Innovative Decision Management

The thought behind this post emerged from the spiritful discussion happening in KM forum in LinkedIn . The discussion started by Art Schlussel, If the term "KM" could get a do-over what would you call the discipline? brought forward best of global knowledge and thoughts on one page ( I guess it will take dozens of pages to print this discussion as it has crossed 200+ comments mark !!)

The answer depends on how we perceive KM. As Gurteen puts in his article, referred in his comment, "...the phrase knowledge management is a poor description and because of much of the early hype and failures, it has a bad name in some quarters as a result. But we need to face up to that", and that is quite true.

The term holds lot of different meanings to different employees within the same organisation. But at the end the role of KM is to facilitate learning thru innovation to have effective decision making at all levels, and which I believe.

But I really feel sorry for the person who avoids discussion involving KM, as mentioned by Gurteen in same article. We all know that we cannot avoid Knowledge management as KM works in all organizations but this could be in unstructured & structured format and at organized & unorganized level but with the primary objective to develop wisdom that gives ability to capture and synthesis ( or let’s say ‘evolve’ as said by Md Santo in his comment) data/information which could be put to fruitful use.

Edwards in 1994 wrote that raw information may be widely available to many, but only some organisations will be able to convert the information into relevant knowledge and to use this knowledge to achieve their aims. The processes by which they do this are known as KM strategies.

On 2nd Gen KM Charles Savage put forward that the most successful organisations are shifting from strategies based on prediction to strategies based on anticipation of surprises.

There is lot of ambiguity to terms explicit and implicit and we need to reach out to Cognitive psychology to understand these two term. As per Polanyi there are two dimensions of knowing, “knowing what” and “knowing how”. He said that that these two aspects of knowing are always present in any instance of a person’s knowledge. He argued that we know that tacit knowledge exists because practical outcomes of its application are clearly visible and can thus infer that there must be some implicit or tacit knowledge that the person has but cannot articulate. Polanyi argued that the aim of explicitly and objectively formalizing all knowledge may not be achievable, as the implicit or tacit aspects of knowledge cannot be fully replicated as formal explicit knowledge and for these two there are many different transfer mechanisms.

In one of the paper Derek Binney put forward that successful organisation are shifting from management based on compliance to management based on self-control and self-organisation. They are also shifting from utilisation of already known knowledge to the creation of new knowledge, from pure ‘technology’ KM applications to also include ‘process’ applications

Binney provided a framework, KM Spectrum, to help organisations make sense of the large diversity of material appearing under the heading of KM, and to help them assess where they are in KM terms. His focus is on the KM activities that are being carried out, grouped into six categories:
1. Transactional KM: Knowledge is embedded in technology.
2. Analytical KM: Knowledge is derived from external data sources, typically focussing on customer-related information.
3. Asset Management KM: Explicit management of knowledge assets (often created as a by-product of the business) which can be reused in different ways.
4. Process-based KM: The codification and improvement of business practice and the sharing of these improved processes within the organisation.
5. Developmental KM: Building up the capabilities of the organisation's knowledge workers through training and staff development.
6. Innovation/creation KM: Fostering an environment which promotes the creation of new knowledge, for example through R & D and through forming teams of people from different disciplines.

Binney’s analysis makes sense as he ponders on the knowledge-centred classification of KM and the business perspectives classification of KM.

To make KM successful in organisations KM should have top-down approach so that there is efficient “Intellectual Capital Management”. The argument put forward by Paul Nauwelaerts in his comment on the term 'Intellectual Capital Management” is quite interesting.

KM has to be imbibed in a corporate strategy. "Shaping corporate strategy around knowledge" by Day & Wendler is quite interesting reading which have similarity to Wiig which has a similar category of "Knowledge Strategy as Business Strategy"

I believe, storing –“non-interactive document-centric warehousing approach”- sharing, auditing /re-auditing (weeding) are all processes which will undergo change with the need which we have seen since KM 1.0 and will witness till n. When we Integrate Web 3.0 (we can replace 3.0 with value n) with KM, we intend to improve the effectiveness of science of decision making.

Recently, in one of the organisation, I saw KM as a harbinger of organizational change. I saw that the KM requirement from each team was quite diversify but the common element was that they wanted inputs to bring in innovation in their work and reach risk free decision. (Was it fear of success or failure or they want effeciency cannot comment)

I do agree with Brad and John who have agreed that it is means creating “ ‘relationship’ connections and flow” or as Nirmala commented earlier "interplay in the ecosystem", The knowledge management success model developed by Jennex and Olfman emphasizes the need for knowledge management systems to include both stores of knowledge and linkages or pointers to people with knowledge expertise. In literature by Dixon; Davenport and Prusak it has been emphasized that KM processes such as knowledge creation, sharing and use and KM strategies are crucial for successful firms of the 21st century. Czerniawska & Potter and Leibowitz have put forward that Knowledge originates in and with people; it creates networks, communities and routines whose life spans exceed that of the tenure of the individual members

2nd Gen of KM thinkers such as Chris Argyris, Peter Senge, Nonaka , Levitt, March and Scheinall have laid stress on importance of thinking about processes and connections.

Senge has put forward that organisational learning is only successful when it is based on an understanding of how the whole organisational system is connected, rather than a focus on individual parts. C Argyris further develops the idea of learning by distinguishing between single and double loop learning

In their article published in late 80s’ Levitt and March were less positive about the capacity of organisations to manage knowledge effectively and to learn from past experiences. Later in early 90s March highlighted the considerable limitations that impede organizational learning which include the complexity of organizational experiences, human habits, hierarchical structures, routines, and differing interpretations by different sub-groups within an organisation.

Did I say " Innovative Decision Management "?