Components of a KM Strategic Plan

Thinking about crafting your Knowledge Management Strategic Plan? Not sure where to start? Here I am presenting a "straw-man" to get you started! Following the information presented below will get you on your way:

1 - Executive Summary

The executive summary is often considered the most important section of a KM Strategic Plan. This section briefly tells your reader where your company is, where you want to take it, and why your business idea will be successful when implementing Knowledge Management. The executive summary should highlight the strengths of your overall plan and therefore be the last section you write.

2 - KM Vision Statement

The KM vision statement takes into account the current status of the organization, and serves to point the direction of where KM in the organization wishes to go. As a means of setting a central goal that the organization will aspire to reach, the vision statement helps to provide a focus for the mission.

3 - KM Mission Statement

The KM mission statement serves as a guide to the actions of the organization as it pertains to KM, spell out its overall goal, provide a path, and guide decision-making. It provides "the framework or context within which the company's KM strategy is formulated and aligns with the KM vision (Note: the KM Vision and Mission are often combined).

4 -   Current KM Environment (Include If one exist)

This section details the current knowledge environment. Any knowledge management activities and experience will be detailed here. This section will also outline any benefits that have been gained and how they can be built upon or leverage in future initiatives.

5 - KM Best Practices

This section details the KM Best Practices that this KM Strategic Plan will align to.

6 - Challenges and Knowledge Needs

The key issues and knowledge needs of the organization will be summarized here and will include any knowledge resources, processes and tools that will be needed to effectively execute the knowledge management strategy.

 

7 - Strategy Details and Key Initiatives

The key activities to implement the Knowledge Management Strategy are as follows:

8 - Knowledge Transfer

Knowledge Transfer is a culture-based process by which adaptive organizational knowledge that lies in people’s heads and which lies in documents, programs, reports, etc is exchanged with others. This section will indicate how knowledge transfer will play a role in the overall knowledge management strategy.

 

9 - Dependencies

This section will detail critical dependencies such as the availability of key personnel, approval of budgets, and available technologies to initiate the knowledge management strategy. This section will also analyze the effect of not executing the knowledge management strategy at all.

10  - On-going Knowledge Management

To continue to foster an atmosphere of sharing, transferring, harvesting and creating knowledge within the organization an adherence to this strategy will be imperative. On-going support will include:

• Identifying the key knowledge holders within the organization
• Creating an environment which motivates people to share
• Creating opportunities and utilizing tools to harvest knowledge
• Creating opportunities to foster knowledge creation
• Designing a sharing mechanism to facilitate the knowledge transfer
• Measuring the effects of executing the knowledge strategy

11 -  Establish a Central Knowledge Management Office

The Central Knowledge Management Office (CKMO) comprised of Senior Management and Core Team members and is the vehicle for implementing and keeping under review the KM Program and on-going KM initiatives that will be championed by the organization.

12 - Tools

This section details the tools and how they will be utilized to deliver Knowledge Management through out the organization.

 Feel free to leave your comments and/or questions regarding this KM Strategic Plan "straw-man".

 

KM in Talent Management

Talent Management is often referred to Human Capital Management. Many organizations are faced with the problem of retaining talent as well as capturing the knowledge of the talent as it moves in and out of the organization. Knowledge Management (KM) plays an important role in converting individual knowledge into corporate knowledge making it available to be cataloged and shared throughout the organization.

As part of a comprehensive KM strategy applied to Human Capital Management it is vital to establish a program that is executed when staff enters your organization and continues until the time that staff member leaves the organization. How is this accomplished? Initially through employee orientation, establishing a mentor protégé relationship, mapping their roles, responsibilities and their work products to the specific duties that are being performed and executing a comprehensive exit interview. These are all aspects of a KM strategy aimed at moving your human capital to corporate capital.

This strategy does not begin and end here! As staff members evolve in their roles the sharing, and cataloging of knowledge continues through the use of Communities of Practice (Cops), the creation of knowledge repositories, capturing lesson learned, and instituting a culture that values life-long learning and sharing of knowledge. Getting started with a KM strategy entails a collective visioning as to how sharing knowledge can enhance organizational performance, and the reaching of a consensus among the senior management of the organization that the course of action involved in sharing knowledge will in fact be pursued. Implicit in such a process is a set of decisions about the particular variety of knowledge management activities that the organization intends to pursue, including how the knowledge assets of the organization will be leveraged and the execution of the process and tools that will enable sharing and innovation to occur.

Here are a couple of links to additional information to kick start the process of effectively managing your human capital: Human Capital Management – Capturing Worker Knowledge, The Case for Human Capital Management, Human Capital Institute, The Benefits of Effective Human Capital Management.

I look forward to your comments and understanding how your organization is tackling this Human Capital Management Challenge!

KM in Specific Industries

Over the next few weeks I will examine several industries in which knowledge management (KM) is making an impact. I will take a brief look at Customer Service Centers, Research Institutions, Talent Management, Legal Institutions and the Military. In this blog post I will take a look at what’s happening with KM as it pertains to Customer Service Centers.

Customer Service Centers are looking to leverage their knowledge assets, KM processes and tools in order to get knowledge to the customer service rep to convey to the customer or directly to the customer in a timely manner. The KM concepts of collaboration through live chat, content management and search as well as KM workflows and expertise locators to enable the “right” resources to solve customer problems are being deployed.

Used properly, knowledge assets with the proper KM tools will enable the customer service centers to not only answer customer questions and solve problems but also increase sales and customer satisfaction through an improved customer experience. KM being leveraged at Customer Service Centers achieve the following:

Lower service cost by reducing repeat calls, call handling/resolution times, and brings down the cost of agent training

Better Quality of Service, Customers are more likely to receive the right answers faster

Consistency in service, with the right KM processes, procedures and tools in place KM ensures that customers with the same question receive the same response, regardless of agent as well as interaction channel or mode

Speaking of tools, some of the tools being utilized for KM in Customer Service Centers include salesforce.com, Kana, and SharePoint. In considering the use of these tools organizations must understand first their knowledge management strategy, how such tools fit within the KM strategy as well as their specific requirements for using one or more of these tools. Keep in mind that if multiple tools are being used to deliver on the KM Strategy your organization should look at ways to integrate the tools in order to deliver consistency in response and service to the customer.

For those organizations leveraging KM or want to utilize KM as part of your Customer Service Center solution I want to hear from you. I look forward to knowing more about what is happening at your Customer Service Centers.

Leveraging KM for M&A Transactions - Part One: Knowledge Map

During this challenging economic time many corporations are facing the prospect of merging with other firms to not only survive but to have a sustainable and viable business in the future. With the consolidation of the telecommunications industry underway (see CenturyLink/Qwest Merger) as well as the airline industry (see United Continental merger) there is a need to identify the key knowledge holders in order to ensure the success of mergers and acquisitions.

The effect of these mergers will and often lead to a loss of valuable knowledge from both sides of the merger/acquisition equation. This loss of knowledge is due to positions being consolidated and/or eliminated, other personnel taking early retirement package or other financial incentives. The question is how do we identify who the key knowledge holders are and what knowledge do they hold? Also, has it been determined that this is viable knowledge to the "new" organization going forward and what is our plan to retain, capture, or acquire this knowledge?

All of these questions can be answered with a comprehensive Knowledge Management Strategy geared to identify viable initiatives that will address these questions. One such initiative will be to develop a knowledge map of the organization to be acquired. A knowledge map is a mechanism used to identify key knowledge and the knowledge holders of the organization. Once these maps are completed further analysis is needed to determine the process, procedures and initiatives necessary to prioritize, retain, and/or acquire knowledge that may leave. Often organizational knowledge is the reason certain mergers happen. Knowledge Management is the mechanism to transition individual knowledge to corporate knowledge and make it available for all employees to access.

There will be additional parts of this blog entry to follow over the next week. I welcome your comments on this timely issue!

Knowledge Management for Law Firms

Over the last several weeks I've been discussing knowledge management specifically in the areas of healthcare, telecommunications, government (military) and mergers/acquisition. During these conversations a colleague of mine mentioned law firms and if KM can provide viable assistance for lawyers and other legal personnel. The conversation went quickly to KM tools such as those provided by Lexis Nexis (www.lexisnexis.com). I cautioned however that KM is not about IT. Technology is an enabler for KM initiatives. You must first understand the business of the law firm and the lawyers who operate in it (every firm and lawyer has different knowledge needs). So, I suggested you start with crafting a KM Strategy to understand how KM will be leveraged by the firm.
Law firms focus centers around client relationships and understanding the clients' legal needs. These needs can range from but not limited to  litigation, intellectual property, criminal, divorce, and bankruptcy. In understanding what a client needs the law firm partner has to determine who would be the best (lawyer/lawyers) to address specific needs of the client and how can they effectively and efficiently handle these needs. Therefore knowledge around servicing the client would be a good start for the KM Strategy to focus. The KM Strategy should address the knowledge needs, processes, initiatives and tools that will increase the performance of the staff, provide outstanding services and increase revenue of the firm.
Some resources to review are: Effective Knowledge Management for Law Firms, Knowledge management and the smarter lawyer, and Lawyer KM. I look forward to your comments.

Knowledge Management Education

I recently read the discussion and the associated comments around KM education, which includes university courses (Masters programs), Certification programs and Certificate programs. This discussion is hosted by Art Schlussel in the CKO (Chief Knowledge Officer) Forum in Linkedin. This discussion inspired me to elaborate on my thoughts concerning KM education. As I stated in my comments to Art for any education to be effective it must be supported by practical application including having experienced mentors work with participants who have recently completed any number of various KM training venues.

In this discussion Art mentioned that a partnership between the US Military and a well know accredited university to build a comprehensive KM training program is in its preliminary stages. However, the major issue is what does or will this training consist of and the fact that the US military wants it to follow their KM Competency Model (see above):

I believe that the KM Training should have a holistic approach, which will cover the following:
The Basics and differences between, Data, Information and Knowledge
Establishing "your" definition of Knowledge Management
Developing/Executing Knowledge Management Strategy (Including Knowledge Audits, Knowledge Mapping, KM Process)
Identifying and Address Knowledge Gaps (result from knowledge audit)
Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing (Communities of Practices
Knowledge Transfer Planning (Mentor Protege, Knowledge Codification)
Collecting/Applying Knowledge Management Metrics
Identifying, Planning and Executing KM Projects/Initiatives
Knowledge Management Tools (Wikis, Blogs, Search, KM Systems)

While this is not an exhaustive list, the approach must include the planning, strategy and processes applied for knowledge management as well as the software that will enable and support the execution of the KM program initiatives. The Army's KM Competency Model serves as a foundation to how the Army will approach KM and forms the basis of what KM will address from the Army's perspective. The Army's Enterprise KM Competency Model represents one holistic approach to institutionalizing KM. I believe that a holistic approach to KM is where we must begin in our training as well as our execution of KM at our organizations.

KM Planning vs KM Strategy

I have been working with several groups and organizations over the past few weeks looking to launch Knowledge Management (KM) programs. During my conversations one aspect of a KM program continues to come up... the KM plan v.s. the KM Strategy. Do we need both, what is the difference and what are they used for?

To start, a knowledge management plan involves a survey of corporate goals and a close examination of the process, and tools both traditional and technical, that are required for addressing the knowledge needs of the organization. The challenge is to establish what knowledge and knowledge management mean to your organization, understand what types of knowledge exist, what knowledge assets are going to be leveraged to improve performance and increase organizational innovation. In addition a KM Plan assists in the determination of software that fits the context of the overall plan and encourage people to share knowledge, information and data.

A KM strategy on the other hand entails a collective visioning as to how sharing knowledge can enhance organizational performance, and the reaching of a consensus among the senior management of the organization that the course of action involved in sharing knowledge will in fact be pursued. Implicit in such a process is a set of decisions about the particular variety of knowledge management that the organization intends to pursue. How the knowledge assets of the organization will be leveraged and the execution of the process and tools that will enable sharing and innovation to occur.

In short think of the KM Plan as the "what" and the KM Strategy as the "How" knowledge is leveraged.

I welcome your thoughts on this subject and to lively conversation...