Knowledge Management in the Military

Knowledge Management (KM) in the United States (US) Military has been implemented using a top down approach that is resonated through each branch, command, directorate, division, group, battalion, etc. The US Military has established a culture of KM that leverages its personnel, processes and systems to facilitate a consistent flow of knowledge and the mechanisms to execute and make decisions from this knowledge.

It is widely acknowledged that knowledge management (KM) strategy is a desired precursor to developing specific KM initiatives. The US Military has established KM Strategies from the top down in every branch. As this strategy is propagated and aligned through the organization it is often a difficult process due a variety of influences and constraints. These KM influences and constraints include understanding, conflicts with IT organizations, funding, technology usage and configuration, and outsourcing.

Each US Military branch works to overcome barriers to KM adoption. To this effort an establishment of processes and tools, which involves providing approaches and solutions for knowledge sharing has influenced a change in people’s habits. This change will drive values to move US Military organization culture father to overall KM adoption. In support of the US Military in its knowledge sharing efforts, Communities of Practice (CoP) have become an integral method of sharing and distributing knowledge across all branches of the military. In addition enterprise web search capabilities have been implemented to increase “findability” of key content, which is leverage for decision making at all levels of command.

Continuing KM Challenge of BRAC

The US Military has a KM challenge involving Base Realignment and Closures (BRAC). The BRAC specifically represents the challenge of capturing knowledge both tacit and explicit before it leaves a command from personnel shifts and loss due to a BRAC move. The US Military has already experienced this knowledge loss and unless steps are taken at least a year in advance of a BRAC move, this loss will continue to happen. The loss of knowledge has the potential to compromise mission activities and the soldier in theater. Leveraging the US Military’s ability to share knowledge through its established process and tools will help lessen the adverse impact of this knowledge loss. However, without process and tools to capture, catalog, and reuse knowledge, the US Military will be challenged to keep the various commands fully operational and effective long term for the solider in theater.

I am interested to hear from our men and women across the military, this includes active, inactive, reservist as well as civilian personnel who have worked or are currently working with KM. I would like you to share your thoughts about how you are utilizing KM and/or if you feel KM is/will be a benefit for you!

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!

Drinking the KM "Kool-Aid"

Many organizations have begun to understand the value and promise Knowledge Management (KM) can bring to their workforce. Delivering innovation through collaboration and sharing remain the cornerstones of KM. However, once your organization has established its KM Strategy, and/or rolled out it's initial KM offering (i.e., KM System, KM Process, Tools, etc.) what happens next? What happens next is the adoption process. Whether its a new process, procedure, or system; getting your workforce to leverage and use it in the course of executing activities and delivering on their task will be essential to your KM program's success. In order to achieve this there must be processes and vehicles in place to allow, encourage and reward staff members as they work within this new paradigm. It will not be easy. As with anything new it will take some time for adoption to occur. To move this along there must be KM supporters, mentors, and/or evangelist at all levels of the corporate infrastructure to encourage the workforce to "drink the KM Kool-Aid". In other words buy in and practice KM in all aspects of performing tasks and activities.
Developing an organizational culture of knowledge sharing, collaboration and lifelong learning should be the goals of any KM program. Organizations such as Fluor Corporation have been successful in infusing KM within it's culture. From human resource activities, to leveraging knowledge for strategic purposes to engaging with clients, Fluor remains an example of how KM can be leveraged effectively at an organization. Drinking the "KM Kool-Aid" is a slow and deliberate activity grounded in a basic KM process of Connect-->Collect-->Catalog-->Reuse-->Learn and Innovate. When practiced effectively this process will be a cornerstone to enabling the adoption of Knowledge Management throughout your organization. I am very interested in hearing comments on this subject as well as examples of how your organization has or suggestions or will adopt KM.

KM for Collaboration and Innovation

This blog post is centered around a conversation I had with Preston Simons, CIO of Abbott Laboratories during the National BDPA Technical Conference   in August. Our conversation was initiated from a question I posed to Mr. Simons concerning how Abbott was utilizing Knowledge Management (KM). At the heart of his response he mentioned how Abbott researchers were using KM as a collaboration and sharing mechanism to foster innovation and leverage similar research across the organization. Over the past couple of months, the idea of leveraging KM within the research areas of organizations came up several times in conversations with marketing, product owners, and technical colleagues at other organizations. The central theme here is that research areas are critical to new product creation and the speed to market for new products are essential to stay ahead of your competitors. KM plays a central role not only from the perspective of innovation by knowing what has been done and/or what is being done in other areas of research that can be utilized, but also from the collaboration and knowledge sharing among researchers contributing to the speed of new products to market.

To foster and support an environment of knowledge sharing and collaboration for researchers, KM offers a process of Connect -- Collect -- Catalogue -- Reuse -- Learn. This process is supported by several KM tools such as Communities of Practice (CoP), Wiki, white boarding and brainstorming tools, knowledge maps as well as knowledge Cafes. Instituting KM will uncover what you know, who knows it and facilitates the diversity of thought you need for innovation and speed to market.

One questions remains... What is your organization doing to assist researchers in fostering innovation and to speed these products to market? If you are not leveraging what KM will do for you I bet your competitors will!

Knowledge Management at Your Organization

Have you ever wondered what all the fuss is about concerning knowledge management (KM)? What is knowledge management anyway? At its core KM is about sharing and collaborating about what you know, capturing what you know, and reusing that knowledge as to not reinvent the wheel and/or to combine with other ideas to foster innovation. Recently I had the privilege to attend a KM meeting conducted by the APQC (APQC's January 2011 KM Community Call), which had representatives from Conoco Phillips, Fluor, IBM, GE and Schlumberger. What I came away from this meeting with is the need to have KM become part of an organization's culture. I believe that this is important because we do not want KM to be "another task to complete on the checklist", but the way we conduct business. This includes the business between the various individuals and entities within our corporations as well as with our customers. Talking, listening, capturing and applying what we learn from each other is a constant never ending and always evolving process.
I challenge all of us to take this attitude into our workplace and remember that when you share what you know you don't loose that knowledge, but rather you enhance that knowledge with the other individuals you share it with. Take a minute to review the slides from the APQC Jan 2011 KM Community Call as well as this video from YouTube Discover What You Know. Feel free to comment and share your knowledge!

The Need for Diversity

The power that Knowledge Management (KM) brings to an organization is it's ability to leverage the power of diversity. I am not speaking of just diversity of race, gender and/or religion, but diversity of thought. Through collaboration, knowledge sharing and knowledge reuse it is important to leverage different points of view, different experiences and different cultural backgrounds to stimulate diversity of thought. This diversity of thought leads to innovation. This innovation will enable organizations to deliver unique and or improved products and services to its customers as well as improve the way the organization does business.

Diversity of thought is encouraged and utilized today in the push by corporations to support Board Diversity in expanding the makeup of their corporate boards, through Affirmative Action programs to promote a diverse workforce and through a myriad of organizations that understand that diversity of thought will improve everything from our educational system, healthcare system, create new jobs, and improve how our politicians work together!

Communities of Practice (CoP) is a tool utilized within KM which provide environments where people can collaborate, catalog, and reuse knowledge centered around a certain topic, practice area, or profession, to name a few. This community will bring "like minded" people together regardless of their race, gender and/or religion to stimulate thought, exchange ideas and learn for each other. All focused on innovation, and improving performance. The need for diversity of thought will continue to be a catalyst for our culture to improve the way we live, work and play. I welcome everyone to share their stories where this diversity is happening, where it should be happening and where it has been successful or not! 

Managing Time!

I recently read a blog post from Knowledge Jolt with Jack http://blog.jackvinson.com/ about how successful leaders manage time. I recently started working with a Virtual Assistant (VA)http://www.peppervirtualassistant.com/ company so that I can get a better grasp on managing my time more effectively. In looking for a virtual assistant I reached out to by fellow twitters and this collaboration lead to my VA selection.

In reaching out through social media I have found that this is NOW the most efficient and effective way to collaborate, and share knowledge as well as to market and expedite the flow of business. In effect web 2.0 tools such as twitter, facebook and linkedin when use effectively assist us in managing our time by getting our work done more effectively. The world of social media allows us to not ever feel like we are working alone. In fact we have an entire world of knowledgeable people ready to "pay it forward" by sharing their knowledge on a wide variety of topics. I can't way to see how we all will leverage web 3.0!

Opportunities for Knowledge Management

When determining if or when you should incorporate Knowledge Management (KM) in your organization you must first look for opportunities where KM can be used. In addition where KM can bring about visible results that can be communicated throughout your organization. An immediate KM initiative that can be leveraged is what is called no or low budget KM. These initiatives include conducting, capturing and distributing "lessons learned" on projects and other corporate initiatives, writing a "trip report" and conducting a presentation to your team when you go to a conference and/or attend an important corporate function (this promotes knowledge sharing), and conducting "brow bags" presenting a topic of interest. These activities all address one of the central themes of KM, Knowledge Sharing and Transfer. Keep in mind that when I say no or low budget there may be no cost to the organization or very little cost. An important factor in these challenging economic times.

I also mentioned distributing this knowledge throughout your organization. One simple way to do this is to make the trip reports and presentations, lessons learned and brown bag presentations available on the corporate intranet and send out the appropriate communication to let everyone know that this information is available along with the principle person(s) contact information. You should encourage people who leverage this knowledge to send the principle person(s) an email letting them know how it has made a difference for them. All of the emails should be documented and presented to management to show how KM can bring about visible results and that an official KM initiative (with budget) should be examined and launched.

This is one effective way in looking for opportunities for Knowledge Management. I look forward to your comments and contributions on this subject.

The Obama Affect - KM Systems

This will be my final entry (for now) concerning President Obama's use of Knowledge Management. This post will focus on the Obama campaign and administration's continued use of Knowledge Management in particular Knowledge Management (KM) Systems. KM Systems can come in various forms. Its use however is very specific. The KM System is put in place to facilitate knowledge sharing (tacit and explicit), collaboration, creating new knowledge through eLearning as well as Knowledge transfer activities that can be distributed across the organization. Barack's team instituted a series of technologies under the web 2.0 umbrella. These technologies include: blogging, Ajax and other new technologies, Google Based and other free Web Services, social networking, mash-ups, wikis and other collaborative applications, dynamic as opposed to static site content, as well as interactive encyclopedias and dictionaries.

These technologies leveraged the Internet as its community or organization in which to distribute its message and create an environment of knowledge sharing (tacit and explicit), and collaboration. Obama's KM strategy served as the catalyst for the new generation of Knowledge Management. Incorporating the use of blogs, YouTube, and other social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin) the Obama team was able to push out the latest news, information and knowledge about every aspect of the campaign and now many aspects of his administrations' policies and initiatives.

In understanding the general view of the composition of a KM System you must consider that a Knowledge Management System (KMS) addresses the needs of an organization (in this case the Obama Team) that desires not to re-invent knowledge, spend excess time locating difficult to find knowledge, unsuccessfully absorbing and using the growing volumes of new knowledge, while seeking to collaborate and bring in new knowledge. However, one point must be stressed here is that knowledge management also combines cultural and process changes along with enabling technology to achieve bottom line results. It seems that President Obama will continue to leverage Knowledge Management and KM Systems through out his tenure as president.

I look forward to everyone’s response and comments!

The Obama Affect – Knowledge Sharing and Reuse

An important aspect of any knowledge management strategy is to establish an environment of continuous sharing, collaboration and knowledge reuse. During the democratic primary and the presidential campaign the Obama team leveraged email list gathered partly through their internet site and their push for campaign donations through the mail, including list harvested during Obama’s run for the United States Senate. The emails were leveraged (and are still being leveraged) to push out information and knowledge to supporters, solicit donations and to solicit additional email list of people that want to get involved, partly enticed by the possiblility of winning certain promotional items identified by the Obama email (see example - http://www.pic2009.org/page/invite/tickettohistory).

The Obama team would utilized these email list, determine where in the country these supporters live and dispatch teams to these locations to mobilize these and other supporters to get out the vote for Barack. This process was repeated (reused) all over the country. This created a “grass roots” effort to gain support and votes for Barack Obama. The emails served as a vehicle to build organic Communities of Practice (CoP) for Obama, to disseminate knowledge and build support for the Obama campaign and subsequent presidency. This strategy empowered supporters to hold their own functions (lunches, dinner parties, other special events) to showcase Barak Obama’s message and to talk about the issues.

Through targeted email marketing, development of communities as vehicles to share knowledge, and creating and executing a repeatable process, established a foundation to a knowledge management strategy that was able to expand. I will post more about this iterative expansion of the Obama Knowledge Management Strategy as we continue this dialog. I look forward to all thoughts and comments.

Happy New Year!

The Obama Affect

Happy Holidays to All!

During the next several post I would like to examine the affect the Obama presidential campaign, cabinet selections and governing strategy is being shaped by the principles, practices, and technology of Knowledge Management (KM). I am referring to this as "The Obama Affect". This is the first time in the history of American politics that someone has leverage KM in a political campaign and has ultimately changed how politicians will be elected. KM has many facets. Among its many facets KM includes knowledge acquisition, collaboration, knowledge transfer/sharing, and the technology and strategy to effectively leverage knowledge to shape decisions.

The Obama Team has instituted a push strategy executing a knowledge sharing policy that includes disseminating information about the the campaign, transition team, cabinet selections and future policies via , email, mobile devises, and Internet. As the Obama Team continues to add cabinet positions and shape their policy decisions the following links provide some insight into their strategy:

http://change.gov/

http://www.barackobama.com/index.php

http://www.ontheissues.org/Barack_Obama.htm

A good KM strategy Includes:

KM Vision
Valuation of Knowledge Assets (People, Process and Technology)
Conducting Knowledge Audit
KM Strategy Details
· Knowledge Acquisition Planning
· Knowledge Transfer Planning
· Knowledge Sharing/Collaboration Planning
· Knowledge Management System Planning

We will examine each aspect of the Obama KM Strategy and I welcome your comments and suggestions.