APO study meeting on KM

APO sponsored me for Study Meeting on Methodologies for Knowledge Management Measurement (23-26 October 2007, Manila, Philippines). The Implementing Organization was Development Academy of the Philippines (DAP).

The resource speakers were:

1. Mr. John Robert VUCKO, Principal, Consultant
2. Mr. Praba NAIR,Director, KDiAsia
3. Dr. Rory L. CHASE, Managing Director , Teleos

The interaction and learning from fellow participants from 22 countries from Asia was excellent. I realized during the conference that language is not a barrier for communication, as i always understood.

The presentation by John Vucko on Dance of Intangibles was very practical, and seemed that some experiment has been in process by him.

All of use debated on:

• People are still very important.
• Technology is Enabler
• virtual team and electronic trust
• Measure knowledge within people
• questioning, Innovating and developing.
• Creating a learning organization
• Transforming Enterprise Knowledge to Organizational wealth
• We only measure tangibles.
• Intangible assets are essentially knowledge assets.
• Trust is the bandwidth of KM
• Leaders need to focus on intangibles.
• 3H - Head, Heart and Hand
• Hand - Project Team
• Heart - Community
• Head - People
• Collectors or connector
• Message vs Meaning
• 3 A - Ask, Act and acknowledge.
• Knowledge driven company

WORSHOP OUTPUTS

The frame work on KM and KM Measurement was discussed and suggestive framework was evoloved during the conference.

Competency mapping

During the colloboration the experts emphasized on source mapping based on knowledge, family background, Intelligence, Energy, Motive, self concept etc. But I could relate comptency mapping more as Gap Analysis for the present work force and determining one's strength as individual and in some cases, as part of an organization to foster team work and productivity.

Relationship

TRUST

Trust is a very important factor for all relationships. When trust isbroken, it is the end of the relationship. Lack of trust leads to suspicion,suspicion generates anger, anger causes enmity and enmity may result inseparation.A telephone operator told me that one day she received a phone call.She answered, "Public Utilities Board." There was silence. Sherepeated, "PUB." There was still no answer. When she was going to cut off theline, she Heard a lady's voice, "Oh, so this is PUB.Sorry, I got the number frommy Husband's pocket but I do not know whose number it is."Without mutual trust, just imagine what will happen to the couple if thetelephone operator answered with just "hello" instead of "PUB".------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

N O POINTING FINGERS

A man asked his father-in-law, "Many people praised you for a successfulmarriage. Could you please share with me your secret?"The father-in-law answered in a smile, "Never criticize your wife ! for hershortcomings or when she does something wrong. Always bear in mind that becauseof her shortcomings and weaknesses, she could not find a better husband thanyou."We all look forward to being loved and respected. Many people are afraid oflosing face. Generally, when a person makes a mistake, he would look around tofind a scapegoat to point the fing er at. This is the start of a war. We shouldalways remember that when we point one finger at a person, the other fourfingers are pointing at ourselves.If we forgive the others, others will ignore our mistake too.------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

CREATING PERFECT RELATIONSHIPS?

A person visited the government matchmaker for marriage, SDU, and requested "Iam looking for a spouse. Please help me to find a suitable one." The SDU officersaid, "Your requirements, please." "Oh, good looking, polite, humorous , sporty,knowledgeable, good in singing and dancing. Willing to accompany me the wholeday at home during my leisure hour, if I don't go out. Telling me interesting stories when I needcompanion for conversation and be silent when I want to rest." The officerlistened carefully and replied, "I understand ! you need television."There is a saying that a perfect match can only be found between a blind wifeand a deaf husband ,because the blind wife cannot see the faults of the husbandand the deaf husband cannot hear the nagging of the wife. Many couples are blindand deaf at the courting stage and dream of perpetual perfect relationship.Unfortunately, when the excitement of love wears off, they wake up and discoverthat marriage is not a bed of roses. The nightmare begins.------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

NO OVERPOWERING

Many relationships fail because one party tries to overpower another,or demandstoo much. People in love tend to think that love will conquer all and theirspouses will change the bad habits after marriage. Actually, this is not thecase. There is a Chinese saying which carries the meaning that "It is easierto reshape a mountain or a river than a person's character."It is not easy to change. Thus, having high expectation on changing the spousecharacter will cause disappointment and unpleasantness.It would be less painful to change ourselves and lower our expectations. .------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

R IGHT SPEECH

There is a Chinese saying which carries the meaning that "A speech will eitherprosper or ruin a nation." Many relationships break off because of wrong speech.When a couple is too close with each other,we always forget mutual respect andcourtesy. We! may say anything without considering if it would hurt the otherparty.A friend and her millionaire husband visited their construction site. A workerwho wore a helmet saw her and shouted,"Hi, Emily! Remember me? We used to datein the secondary school." On the way home, her millionaire husband teased her,"Luckily you married me.Otherwise you will be the wife of a constructionworker." She answered ,"You should appreciate that you married me. Otherwise, hewill be the millionaire and not you."Frequently exchanging these remarks plants the seed for a bad relationship. It'slike a broken egg - cannot be reversed.------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

P ERSONAL PERCEPTION

Different people have different perception. One man's meat could be anotherman's poison. A couple bought a donkey from the market. On the way home,a boycommented, "Very stupid. Why neither of them ride on the donkey?"Upon hearingthat, the husband let the wife ride on the donkey. He walked besides them.Later, an old man saw it and commented, "The husband is the head of family. Howcan the wife ride on the donkey while the husband is on foot?" Hearing this, thewife quickly got down and let the husband ride on the donkey.Further on the way home, they met an old Lady. She commented, "How can the manride on the donkey but let the wife walk. He is no gentleman."The husband thus quickly asked the wife to join him on the donkey. Then, theymet a young man. He commented, "Poor donkey, how can you hold up the weight oftwo persons. They are cruel to you." Hearing that, the husband and wifeimmediately climbed down from the donkey and carried it on their shoulders.It seems to be the only choice left. Later, on a narrow bridge, the donkey wasfrightened and struggled. They lost their balance and fell into the river. Youcan never have everyone praise you, nor will everyone condemn you. Never in thepast, not at present, and never will be in the future.Thus, do not be too bothered by others words if our conscience is clear..------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

B E PATIENT

This is a true story which happened in the States. A man came out of his home toadmire his new truck. To his puzzlement, his three-year-old son was happilyhammering dents into the shiny paint of the truck. The man ran to his son,knocked him away, hammered the little boy's hands into pulp as punishment. Whenthe father calmed down, he rushed his son to the hospital.Although the doctor tried desperately to save the crushed bones, he finally hadto amputate the fingers from both the bo! y's hands. When the boy woke up fromthe surgery & saw his bandaged stubs, he innocently said, " Daddy,I'm sorryabout your truck." Then he asked, "but when are my fingers going to grow back?"The father went home & committedsuicide.Think about this story the next time someone steps on your feet or u wish totake revenge. Think first before u lose your patience with someone u love.Trucks can be repaired.. Broken bones & hurt feelings often can't. Too often wefail to recognize the difference between the person and the performance. Weforget that forgiveness is greater than revenge.People make mistakes. We are allowed to make mistakes. But the actions we takewhile in a rage will haunt us forever.

KM Techniques and Tools

KM techniques:
1. Mentoring
2. Facilitated networking
3. Social network analysis
4. Peer to peer knowledge sharing
5. Communities of Practice – face to face and virtual
6. Best practice replication
7. Organisational learning programs
8. Innovation support
9. Strategies to protect Intellectual Property
10. Strategic information management
11. Storytelling
12. After action review
13. Knowledge brokers
14. Narrative

KM tools:
1. Video-conferencing
2. Groupware (e.g. Lotus Notes)
3. Online forums or list-serv
4. Intranet
5. Portal
6. Expert systems
7. Search and retrieval agents
8. Data warehousing & Data mining
9. Document repositories
10. Document management systems
11. Instant messaging
12. Wikis
13. Blogs

Knowledge Worker

An interesting excerpt from an article
Recently I (author) was speaking to the senior cleaner (I followed her around while she carried out her duties) at a rather traditional institution (won't say where) and sought to explain to her that she is a knowledge-worker. She quickly said to me, almost before I finished my last word, "Of course I am, but no one here ever thinks of me as being a knowledge-worker. I have been hearing them with this talk of knowledge-workers and almost everything they say I can relate to myself, yet no one has ever suggested to me that I am a knowledge worker". I was taken aback at her prompt and decisive statement of fact, and not quite sure if I showed my astonishment. You see, I had expected this 'lowly' cleaning lady to first ask me what a knowledge-worker is and then I further expected that after a long and careful explanation (perhaps rather condescendingly, who knows), to go on to bemuse her with the fact that she was a valuable knowledge worker. So instead of my telling her or explaining to her why she qualified as a knowledge worker, I asked her to tell me in what way she was a knowledge worker. And told me she did, in no uncertain manner. To cut a long and interesting conversation very short indeed, my knowledge-cleaner, who had been working with the organisation for 14 years, pointed out that a knowledge-worker to her is anyone who has the responsibility of guarding and using effectively any important company knowledge. She said that she guarded, used and managed a lot of important knowledge of how to keep the office clean, when to clean where, when not to clean where, how to clean for what person, when not to move things on peoples desks, and how to replace things after they had been moved, what cleaning material was best for what surfaces, who was allergic to what cleaning substance, who liked what smell, and so on. She knew what suppliers were most reliable and what cleaning products offered best value. Further, she was able to tell me of the valuable knowledge she held> about who in the company seemed to have the organisation's best interest at heart and who did not. She knew who wasted the most paper, who was most careful, who did a lot of their own personal work in company time, who was lazy, who was frustrated, who had a lot of untapped talent so found their jobs boring and unchallenged. On a different scale, our cleaning lady knew who was most likely to have personal problems, and even fellow employees that did not feel a part of the organisation. During her time, she had observed a lot of changes, seen many people come and go and could tell me the impact of the changes on her role as a cleaner, and the level of service she could give efficiently. Much of our experienced senior cleaning lady's knowledge was acquired through observations over the many years and many hours on the job. She also became a reservoir of knowledge that was passed on to her from other employees who trusted her. In her own words, "I sometimes feel like an agony aunt, but without the fame and money to go with it". Our wise and trusted cleaning lady felt that her years of accumulated knowledge and experience, and the application of her knowledge was what allowed her to keep the office clean in the way that even new people liked and appreciated, and to make those she cleaned for happy to come to their office/desk each morning. Fascinated with this woman's knowledge of her knowledge and the importance to her company, I asked her if she had heard the term knowledge management and if she had, did she understand what it means and involves. "Of course I have and of course I do" she answered without hesitation, in a rather feisty manner I hasten to add. And once again she told me, yes told me. It is worth mentioning at this point that this lady had only the minimum basic high-school qualifications. Knowledge management, she said, was no different to cleaning management or housekeeping management. I quote her as follows: "I have to know what I need to know to do my job and learn what I know I don't know. I then have to make sure I use my knowledge to do my job in the easiest and quickest way possible, and of course watch the pennies". She told me that she manages her knowledge by making sure that what she knows is put to good use, and whenever she needs to, she lets others into her knowledge; but not always she quickly added with a mischievous smile. Our cleaning lady went on to relay a fascinating example of a fellow employee who was plagued with violent bouts of sneezing early in the> mornings, but that this would ease up or stop by late morning. Through careful observations and the harnessing of her tacit knowledge, our cleaning lady was able to deduce the likely cause of the attacks as being a particular substance that was used to freshen the room, at least half-and hour before the occupant arrived. The odour of the substance was not overbearing, so the possible deleterious effect was not evident to the room occupant. Our experienced and knowledgeable senior cleaner took the initiative to stop using the likely offending air-freshener in the affected employee's> room, and the sneezing bouts ceased within days. Our knowledge-cleaner revealed her experiment to the (senior) employee in question, who in> turn got the R&D department to carry out a survey to find out if other employees had experienced any possible adverse effects to the substance, and to further investigate the product. The end result was that the product was withdrawn from the procurement list. The grateful past sufferer bought her cleaning-lady saviour a delightful present, which our star-knowledge lady smilingly told me she was most touched to have received (the effects of knowledge sharing reward in action).

What is Knowledge Management ?

KM can be understood as the organizational process for acquiring, organizing and communicating both tacit and explicit knowledge so that others may use it to be more effective and productive.

Implementation of Sevottam - IS15700

The Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances has developed a model for benchmarking Excellence in Public Service Delivery (Sevottam).

The model provides a framework to organizations to assess and improve the quality of service delivery for the citizens. It guides government departments to identify the services to be delivered, to set service norms, to align delivery capability with expectations of citizens, to gauge the quality of service delivery through an objective assessment and to improve quality using interventions like business process redesign and information technology.

This standard specifies requirements for a quality management system of a public service organization
a) needs to demonstrate its ability to consistently provide effective and efficient service that
meets customer and applicable legal, statutory and regulatory requirements,
b) aims to enhance customer satisfaction, and
c) aims to continually improve its service and service delivery process.

Sh. Anupam Kaul of CII spoke in length about Quality in Public services , the problems in service delivery (salary, transfer, weak accountability, shortage of technical staff), service quality dimension (Tangible, Reliability, Responsiveness, Empathy, Assurance etc).

Sh. P K Gambhir of BIS talked about Certification procedure during the training programme for trainers.

PPP model

The issue of adopting PPP model for economic sustainability and feasibility of the services provided by government organizations in India has been strongly advocated by consulting firm and private players. Initial findings does show remarkable benefits in adopting this model. The prime examples are e-governance model in AP and karnataka, e-choupal in MP etc. But there is a need to adopt the PPP model in India with some regulations. The government has to work like regualatory body to make sure that the services offered through this model is not monopolzed or compromised. The general opinioin of the delegates was that the PPP model cannot be applied to all the e-governance initiatives.