If Only We Knew What We Know: The Transfer of Internal Knowledge and Best Practice

This book provides a terrific introduction to knowledge management and so much more. The authors have gone well beyond the theoretical treatment that most have provided on the subject and provide real world examples and processes for implementing knowledge management in your own company. The authors did not spend much time talking about applications that support KM, since the market is still growing, instead they touch upon the concepts that the software applications address. Although it was written in late 1998, the information presented is very timely and still accurate. -- Highlights --The first section of the book (3 chapters, 30 pages or so) get you up to speed on what knowledge management is and is not. It also addresses some barriers and benefits of KM.The second section of the book makes you think about the reasoning behind a KM initiative. This should be standard management-type thinking, but I've found it to be often overlooked in today's IT environment. Why are we doing this? The authors give you three reasons (customer intimacy, time-to-market, and operational excellence) and tell you the type of data to focus on for each of the three reasons.The third section talks about enabling the enterprise to effectively use a KM system. The authors note that it is vital for the processes to be aligned witht he strategy of the company and the job tasks people currently undertake. To that end, they look at the cultural, technological, infrastructure, and measurement requirements of the KM initiative.The fourth section gives some case studies of Texas Instruments, Buckman Laboratories, and Sequent. The text refers to these case studies throughout the earlier chapters of the book and now gives them each a chapter to overview how they went about building a successful knowledge sharing infrastructure.The fifth and final section of the book gives a framework for pursuing the sharing of knowledge and best practices. This is the "What do I do on Monday?" section, according to the authors. It gives a 40 page prescription for the planning, designing, implementing, and scaling phases of a knowledge management program.The next several years will be very interesting in the I.T. arena. These authors were somewhat ahead of their time in writing this book. Companies across the globe have been storing knowledge in their silos for the past decade as they have taken products to market, built disconnected customer information systems, and as employees have given feedback on internal business processes. The coming business intelligence revolution will seek to organize that information and put it in the hands of people who can create value and grow the business based on the intrinsic knowledge it contains. This book provides a great framework for those who have to conceptualize, design, and build information systems to meet those needs.

I think the best recommendation I can give for this book is to show how it has helped me. As a consultant one of my biggest struggles is efficiently extracting information from clients. Although this book is about finding, aggregating and disseminating internal knowledge, the approach has proven invaluable to finding where my clients' pools of knowledge are and using this to efficiently craft solutions that are based on best practices that have been developed by my clients. I have too often dscovered that my clients have best practices and other knowledge artifacts that are not known throughout their organization. An example of how difficult organizational knowledge is to ferret out is shown by one consulting engagement where the client needed problem management processes. All of the "identified" stakeholders and points of contact claimed that there were no written definitions of severity levels, which are an important part of the process. After developing a complete set of definitions and circulating them for stakeholder review out of the blue an unidentified stakeholder emerged and produced a set of definitions that was written years before. Had I read this book before this particular engagement I would have approached it differently and would have identified the *real* stakeholders and pools of knowledge using the cultural enabler of knowledge transfer described in chapter 9. I would have also saved a significant amount of billable hours to the client in the process because what they already had (but just didn't know they had) met their exact requirements.I gained a whole new perspective on analysis from this book. I now approach this task by identifying (or eliciting) value propositions from clients, and employing to the extent allowed by each consulting engagement the four enablers of knowledge transfer.This book woke me up to some refined techniques and has influenced my thinking and approach on a number of levels. While it provides organizations with a valuable tool set with which to find and collect the valuable knowledge within, it is also a valuable tool for consultants who are always under pressure to gather data and information from clients as a prelude to findings and recommendations. I cannot emphasize strongly enough its value to both audiences.

One of the exercises I conduct for consulting clients is quite simple but extraordinarily valuable. Here's how it works. I ask to meet with 5-10 key executives, with or without the CEO included. Each of those present, in rotation around the table, says to each of the others (one at a time): "Here is what you and your people could do to make my life much easier." The exercise continues until each executive has spoken directly to every other person. All this takes about 60-90 minutes. Invariably the response is, "I had no idea. No problem. We'll be glad to do it. Why didn't you mention this before?" Everyone is involved, either asking for specific assistance from everyone else, or, learning how she or he could provide it.I mention this basic exercise to suggest what probably motivated O'Dell and Grayson to write this book. They focus on what they call "beds of knowledge" which are "hidden resources of intelligence that exist in almost every organization, relatively untapped and unmined." They suggest all manner of effective strategies to "tap into "this hidden asset, capturing it, organizing it, transferring it, and using it to create customer value, operational excellence, and product innovation -- all the while increasing profits and effectiveness."Almost all organizations claim that their "most valuable assets walk out the door at the end of each business day." That is correct. Almost all intellectual "capital" is stored between two ears and much (too much) of it is, for whatever reasons, inaccessible to others except in "small change." O'Dell and Grayson organize their material as follows:Part One: A Framework for Internal Knowledge TransferPart Two: The Three Value Propositions [ie Customer Intimacy, Product-to-Product Excellence, and Achieving Operational Excellence]NOTE: Part Two will be even more valuable when read in combination with Treacy & Wiersema's The Discipline of Market Leaders. Part Three: The Four Enablers of TransferPart Four: Reports From the Front Lines: Pioneer Case StudiesPart Five: The Four Phase Process: Or, "What I Do on Monday Morning"In the Conclusion, the authors assert that "there is no conclusion to managing knowledge and transferring best practices. It is a race without a finishing line." They are right, now and especially in years to come. In the concluding chapter, the authors share ten "Enduring Principles" which should inform and direct the formulation of any plan by which to manage knowledge and transfer best practices. During implementation of the plan, everyone involved must be willing and able to make whatever adjustments may be necessary. Perhaps the authors would agree with me that an 11th "enduring principle" affirms that change is the only constant. Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out Senge's The Fifth Discipline and The Dance of Change as well as Isaac's Dialogue. With regard to the exercise briefly explained in the first paragraph, one of its many value-added benefits

"This is not the first book about managing of transferring knowledge and it is certainly not the last book about knowledge management (KM). There are many excellent books about knowledge management..., but we think our book is unique. Here's why: First,...It's a book about how to improve the performance of your organization...Second, this book is not based on theories or speculation. It is anchored in successes, mistakes, and real-life case studies. It is not a spiritual guide or a technology manual. The experiences, thoughts, insights, and conclusions herein are based on surveys, site visits, and design work with over seventy organizations of all shapes ans sizes...This book is primarily about internal transfer of best practices in organizations. That is, the transfer of best practices from one part of an organization to another part-or parts-in order to increase profitability or effectiveness...Finally, it is also a book about the transfer of knowledge, specifically, the effective management of knowledge inside an organization...This book will focus largely on 'internal benchmarking'-looking inside your own organization-and transferring best practices" (from the Preface).In this context, Carla O'Dell and C.Jackson Grayson,Jr., in Chapter 4, write that "the internal transfer of knowledge is about finding out what you know, and using it to improve performance. It is about leveraging the value of knowledge you've already got. Whereas different companies adopt different approaches to finding and sharing internal know-how, they all seem to pursue one single strategy with great vigor: the transfer of internal best pactices", and then lay out a model that will guide the rest of the book. It has three major components:1. The three value propositions- Companies must transfer knowledge and best practices to create value, and value is created by translating knowledge into action. But exactly what 'value' are we talking about? Thus, the first step toward profitable management of your company's knowledge asset is choosing the right value proposition.* Customer intimacy- Increase revenue, reduce cost of selling, and increase customer satisfaction and retention.* Product-to-market excellence- By reducing time-to-market, and designing and commercializing new products more quickly and successfully, we will increase revenue, retain market lead, and grow our profit margins.* Operational excellence- Boost revenue by reducing the cost of production and increasing productivity, and raise performance to new highs.2. The four enablers- The second step is creating the most supportive environment for transfer, by designing and aligning the enablers of transfer: culture, technology, infrastructure, and measurement.3. The four-phase change process- The third step is change process would likely follow the following four phases: plan, design, implement, and scale-up.Finally, they write that "Sure, companies have embarked on change efforts before. This one is diffrent. It's

The authors of this book will not try to seduce you with another 'management recipe' or fad. Knowledge will ultimately become the only sustainable advantage for companies of the future. Unfortunately, most companies do not realize that they internally possess unexplored knowledge on their own human, customers, and structural capital. This book will clearly demonstrate on how to extract out and share our internal knowledge and best practice, so we can use them to create our value propositions. In addition to rich case analyses and stories, this book will also guide you to start your own knowledge program. Read this book and put it into action. Also recommended: The Knowledge-Creating Company by Nonaka and Takeuchi.