What I know about Knowledge Management ? ;) 

It has been one semester for me to learn about Knowledge Management, at first what I know about Knowledge Management is just some basic information about it. Today, I'm going to talk about what I understood so far about Knowledge Management.

As we know, Knowledge Management are formed from two simple words, which are "Knowledge" and "Management"; however, interestingly both of the meaning and concept of these two words are much more complicated.

Starting with "Knowledge", we all have learned about it is created by having a basic data, turned into information and developed into knowledge. Furthermore, knowledge can bring wisdom to people. Where all of these will be so much important for a company to master.

As in Management, it is how we manage, organize, develop something to be more useful, to be more understandable, transferable, and useable.

Combining these two words, it simply means how a company manage the existing knowledge so these knowledge are able to spread widely and usefully throughout the employees, so that company is able to gain more benefits and competitive advantage.

A "Knowledge Management" comes with 3 components as below:

 

 We can see that how this picture places People as the most important component with 70%. It means that even a company has created a good process and technology to support their knowledge management program; it will never success once the people are not willing to cooperate. 

To enable the "people", it has never been easy to any company, because people tend to prefer owning knowledge on its own, not sharing knowledge. So if a company wants to make it Knowledge Management success, it has to start with creating a knowledge sharing friendly environment. Once the people around are willing to share their own knowledge, it is when the knowledge of a company is started to get accumulated. 

As theories, there are many talking about knowledge management, one of my previous posts shows the theory, and here is another one from Nonaka and Takeuchi knowledge conversions. 

A lot of companies have actually implemented various knowledge management programs, some of them gained huge success, while some of them fail in meeting what they expect for. 

For example, the previous video post from me shows how Unilever success in implementing their knowledge management program. *you can take a look at the video. 

Another great example is how Bank Central Asia uses Community of Practice to push sharing knowledge and creating knowledge.

Last but not least, what I want to say is, in this era, there are numerous companies that are performing so well, being so creative. But current success never defines future success. The key to keep this success is now depending on how smartly a company is able to manage their knowledge. :D

 Knowledge Management Introduction and Implementation in Unilever

 

 

Our group has created a short video in introducing what is knowledge management, what kind of difficulties company face in implementing. Furthermore, we show you how Unilever managed to successfully implementing a series of Creative Knowledge Management Programs.

Today, I'm going to post about the slide from discussion of a HP case:

Another case done by our team, regarding Xerox:

There are actually 4 approaches discuss about the KM cycle, which are Meyer and Zack (1996), Bukowitz and Williams (2000), McElroy (1999,2003), and Wiig (1993). All of them have their own similar yet different steps talking about KM cycle. So, if you are trying to learn about KM cycle, you can actually pick one that you feel comfortable and confidence about, and then try to analyze further.

And today, I'm going to discuss the KM cycle based on The Meyer and Zack and relates it to my own knowledge. It basically consists of 5 different steps:

1. Acquisition

 Firstly, I am able to acquire my knowledge from many different sources. Some of them might only cost me time, yet some of them might actually cost me money. These all can be said as the raw materials that I acquire for my ownself. A lot of aspect might be very important, like i have to concern about the accuracy, timeliness and things. For example, when people teach me about how to find a solution, some of their insights might be more from subjective opinion.

2. Refinement

 Since not all information I get are prepared in a good way and objective, so I need this step to further filter the information I got. By doing this, I am able to add more value to the information I have. Some things I will do to realize this step is by rethinking about it, like how far the information actually I need. What is important and valuable to me, and what is actually not.

3. Storage retrieval

 To store them, there are many ways that I can do. The simplest one is taking notes. I will write them on notes to make it more structured, so I can record the information better and it will be easier for me to reieew them in the future. Besides, I might also take notes directly in laptop. Or preapre them in presentation files or documents. These applications are really helpful for people that want to store their knowledge.

4. Distribution

 I basically have some ways to distribute the knowledge I have. Like I might just share and discuss it with people around me, especially for my junior that need this kind of knowledge too. Like those are interested in joining competitions. The next approach is by presenting in a more formal way. Like delivering a training, in this kind of distribution, I need to have more preparation, like some presentation files, and deliver them in a more structured way so other peoople can get the main points. We might also create some FGD, by having FGD not only I am the one share my knowledge, but also I get a lot of knowledge from others. So, we can learn from one another which is very very helpful.

5. Presentation

Last but not least, here comes the presentation or use. It's when i'm joining competition and directlly use my knowledge, starting from public speaking skill, problem solving skill, delivering skill, analyzing skill, and so many others. I need to combile all the knowledge I knew and learned previously once in a compeititons.
 And when I lose, I definitely have to evaluate what the mistakes that I made that lead to my failure. Because by having evaluation, it can trigger us to do better next time.

This week, I'm going to talk about how I apply my knowledge in the Knowledge Management Life Cycle. As we learned, there might be some different versions of that life cycle, and today the one I'm going to use is consisted of 6 steps, which are captured, created, codified, shared, applied, and finally we have reuse.

The specific topic I'm going to share is about joining Business Competitions.

1. Captured

From someone that knows nothing, I started capturing the knowledge from watching my seniors in competitions and they would also give us trainings related to this field. Furthermore, they would also share a lot of real life experiences they got in joining competitions, and also provided some tips and tricks to be good in performing.

However, to bee good, this is not enough for sure. To be able to improve my presenting skill, I would watch some tutorials in Youtube. There are great tutorials where the experts will tell us what is exactly a good presentation and public speaking.

Last but not least, books and Google are also a great help of mine, when I got a specific topic that i'm not familiar with, of course all I need is getting to know about it first.

2. Created

After capturing the knowledges, of course when all of them are mixing together with my current knowledge, idea and experience, I am able to produce / think of new things. It might be a strategy, solution, a concept or whatever it is.

But those new things I created in my mind can be very scattered and unorganized, it might pop up sometimes, but gone forever after that. That is why they are really forgotten easily.

3. Codified

To avoid the scattered/ forgotten knowledge, the best way is to codify them. There are a lot of things we can do for this step. For instance, I would prefer choosing taking notes. Sometimes, if there are things that will be used repeatedly, I will also prepare them in direct presentation files. So when I'm n another competitions, I only need to copy it and this makes things faster and easier to be done.

By doing those things, I am able to have a chance for myself to organize my knowledge in a more structured way.

4. Shared

Sharing is the best things to get more. To share one's knowledge, there are so many ways. For instance, I will normally join FGD and discuss with others, In a discussion, we are not only the one share our knowledge, but we are also the one absorb other's knowledge. So it's a win-win condition.

Besides, I will sometimes be invited to share my experience to the juniors from Information System. This is also a good chance for me to share things that I know, or even the sharing process can occur as simple as when I'm talking to other people about business case competitions.

5. Applied

When I'm joining a competition, it can be said as the best time for me to apply my knowledge. Because I need to combine all things / stuff I learned and implement them for achieving something great, which is winning the competitions. And this is also the besti time for me to really remind myself all knowledge I once got.

6. Reuse

Those knowledge I have, I'm able to reuse them in my daily life. Like it improves my analyzing skill, decision making skill and also increases my confidence. Furthermore, I am also helped in my college life, like those knowledge can be used in classes' presentation.  

Competence, Capability, and Technology

Hereby, I'm going to talk about these 3 points that I have.

1. Competence

Talking about competence, it is talking about what we know. For these few years, of course I have been knowing and even learning many things. For instance, in terms of soft skills and hard skills:

• Critical: I learn how to be critical in thinking, especially solving problems and this is very important in real life. 
• Analyzing skill: by being able to analyze things properly and this helps me a lot when in decision making too. 
• English: a language everybody knows, but might not mastering it. But being able to join BNEC, I am able to clearly understand the importance of this specific language. 
• Presentation skill: being able to talk in front of people is not easy, especially in front of many people and speak confidently, effectively, and attractively. I might not mastering it yet, but for the least thing is I start getting it.
• Design: I was a multimedia student when I was in vocational school, and it was my starting point in learning photoshop. 

 2. Capability

From the competences I have, I have been trying to apply them in a better way to be a better person.

For example, I have been staying active in organzation, BNEC. In BNEC, I can really shaping my those skills I have. People might think that BNEC might only provide English skill, but actually BNEC was the first place for me developing critical and analyzing skill.

Not only that, in recent years, I have been joining business competitions. By joining competitions, I am able to step into my competences further like even practicing critical and analyzing skill, as wells as English, presentation skill, and sometimes I even need design skill.

3. Technology

Nowadays, who doesn't use technology; especially for me as a Sistem Information student.
I learn programming using C#, Visual Basic, HTML, and many other programs. I learn designing using photoshop, I even learn how to analyze data with some tools or applications.