week prompted an interesting question from a director who was not there but heard about it:

"Shouldn't we do a knowledge capture exit interview when Matthew leaves." Of course, I said. But how do we do it? Since I've not parted with anyone for a few years, my own brain cells were rather rusty, so I went about to update my learning and found this interesting article: Leverage Exit Interviews to Collect Key Knowledge.

This triggered my brain cells into remembering (roughly) what I used to do (there's a lesson there - things which are routine to you today should be documented - even roughly - as a piece of knowledge you can hand on ­ or pick up years later!). My approach, I recall, went something like this:

1. Review the key tasks the person does (e.g., from a work plan, job description or annual plan - an annual plan triggers discussions of those activities that may be done only once a year but might not be at the forefront of one's mind at this time of year):
2. Discuss how they go about those tasks - especially any pitfalls;
3. Identify what knowledge they need to succeed in what they are doing;
4. Find out what they felt were reliable sources for that knowledge.

Ideally this should be done as a set of short sessions over a period during handover to a successor. Often, though, reality doesn't let it happen. Now, one of the advantages of using consultants is that as people leave, they can be brought back for the odd day or two later. On one of my current projects, we've just had someone back for three days after a gap of six weeks, to brief a new hire. Now when you lose people to new jobs, can you arrange that as part of their transfer deal? Karl Erik Sveiby, whose the next AOK Star, in a piece on valuing knowledge, suggests that knowledge workers should have transfer fees on their heads when they move from job to job. After all, aren't knowledge workers as valuable as footballers?

After thinking that exit interviews (with a knowledge capture focus) are a relatively a simple thing to do and could give useful returns if more people were encouraged to do them, I rushed to the KM strategy to see if they had been mentioned. They were - in one sentence in the middle of a few paragraphs of a core activity labeled knowledge capture.

This made me think - should a KM strategy give more attention to these simple practical things, rather than the big strategic picture?

What do you think? How seriously does your firm take capturing the knowledge of people who are about to leave?

Susan Bell, Wine Industry Information Officer, Huntfield Heights, Australia: I am a new member to AOK and am already finding the emails I receive each day very interesting. I am interested in the discussions, but do feel a little inadequate considering the well-known people who are contributing.

However, today's article on exit interviews is relevant to a process that I am about to go through to capture corporate information sources. This is not so much about people's jobs but about the sources of information they use, information that is held in their offices and knowledge about external people and organisations with particular areas of expertise.

David Skyrme's comment about knowledge management being handed to the KM worker when they arrive is also an interesting one. One of the problems is defining what comes under the banner of knowledge management within an organisation. There is a danger of tasks that nobody else wants suddenly becoming an "information workers" duty, while other roles and initiatives have to be shown to have benefit. We have to develop a corporate culture of information sharing rather than small pockets of information. While this is obvious and has been stated a million times it does take some time to develop this culture.

As a librarian working in a corporate information service I will be following all discussions with great interest.

David Skyrme: Take a two-word phrase:

• choose information or knowledge for the first word - choose audit or inventory for the second

That's what Susan is doing, and what most companies would benefit from in doing to some degree. Thus, those with Susan's background (librarian, information specialist) generally call it an information audit, and use the well respected techniques of IRM (Information Resources Management). I'm appalled at how little organizations really understand what knowledge is valuable (or even exists or is needed) and then go on to put in place processes to manage and nurture it properly. Whereas a reasonably complete information audit (information inventory, knowledge audit, knowledge inventory) might take 30-45 person-days, a first pass can be done in less than ten person-days and highlight significant areas of duplication or gaps in what people need, and pay for itself several times over.

No knowledge management strategy is complete without this essential first step - or if it hasn't been done, it should be the first recommendation / action line in the strategy (well - perhaps appoint a CKO or KM specialists first!).

Jerry Ash: While researching for new material for the AOK Libraries, Michele came across an interesting article at Destination CRM that was right on point with David Skyrme's thoughts on exit interviews.

In it, David Kent called attention to the rise in layoffs due to the downturn and the downfall of the World Trade Center and then said it was worth considering that each time an employee leaves a company some knowledge also "parts" -- I'm learning "English English" here. There's no new revelation there since KMers have fretted for years about how to "capture" tacit knowledge while the employee is on the job. But the use of the exit interview as a KM tool is a new twist, at least to me.

Questions bubble up rapidly, though, as you think about it. Just how do you go about convincing an employee to leave his knowledge behind when parting? Especially if it's involuntary! What knowledge is worth harvesting? When and how should it be done? Should there be incentives for knowledge sharing at the point of exit?

And, the most important question of all -- Have you -- I mean you -- had any experience with this? Susan Bell has given us some front line insights in another post. If you have some experience or are facing such a task, please share it with us. Like the most of us, David is suddenly on a quest for new knowledge. I know some of you have it! Share.

Graham Westwood: There is something inherently backwards (twisted perhaps) in the concept of exit interviews as the time to capture knowledge. Something akin to trying to fix quality problems at the end of the line rather than having designed out the bad processes in the first place. It speaks again to the concept of KM as a side show and not the main event. I am convinced that there would be little net gain from this process. The problem is not the lack of intellectual capital but its accessibility.

David Skyrme: Jerry rightly points out the whole issue of cooperation on leaving. If you are not leaving voluntarily why should you even bother to cooperate? Perhaps it all comes down to whether each party (the organization and the individual) regards their time as a job (paid for hire) or part of a symbiotic relationship. If the latter, you should have built up a good working relationship in which knowledge has been shared anyway, and the exit interview is just tidying up the loose ends. I have seen so many people leave for "pastures greener" in another firm, yet come back later - sometimes within days - so whatever the circumstances the future looking employee will always depart on good terms. This still leaves the paradox - that the less you capture knowledge on a regular basis, the more you need to capture it at exit, yet the less likely you have the mechanisms in place to do so or the leaver's willingness to cooperate!

One way of capturing leavers' knowledge is to keep them in your organization's extended knowledge network after they leave. Treat them as alumni, give them a retainer, invite them to events and give them assignments from time to time. Obviously, this may not be possible if they move to a direct competitor, but there are many circumstances where this would work, including moves between supplier and customer. Some companies make use of their retiree networks, even when members have had redundancy forced upon them, but who have left with an equitable package, good treatment and counselling, and remain in close contact. These may well be outsourced to specialist firms (thinking of something else that affects everybody - does your company have a Vice President of payroll?)

Stephen Denning, former KMer at The World Bank: On the issue of "mining the parting mind", we had some experience in some parts of the World Bank with something that was called "tacit knowledge download." This was a fancy name for something that was actually very simple.

Here's what we did. When someone was about to leave, we took the following steps:

Step 1: set up a two-hour interview with someone who knew the subject matter in depth as well as what the interviewee was thought to know.

Step 2: transcribe the tape (about 50 pages)

Step 3: hyperlink the text to reports on the subjects under discussion (i.e., links to several thousand pages)

Step 4: (most important) the interviewee's telephone number.

This is a fairly low cost and easy to get at what someone knows. You can expand the interviewers to include new recruits who can ask what they would like to know. In the end, it's the telephone number which is the key - talking about the problems and how to approach them and sometimes solve them - illustrating yet again that high value KM is more about connection than collection.

Carl Frappaolo, EVP, The Delphi Group: Exit interviews are a matter of too little too late. A departing employee is less apt to share what they know then an active employee. If I am leaving voluntarily, chances are my thoughts are elsewhere. If I am being asked to leave - well, we all know how that goes.

A knowledge strategy should specifically look to garnering knowledge daily, dynamically. Knowledge harvesting must occur on an ongoing basis. With careful planning and design, the impact on the individuals can be minimized.

With a sound strategy, the value realized should compel cooperation. It is the strategy that we come back to again, and this was the focus of my two weeks (as STAR SERIES moderator) - the knowledge audit. You cannot create a strategy without a clear understanding of what the business is trying to accomplish, its core competencies, its resources, its culture, its incentives, its competitive nature etc.

In the end it keeps coming back to this - know thyself - then you can determine the best way(s) to organize your knowledge resources, update them, communicate them, etc. Do not wait until someone is heading out the door to determine what they know. Think of all the missed opportunity this implies, for leveraging what they know while they are actively a part of the organization.

David Skyrme: Thanks to the inputs from two former AOK Stars and Graham Westwood on exit interviews.

Carl's "too little, too late" puts more succinctly what I was referring to as the paradox - if you haven't been capturing knowledge as you go along, then you need it more when someone leaves, yet may finder it harder to get! However, like the proverbial situation we often find ourselves in as consultants when a client is seeking a way forward, we are often minded to say: "if I were you I wouldn't start from here," so perhaps the loss of key knowledge might act as a wake up call.

A few years ago a colleague of mine and his team were given notice during a period of downsizing and cost-cutting by a major utility. They were (are) specialists in environmental assessment of new oil and gas projects. While they were working out their three months notice, they were asked if they would stay on because their organization would be in a fix. You can guess how many fingers they raised to their employers. The team moved en bloc to a consultancy where they carry on their speciality for a wider customer base - and, yes - you've guessed it, they do projects for their former employer but at a much higher cost than if they had still been employees.

And thank you, Steve, for your practical four-step approach. Your last point, about maintaining contact, is - as you say - key. The leaver should be considered an important part of the alumni network, and may in the future be available for more extensive knowledge transfer than just a casual phone call - there might even be a job or contract for them in the future, while the organization gains by working with someone whom they know.

Graham suggested that exit interviews give "little net gain". I don't agree. Properly done they are a useful addition to the organization's memory and knowledge base (though the incremental gain is indeed small if knowledge capture is a way of life within an organization). In such situations it is, as I suggested earlier, tidying up the loose ends and helping transfer (and time to effectiveness) for the job holder's successors - and that surely is a net gain. However, I do agree that exit interviews are a side show to the main KM challenges. So as we come to the final couple of sessions of this dialogue, would anyone who has not yet contributed like to summarize what they feel the main thrusts of KM strategy should be - or is - in their organizations?

Bob Parden: Knowledge Management is totally dependent on collaboration. I like to speak of cultivating a coalition attitude--"In the Big Picture, it is in my own best interest to cooperate by sharing, exiting or not."

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  If KM Fits Mission, Then It's a Natural Strategy

Jack Vinson, knowledge manager, biopharma division, Pharmacia: In one of the first posts in this thread, Jerry asks, "What is a strategy?" While it may seem a simple question, I think it is a good one. In my world,I have been learning that everything we do must be linked to some business need or function. In parallel to the process that Jerry describes for the Forbes Group, any organization worth its weight must set its high level "mission."

Unfortunately, the mission is frequently forgotten in the maze of every day activities. It is critical that the mission (or vision or whatever) be linked into the key functions of the organization and that those functions be linked to the regular activities in which people participate. If I am doing things that do not trace back to that mission, is the mission missing some component? Or am I doing things that do not add value, as the organization defines it?

So, my answer is that if KM fits the organizational mission, then it is a natural fit for a "strategy" for the organization. Whether it is defined as a separate strategy, or as part of several existing strategies, is probably not the important issue.

David Skyrme: Jack raises some good points about mission and vision.

One aspect of getting a strategy accepted is not only that it fits with corporate mission and objectives, but that it is well communicated. For this reason, I encourage KM teams to come up with corresponding mission and vision to accompany the KM strategy and make it more easily communicated. Sometimes advertising strap lines do it for you - like Ryder Truck rental's "knowledge in motion."

Embedding KM into the organization should be treated like any major change programme. You have in the organization a wide range of people who need to contribute to knowledge development and sharing if your strategy is to be successful. Some are enthusiasts, some are sceptics, and probably all of them are busy doing their 'day job', so you have to create some compelling messages to get their attention. Further, you have to deliver them in appropriate ways. For example, it is much better to get a client of the KM team's activities to become a spokesperson and featured in an internal 'case study' (with a video of course!).

Coming up with a succinct mission and vision is quite a challenge. A mission should explain the essence of what the KM initiative is about, ideally in a single sentence (you can always explain individual phrases in additional explanatory sentences ... and please, not one that is so generic to be meaningless like "we deliver the best customer service". I think of the components as 1) the customers / stakeholders; 2) what you benefit them (your deliverables or outcomes) and 3) your added value activities (if you can help them access quality knowledge quicker then why do KM?). In one case a corporate plan had a key statement - "we aim to be the best source of knowledge about Y in the UK". Therefore the KM mission was built around the notion of a knowledge centre as a hub of that knowledge: "The KnowX centre - building pathways to the best knowledge about Y". From this flowed objectives, an action plan, measures and a KM awareness presentation. And when the knowledge centre opened, many of the techniques of traditional marketing were used - buffet and networking with the senior directors, coffee mats, mouse mats, a single help desk number etc.

The bottom line is that a KM strategy helps everyone get to grips with how KM can help the business, puts in place a vision and identifies some key steps to get there - just like any other change initiative really!!

Bruce Butterfield, President & CEO, The Forbes Group, Fairfax, VA: Since The Forbes Group came up, I thought I'd stop lurking and jump in. Jack Vinson is right that work must attach to the organization's mission. The answer to the question he poses -- Is the mission or the work wrong if the two don't connect? -- is the latter. The organization's mission is a clear, concise statement of its businesses. So if the work doesn't fit the mission, then it's the wrong work.

Jack's also right that KM is a strategy. However, from some recent research we've done, the future of KM seems to be similar to the future of quality management -- absorption into the standard operating procedures of the organization. It will become part of the organizational protoplasm. In an interesting sidebar, some ways are saying that the title CIO really means career is over.

David Skyrme: Bruce cites Forbes research: "the future of KM seems to be similar to the future of quality management -- absorption into the standard operating procedures of the organization." Right on - I always remember interviewing CKOs when KM was fairly new (at least in name) in 1995-6. Several saw their mission as "working themselves out of a job," since KM would then be so embedded into everybody's responsibility. Just as in the chemical industry, there are many fewer full-time safety managers, since every plant manager - indeed every employee and contractor - has safety consciousness emblazoned on their forehead. I would just add, that I do expect a small core group of KM specialists to remain, to uphold the standards and skills base ­ however these may well be outsourced to specialist firms (thinking of something else that affects everybody - does your company have a Vice President of payroll?).

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  People as Pawns or Knowledge Resources?

Frans Koomen, Lecturer, RMIT Business Information Technology, Melbourne, Australia: I apologise in advance for the length of this contribution and being a little late with this response. There were just some thoughts which I needed to share (and test with the experts).

I have read with interest the debate on what I call the "Commodification of Knowledge."

To the organisation the "stuff in peoples head" is indeed of limited value due to its transient nature. When the person leaves the organisation the knowledge leaves with them. Like many others, I would like to believe that knowledge management is about people but the words "knowledge management" indicate that it is about managing knowledge. Here Lori's focus on the word management is useful as it brings me back to reality. I recall (correct me if I'm wrong) that Lori believed management to be about control. Management as the control of people worked well in the industrial era. In Taylorism the aim was not to extract knowledge from the worker but to rely as little as possible on the worker's knowledge. This was achieved by making the worker highly specialised and thus requiring little knowledge as possible. By limiting the knowledge required from each worker, the organisation was less vulnerable to the loss of the worker's knowledge.

In the knowledge era this paradigm no longer works as we are no longer competing on efficiency alone but very much on quality. In the knowledge economy, focus is still on the control of knowledge but instead of restricting it we need to capture and organise it and put it to use around the organisation to give us a competitive edge.

There is nothing new about knowledge management. Nature and mankind have been managing knowledge for ever. Evolution is a form of knowledge management. Only those with the appropriate knowledge survive. Life started as simple organisms, and evolved into a beings with a complex DNA (knowledgebase?). Instead "encouraging the organisation to throw out everything and start all over", which would mean abandoning the knowledgebase that exists and try to recreate it, it would be better for the knowledge manager to become the catalyst for evolution - like the rain & sun it can transform the earth.

Jerry asks "Do snake oil and strategy mix?" For the peddler snake oil is the strategy, that's why he keeps on moving all the time. It may be a very good short term strategy but may be destructive in the long term. In our current corporate climate, it is the short term strategies which are encouraged. We need to see change in the tri-annual performance reviews, not the next 5 years. KM roles are relatively new roles and we can often move on to a new position (because of our experience) before our past starts catching up with us.

David's call to move from "knowledge management" to "knowledge leadership" is an admirable vision but is it practical? It is an ideal for an individual. Leadership is about people but is business about people? I was at a corporate governance conference a few years back and at the end of the conference a company director sitting next to me pointed out that although every annual report mentions the value of the employees, they didn't rate a mention at the conference.

Ultimately business is about profit (from a shareholder perspective) and employees are the means to this profit. Leadership may be people focused management and if the people work well (better than the competition) profits will be up. Leadership in other words may be viewed as manipulation of the fellow workers (my dictionary defines manipulation as "manage by dexterous use of influence"). In a knowledge economy it is important to make tacit knowledge explicit. The ideal for all to share their knowledge and capture it in the process and then present it for others to use. Dexterous use of influence will be important.

I agree with David that the view that "knowledge resides solely with people" is a very narrow perspective. For me knowledge is information used by people. In an organisational context, knowledge is information used by people to fulfill the organisation's objectives. In other words it is a subset of the whole domain of information and the challenge is to manage the information overload, find organisational knowledge and present it so that the process of the knowledge spiral is optimal.

Kaplan and Norton's balanced scorecard identifies three main areas human, structural and customer. Where:

• Human: focuses the people in the organisation
• Structural: focuses on the infrastructure including organisational structure, technology, info centres ...
• Customer: Instead of customer I prefer to use relationship capital as this would relate to any knowledge outside the organisation including, suppliers, governments etc.

I have encouraged the use of David's 3-5 rule in the past and would encourage that at all levels (i.e., don't go seven sub strategies) with three to five you can keep all the issues in one hand and thus leaving the other hand free to be creative. After all, this should apply to all levels of the organisation, not just the top level.

Knowledge management strategies need to be developed in light of the organisational strategies and it is probably here that many KM efforts come to grief. Many organisations do not have a clear strategy. Knowledge for knowledge sake (which is really information for information sake) leads to information overload. The first effort of a KM effort must be to find out what the organisation does or is trying to do. The second step then will be to map the knowledge and the knowledge flows to fit the organisational strategy. It is probably wise to develop a political strategy within the KM efforts to prepare for (or prevent) potential power shifts within the organisation.

I am not sure KM "puts in place a vision" but should "identifies some key steps to get there" (David, Issue 82) It may even lead to a new vision and strategy but ultimately KM must remain subservient to the vision and strategy of the organisation.

I have found the discussion on exit interviews mildly amusing. I wonder what knowledge can be gained at that stage. The information gathered at that stage could be very tainted. I would favour ongoing involvement in workplace review, management and reform. The effort might be better focused on setting up an ongoing relationship.

Overall, thank you for a stimulating discussion to date.

Steve Denning: Frans Koomen wrote: "Ultimately business is about profit (from a shareholder perspective) and employees are the means to this profit. Leadership may be people focused management and if the people work well (better than the competition) profits will be up. Leadership in other words may be viewed as manipulation of the fellow workers (my dictionary defines manipulation as "manage by dexterous use of influence")."

Not sure, Frans, whether you wrote this tongue in cheek. The formulation, if taken seriously, of using employees merely as tools to be manipulated would help explain why employees are likely to feel fundamental distrust towards a management who holds such beliefs. In this philosophy, "people-focused management" becomes superior, and ever more dexterous and devious, forms of people-manipulation. The employees, not being stupid, start feeling manipulated and used, and in turn begin to hoard their knowledge, and use and manipulate and rip off the organization for their own interests which they now perceive as being at odds with those of the organization. Productivity crumbles and pretty soon the organization is in the downward spiral that we now see so often all over the world. It is a lose-lose situation all around. Even within the framework of its own Machiavelian philosophy of manipulation, it is very ineffective manipulation.

Until the management can raise its sights and its values somewhat higher and recognize that its staff are not merely things to be manipulated but human beings who have interests, families, values, creativity and knowledge, and who if treated as people with trust and respect will in turn for the most part treat the organization with trust and respect and give their best on a sustained basis. Only thus can the situation become win-win.

Keith De La Rue, Knowledge Development, Telstra, Melbourne, Australia: I am writing in response to Steve Denning's statement: "Until . . . management can . . . recognize that its staff are not merely things to be manipulated but human beings who have interests, . . . if treated as people with trust and respect will in turn for the most part treat the organization with trust and respect and give their best . . . ."

I would like to go a step further - in this era of cost-cutting and job-shedding, we see organisations treating "employees as only a cost to be cut." In addition to treating staff as human beings, are there any organisations that actually account for "employees as assets," rather than liabilities? That would be the ultimate in win-win. I want to work there.

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  Final Responses; Summary

David Skyrme: Thanks for some good additional comments from various colleagues. I like Steve's third point about communicating outcomes after having a good meeting. I'm struggling with this from one last week. Ten people met for an hour and a half and all I get is half a page note with some expectations that I will do something to move a project forward. Also, the project manager, who might know, was on holiday so could not attend the meeting. So both of us are chasing the stakeholders on a one by one basis to figure out what they want. Obviously the meeting was so good nobody had time to write any decent notes! That's also one of the problems of developing effective teams. Over time the team works so well together but is in danger of neglecting the interfaces with the world around it.

Debra offers a strategy for downsizing. Regrettably too many organizations do it in a climate where they get obsessed with one or two key numbers - like head count - and can't see ahead through the tunnel. Once such mentality sets in, there is a vicious downward spiral. If only there were innovators who see a way forward and can make their voices heard in such a climate.

Frans covers several threads of earlier discussion, but there is one phrase that might jar with some people: "ultimately business is about profit," although he does qualify it with "from a shareholder perspective."

More and more people are questioning this. Isn't it fundamentally about what is important to the owners and managers of the business, and that need not be money? Some people value money; others challenge, others a balanced lifestyle. It is no accident that quite a few successful businesses, like The John Lewis Partnership in the UK, do not put profit at the top of their objectives. Similarly, companies like Virgin and Body Shop through their founders have other objectives, and several have bought their companies back from the stock market into private companies. Yes - it's the large Fortune 500 companies that get visibility, but the biggest business in the world is small business (accounting for over half the economy in many countries), where the majority of their shareholders (typically family and friends), are content with making a reasonable living, but value other factors more highly (why be a baker that gets up at 3:30 am every morning to bake the best bread in town, when you could earn more working in a factory?).

In the UK there is an organization called Tomorrow's Company (formed after Charles Handy gave a lecture at the RSA titled "what is a company for?"). Its members - including some top ranking companies - put stakeholder value and relationships as key objectives - profit for shareholders is balanced against employee, customer, community and other stakeholder benefits.

Frans draws us to a useful close with the re