Managing Knowledge

From the Book: Who Should Read This Book? Is your company saving millions of dollars by getting people the information they need? Are you sharing information effectively across time zones, cultures, and geographic boundaries? Do you have corporate standards for creating, capturing, and delivering important content? At the end of the 20th century, will your organization be among the shrinking number of companies who aren't managing knowledge? Many companies realize they need to do this, but they don't know how to begin. This book will help you get started with a knowledge management (KM) project. To that end, we focus on the practical application of concepts and techniques that have been useful to us in our efforts. We believe you can use these concepts and procedures in setting up and running your own Web-based KM initiative. Is This Book Right for You? This book is for those people who have read some or all of the academic literature on KM, and who (along with their bosses) are convinced that they need to go down this path. Hopefully, you have a champion and an understanding of your company's long-range plan (LRP). If not, you need to target someone and make them read Working Knowledge by Thomas H. Davenport and Laurence Prusak, Intellectual Capital by Thomas A. Stewart, and The Knowledge-Creating Company by Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi, among the many other academic studies on this important topic. These are excellent discussions of the scope of KM, and they were some of the important early motivators for us. But for those of you looking to get a project or initiative off the ground, this book can help. Maybeyou've been formally charged with looking into KM and coming back with some recommendations, but you're not sure where to start. Perhaps your company has a functioning Intranet or Extranet, but the content is out of date and no one seems to be taking the lead on keeping it "fresh." Maybe you have an Intranet with thousands of pages, but you constantly hear the complaint, "I can't find anything, and when I do, I don't know if it's accurate." If you are facing these circumstances, this book is for you. Why This Book Is Different While the academic literature on KM is essential reading, there are some important differences between Managing Knowledge and those earlier works. The difference is that those books are exceptionally good at convincing you that you should do KM, but we'll try to convince you that you can do it. Accordingly, we make some assumptions that may or may not be shared with these other works. Assumption One: Knowledge management does not have to be "profound." Our purpose is not to address the nature of knowledge. Rather, we want to help you get the right information to the right people so they can take effective action. In this sense, our definition of "managing knowledge" is much more modest than what you may have read elsewhere. It involves understanding who needs what content to be successful in their jobs. In this book, we give you the tools and techniques to make these determinations. Assumption Two: You have a champion and are figuring out how to get started. While it is necessary to "think big," you'll need to "start small." Managing Knowledge is about picking a strategic place in your organization that can benefit from managing its knowledge and getting started. In this sense, we aren't going to take on the whole concept of KM. In fact, we're not interested in trying to define the entire scope of this important emerging field. We leave that to others. Accordingly, we don't undertake "literature surveys" or try to delve into the history of knowledge in Western society. Assumption Three: Document management concepts, technologies, and procedures provide the basic discipline to kick off a successful effort. The document is an important concept for getting started. In most cases, documents are going to be the vehicles for knowledge. Whether we're talking about HTML pages with links to other documents, application presentation layers with a view into databases, e-mail messages, or multimedia presentations, your focus will be moving knowledge inside and outside your company using documents. That said, document management provides the central framework and discipline for successfully capturing, validating, and moving content to employees, partners, and customers. We discuss in detail how to set up classification systems (a.k.a. metadata) and the importance of "tagging" documents with consistent classifications. Without these skills, even so-called collaborative technologies won't be as effective as they could be. Assumption Four: Yours is a mid- to large-size company with an Intranet and Extranet, as well as an Internet presence. Everything we say in this book assumes that you are (or are going to be) leveraging Web-based technologies to move data, information, and knowledge. While conference calls, digital whiteboards, and pen and paper are viable tools, we believe that the most efficient way to move information within a mid- to large-size company (1000 employees or more) is via an Intranet. We also assume that your company is willing to fund a KM effort. Smaller companies that are centrally located and "tight knit" may be able to move information using less sophisticated means. But if you're larger and globally dispersed—and especially if you have an extensive partnership network—you must have an Intranet/Extranet. Assumption Five: Your business is consciously preparing for the information economy. Your executives or boss or someone influential (maybe you) believes that your company must begin retooling itself for the information economy. You don't need convincing any longer. Rather, you want to get started so that you can reap the benefits of competitive advantage before these advantages dry up and become "me too" processes and "best business practices." We'll help you get started by providing a method for taking the oversized concept that is KM and breaking it down into digestible parts that you can implement in the near term. Acknowledgments Much of the practical, hard-won knowledge that went into this book was the result of long hours spent between 1994 and 1998 developing solutions and approaches to worldwide, Web-based KM challenges at J.D. Edwards, a business software developer in Denver, Colorado. Thanks go to J.D. Edwards officers Ed McVaney, Chairman of the Board; Buffy Collison, senior vice president of worldwide marketing; and Gay Dickerson, director of media creators, for sharing our vision and helping lead the way. Members of our Knowledge Resource Strategies Group who helped develop and refine the concepts presented in this book, and with whom it has been a great pleasure to work, include Kristen Schiffner, Bob Zasuly, Michael Lavker, Meredith Monticello, and Debbie Arellano. Special thanks also go to Laurie Fetterolf, J.D. Edwards information and interface designer extraordinaire, who in addition to refining many KM concepts at J.D. Edwards also designed this book. Eagle-eyed online editor K.P. Nelson has been a tremendous help. Many J.D. Edwards technologists deserve praise and credit here as well: Paul Orsak, founder of the Knowledge Garden, and those who helped get us off the ground, including our Internet Services Group and IT department under CIO Mark Endry, and our MIS director Gerry Coady. There are of course many other individuals too numerous to mention. A tip of the hat goes to SkyWeb's Brian Ward. Thanks to Deb Blecha of Raymond James Consulting. Lee Butler, Sherri Philips, Henry Winkler, and Tulsi Dharmarajan of Microsoft Consulting Services Denver gave much of their time, effort, and support. Thanks to Susan Kannel and Betty Konarski at the Office of Corporate Education at Regis University in Denver. Thanks to Alexis de Planque, senior consultant of Meta Group. Thanks to Denise Vega and Chris Katsaropoulos for paving the path for first-time authors. Thank you to the residents of Steamboat Springs, Colorado for openness to new ideas, friendship, and kind considerations over the years. Thanks also to our charming and seemingly tireless editor, Elizabeth Spainhour of Addison Wesley Longman, who—appropriately enough—we met over the Internet and who has been a strong supporter of Managing Knowledge in every way, from day one. Ultimately, of course, without loving support from all our family members, this effort would not have been possible: Susan, Madeline, Mitchel, Lee, and Cal Globe; Michelle, Sam, and Jordan Applehans; and Pam Moore. —Denver, Parker, and Steamboat Springs, Colorado, 1998