Opps.. the title seems intriguing indeed. Yes, I've been missing for so long... Since I returned from studies it has been a rough ride back to work. Especially when some people my organisation deemed us who went to further our studies as "going on a honeymoon", makes it harder to fit in back. Ah well, though I'm no chameleon, I think I did well so far. Yes, I'm down but that doesn't mean that I'm defeated. Yes, it's a war zone here.
The state of KM in my organisation is also resembles the subject of this writing piece. It's down but I don't really think that it's dead. Not yet. The KM unit in my organisation is really short of staff. 2 lower management is full time on projects and much of the unit's administration and reporting job are under their direct responsibility. A couple of executives like myself is torn apart into multiple projects and ad-hoc assignments with little support and guidance from our supervisors.As a result, many task we done blindly without guidance and support from the lower management causing us to get "shot" when the middle management were to review our progress. It may get worst when our own supervisors also to took the opportunity to "gun" us down too in front of the middle managers.
My own reflection here is that, for the practice of KM to flourish, there should be consistent support from the top and middle management to foster teamwork, collaboration, continuous improvement and etc. The path of punishing and downgrading oneself should not happen at all. If it does happen then this may be one of the first signal of a sick organisation.
A lot of people I met when we talk about KM mostly focused KM in large or big sized organisations. Not many spoke about KM in small business and its relevance. Maybe due to the small size, the organisation could easily manage its knowledge. Yes, if its own tacit knowledge and explicit knowlede, yet to some extent! Usually KM implementations are done by developing a KM system or implementing an IT tool for the organisation. This is usually very expensive and beyond the reach of small businesses. As a result, small businesses do not see KM relevant theme for their business.
KM can hekp small business in many ways that do not require them to implement expensive solutions. Some of the examples of KM job for small business would be:
1. Knowledge mapping - this would include mapping out of the business operational knowledge and flow, knowledge maps of internal resources and external resourcesThe list can go on and on. But the most important thing for KM practitioners is to provide a balance view of what KM is all about. Which is more than IT, technology and data. It's all about human. If business fail to recognize this, then they fail to recognize their own valuable assets.
2. Strategic planning
3. Human development
4. Process management
One of my uni mates asked what course I'm doing, I replied Knowledge Management. I could see clearly that he's grappling in his mind, what is knowledge management (KM). Then he asked me, can we manage knowledge since it is very much in the head? I told him, yes we can manage knowledge but it is not easy to do. He smiled...
Indeed, managing knowledge is difficult. Where I work in Malaysia, the organization has a comprehensive KM framework, covering both human and technological aspects. However, after almost 6 years of implementing KM, we are still struggling.
The organization has provided excellent infrastructure such as email, electronic forums, intranet, database systems and meeting rooms to promote sharing of knowledge. This is really good as I've seen good contents on the intranet, our databases are filled with data and a lot of documents are shared on the servers. However, those are more to explicit knowledge transfer/creation.
One problem that I realised about my organization is that the 'knowledge culture' is yet to flourish. Maybe due to the highly political background of the organization, but also due to the negative culture that has been within the organization for a very long time. For example, blaming is notoriously practiced there. Peter Senge did mention about this and blaming should stop for organization to succeed in managing its knowledge.
Another problem is that my workmates sometimes complained that there's no time for chit-chat which in turn limits the socialisation required to transfer tacit knowledge.
I'll stop here first to see if there's any feedbacks.
Have a productive k-day! :)