The knowledge corporations

The Human Factor

Cut out the management jargon and the answer actually is a rather straightforward one. The purpose of an elaborate knowledge management (KM) system is the belief that in today's information-driven economy, companies uncover opportunities and ultimately derive the maximum value from intellectual rather than physical assets.

The best return from intellectual assets can come only if a knowledge data bank is created and shared with others. After all, the sustainable competitive advantage a company has, comes only from what it collectively knows.

Leading corporations all over the world are doing precisely this to stay at the cutting edge of technology and competitiveness.

Ask Hindustan Lever, which has institutionalised the process of linking people to people in teams through formal/informal structures, for them to effectively share knowledge.

The company has created "communities of practice" that comprise a team of people who are practitioners of a well-defined knowledge domain (packaging, sales, engineering and so on) who come together to capture, create and share relevant knowledge.

Apart from regular face-to-face meetings, the teams have developed intranet applications with collaborative working tools to facilitate knowledge sharing on a continuous basis.

Or, take the case of Infosys, which is the only Indian company to have won the prestigious Global Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises Award for 2003.

To make sure that the top leadership is fully involved in KM, a steering committee at the board level supervises the progress and backs the deployment of knowledge management initiatives across the company.

Infosys has also devised a system called People Knowledge Map which essentially is a kind of a Yellow page linking people to his expertise.

The Map ensures that people with specialised knowledge are available for knowledge transfer to others in the organisation and continuously update their recent skills in the pages.

Realising that no such system can sustain itself without a proper incentive system, the company has devised a reward programme by which knowledge sharers are given gift certificates that can be redeemed in on-line stores. They are also felicitated and given wide visibility for their contributions.

Others are also not far behind. Samsung India, for example, has developed a web-enabled learning system, called e-learning Centre, which can be accessed by all its employees.

The purpose: inculcating a culture of knowledge sharing and knowledge distribution with information available anytime and anywhere.

Some companies like Siemens, which have operations across the globe, have provided employees with a KM implementation guide, which is something like a best practices sharing bible.

To facilitate this, Siemens gives all its business units a KM toolbox that contains information for building effective communities and covers such topics as creating incentive systems, assessing the progress of a knowledge community and so on.

Since a lot of expertise transcends business unit barriers, everything is put in a common knowledge portal which every employee can access.

But the most enduring models of highly successful KM systems remain the ones devised by GE and Microsoft "" companies that go to extraordinary lengths to hire and retain people with strong intellects and capabilities.

GE, for example, invests nearly $1 billion a year in career development "" both on the job and through leadership programmes. The company's boundary-less environment also supports "horizontal learning".

Through GE's professional communities and networking forums, people talk to each other and share knowledge. Sales people share leads, engineers share technologies and people share ideas resulting in great innovations.

Microsoft has a project called Skills Planning "und" Development (SPUD), which is focused heavily on the issue of identifying and maintaining knowledge competencies. This is to ensure that software developers and marketers are able to acquire new skills quickly.

There are five major components to Microsoft's SPUD project: development of a structure of competency types and levels, defining the competencies required for particular jobs; rating the performance of individual employees in particular jobs based on the competencies and implementing the knowledge competencies in an on-line system.

Here's a small example to show how the company has used the KM tool to its advantage. A Microsoft manager seeking to build a team for a new project might not know personally all of the employees who might be qualified for the job.

Therefore, he would query the on-line system and ask, "Give me the top five candidates who have leadership skill levels on 80 per cent of the competencies for this job."

However, the mistake companies often make is to treat KM as a function of technology alone. Have a great digital system and the rest would work as a dream is a constant refrain.

In the process, what is forgotten is that the success of any project depends upon the behaviours of the individuals who would use it.

This is why HR professionals in the company should be brought on board to create an environment where an individual's knowledge is valued and rewarded, establishing a culture that recognises tacit knowledge and encourages employees to understand that sharing of knowledge is critical.

Also, it is important to integrate KM into existing business processes in the company. It should not be seen as a separate initiative as an executive is already hard-pressed for time and is loth to taking additional initiatives.