Tenth Knowledge Management Roundtable

Convened on August 16, 2001 at George Mason University's Arlington Campus

Resources:

Brief:

George Mason University's School of Public Policy hosted the tenth event in the Washington DC region's Knowledge Management Roundtable (KM RT) series at its Arlington Campus on August 16, 2001.

Held in conjunction with School of Public Policy's International Center for Applied Studies in Information Technology (ICASIT) at George Mason University and Virginia's Center for Innovative Technology (CIT), the KM RT seeks to broaden the application and advance the effectiveness of KM practice in organizations in the region. CIT seeks to increase the Commonwealth's economic competitiveness and quality of life by advancing the development of Virginia as a technology state and by creating and retaining technology-based jobs and businesses.

As part of its efforts to achieve these results, CIT provided a grant to ICASIT to help initiate a shared KM culture among organizations in Virginia by identifying organizations interested in KM and convening the first KM Roundtable that was held in March 1999 (KM Roundtable, March 1999). Subsequently, a KM RT has been convened nearly every quarter: KM Roundtable, June 1999, KM Roundtable, September 1999, KM Roundtable, February 2000, KM Roundtable, May 2000, KM Roundtable, August 2000, KM Roundtable, November 2000, KM Roundtable, February 2001, and KM Roundtable, May 2001.

With this event, ten meetings have been held since initiation of the KM RT three years ago, and an average of 52 individuals have participated in each event. The August 16 meeting (Agenda) was attended by 88 participants (Participants), 47 of whom attended for the first time. Based upon attendance at this meeting on GMU's Arlington Campus, more than 280 practitioners representing 130 organizations are now involved in the KM RT program. (Organization List).

Dr. Stephen Ruth, Professor of Decision Sciences in the School of Public Policy and Director of ICASIT, welcomed the group to GMU's Arlington Campus. He provided a brief overview of both GMU's presence in Arlington and the KM RT and encouraged private and public sector KM practitioners to consider using the region's universities as partners in research on KM.

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT ROUNDTABLE SURVEY

Dr. Virgil Frizzell, Consultant for KM with ICASIT, provided a brief analysis (Survey Results) of the results of a short survey that he and the KM RT Working Group emailed to some 450 individuals in the Washington DC region who are interested in KM.

Practitioners in the region mostly use KM processes to gain productivity, capture tacit knowledge, increase innovation, and develop a KM practice. As with a previous study (See Flash) that found while 80 percent of the organizations surveyed had a KM program only 25 percent called the KM leader CKO or Chief Learning Officer. The term used for this leader varies considerably.

While the current emphasis in responding organizations includes document management, information retrieval, expertise management, and education and training, the respondents indicate that KM will be used more widely in two years, with communities of practice, person-to-person collaboration, education and training, and encouraging a KM culture ranking as the four most selected categories of emphasis.

KM processes appear to be applied to many business activities undertaken by organizations, with use for application to strategy and business definition, information management, and managing improvement and change somewhat more frequent than R&D, marketing, and production, which present equal rates of application. Use for workforce management and financial and resources management appears to be limited.

We would like to compare KM practice in the Washington DC region with a wider representation of practice and hope to extend this short survey to a national panel of KM practitioners. If you have not yet completed the survey, please do so as soon as possible.

THE STATE OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT WITH A LOOK INTO THE FUTURE OF KM

Jim Jacobs serves as a research director with the Gartner Research organization (Gartner). His experience with KM issues includes more than 10 years development of simple, rule-based systems to more complex KM-based systems. Prior to joining Gartner, he directed the KM program at SRA International. Jacobs presented an overview of KM in organizations.

Recently, KM has begun showing up in a wide variety of activities within organizations, where it addresses the salient problem "what do we need to do?" Although KM is becoming the servant of organizations, best practices still appear to rank low in priority because organizational and KM leaders don't understand the importance of case studies and best practices to improving their practice.

KM is not about machines talking to machines, but about collaboration. "Implementation of a system" does not mean the same thing as "people collaborating." Without the social component, why would employees contribute? KM enables organizations to maximize human attention and obtain the most value out of their people's activities.

Organizations need to understand work process management more fully. It appears that we have lost the flavor of why people really communicate or collaborate. We need to look for a richer set of goals. We need to differentiate between the operational value chain and the innovation value chain. While former addresses process efficiency, the latter identifies the manner in which we share "new learning." Research on the innovation value chain will enable us to more fully appreciate how we spread what we learn across the organization.

Most organizations today assert that they are using "knowledge workers," but we need to think twice about the economic value being added to the organization as well as the type of value being added. Case studies demonstrate the efficacy KM programs, particularly when the knowledge leaders are funded specifically for their leadership activities. As we increasingly shift appropriate work back to these true knowledge workers, our organizations will be creating "workspace of the mind."

Carol Bothwell, vice president of Global Knowledge Management Services and CKO at Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), is responsible for defining CSC's knowledge strategy, managing CSC's enterprise-wide knowledge program, and supporting CSC operating groups in delivery of KM services to outsourcing clients. She joined CSC in 1970 and has held various management positions throughout her tenure with the company. She graduated cum laude from Goucher College and holds a BA degree in mathematics. Bothwell is one of the founding members of the KM RT and helped us outline a strategy that would entice KM practitioners to get together and share successes and problems with the implementation of KM programs. Please see Knowledge Management: Now and in the Future.

CSC derives over $10 billion in annual revenues from the outsourcing, management consulting, and systems integration activities of nearly 68,000 employees working out of over 700 locations across the globe. The size and scope of CSC's operations present interesting challenges for sharing knowledge across the organization, but CSC's enterprise-wide knowledge environment enables the corporation to build and leverage its knowledge, experience, and expertise on a global basis and integrate knowledge into the organization's fabric. The journey to the current level of understanding and practice followed a natural process of maturation as CSC established the capabilities needed to increase the value of its intellectual capital.

Knowledge management becomes more important to organizations as they confront the challenges presented by globalization, mergers and acquisitions, e-business, and virtualization. In CSC's case, two-thirds of its growth over the past decade is due to acquisition and outsourcing. Its robust use of knowledge provides for rapid integration of these new resources and assets allows the firm to rapidly and successfully leverage knowledge across business and geographic boundaries. CSC not only shares knowledge inside the organization, but also with clients and partners.

Knowledge communities have become increasingly important to organizations. The various communities create lasting ties between workers that will continue to serve as linkages in spite of organizational changes that would, in the past, have reduced important collaboration. These lasting communities will nurture and enhance the business value of the organization's knowledge base.

Elsa Rhoads, the Knowledge Management Architect for the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), introduced the concepts of KM to PBGC and is responsible for implementing an enterprise-wide KM Program. Prior to joining PBGC in 1993, she worked for 15 years as a management consultant and for 6 years as the founding president of a software development and IT consulting organization. Previous to her appointment as PBGC's KM Architect, she was a manager in the Information Resources Management Department. She earned a Master's degree in Public Administration and is a doctoral student in KM in the School for Engineering and Applied Sciences at George Washington University.

Currently, Rhoads also serves as Co-Chair of the KM Working Group of the federal CIO Council, and much is happening at the federal level. See offerings at km.gov and two recent books published by Management Concepts that address KM in the federal sector: "Knowledge Management: The Catalyst for Electronic Government" and "Building Knowledge Environments for Electronic Government." Please also see KM in the federal government.

This is the best time to be a federal employee interested in KM. Reform and transformation initiatives drive the federal KM programs in many agencies. KM programs will help agencies meet the goals of the GPEA, deal with retention and retirement issues, adapt to a smaller, flatter government, and meet performance-measurement-to-budget goals. In essence, government will operate more like business.

The federal government will operate more like a business by transforming itself into a citizen-centered e-government. Rapid initiatives addressing high payoff e-government opportunities will be addressed by Quicksilver, the Office of Management and Budget's interagency task force. The Army's transformation to a knowledge-based organization presents a good example of an organization ready for the future.

Dr. Get W. Moy, Chief Engineer for the Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC), provides the final technical authority for the Navy on shore facilities as well as the highest level of interdisciplinary engineering consultation, guidance, expertise, and continuity in the Command. He provides direction, management, and leadership in formulating policies and procedures related to research, development, testing and evaluation, design, and engineering support of Naval facilities. He is the lead proponent for engineering community management, and the NAVFAC executive leading several liaison efforts with industry. Dr. Moy received a Bachelor of Civil Engineering from the Catholic University of America, a Masters and a Doctor of Science Degrees in Engineering Administration from the George Washington University, and graduated from the Naval War College. Please see The Engineering Network.

NAVFAC, a global engineering organization with 16,000 employees expending $8 billion in support of the U.S. Navy, has become more focused on its quality workforce. The command faces significant challenges related to downsizing, retirement, transformation of contracting methodologies, and changes in customer expectations. NAVFAC seeks to create a better future by implementing appropriate knowledge management processes to obtain the information from its PEOPLE to make the right, most cost effective decisions.

The Chief Engineer has developed the Engineering Network (E-NET) to respond to the challenges of a smaller workforce. Using the E-NET, the Command links senior leaders in terms of discipline, facilities, geography, or life cycle in a cyber environment where communities of practice capture knowledge, manage succession, and share expertise. Ultimately, the E-NET will provide knowledge base support throughout the life cycle of planning, building, operating, and decommissioning of the Navy's constructed facilities.

When fully implemented, the NAVFAC Knowledge Management (NAVFAC KM) initiative will support three major KM components: community management, expertise management (people/career and expertise/services management), and succession management (five-year expectations, work force needs, and types of business expectations). A parallel goal mandates the creation of this robust knowledge environment, while avoiding the creation of "stovepipes." Ultimately, as with most successful KM efforts, if a NAVFAC manager faces a seemingly intractable problem, obtaining expert solutions should be uncomplicated.

In addition to serving as an Associate Professor in the School of Public Policy at GMU, Dr. Mark Addleson serves as Director of the Program on Social and Organizational Learning (PSOL). Before joining GMU in 1994, he served as lead for general management at the Graduate School of Management, University of the Witwatersrand, in South Africa, as well as a director of a firm of economics consultants. He has taught a KM course in the Masters program since 1996 (before many people knew there was a subject called KM!). Addleson's areas of research and teaching include the changing frames of social and organizational thinking, collaborative technology in organizations, coaching and change, organizational learning, and strategic knowledge management. Please see The State and Future of KM.

For the noncognoscenti, the field of knowledge management may appear rather appealing and straight-forward. While KM had "taken off" at a fast rate, a closer inspection may prove to be confusing, however, and trying to adequately understand KM may be perplexing: different groups claim the sub discipline as their own, several different issues may provide alternate focii, and many different ways of thinking about KM present themselves. This is because KM is new, little is settled, and no common nomenclature exists and because KM offers such different perspectives that it opens new ways to think about our organizations and their intellectual property.

More than one view of "seeing" the world and knowledge found in it may be addressed: an old, perhaps Western, view presents us as passive receivers of knowledge that exists "out there" without context, while a new (to those of us in the West), perhaps more Eastern, view presents us as more active, sentient beings who construct our understanding whilst interacting in a broader social environment. Learning about knowledge may be difficult for many of us, for in the West, a philosopher might assert, we haven't actually thought about knowledge for a long time and, therefore, possess many troublesome assumptions about the topic.

Under the old, perhaps orthodox, view, knowledge is derived from data and information ('facts,' tangible, hard stuff) we obtain by 'observing' the world. We collect it, store it, transmit it, and measure it. Under this view, knowledge becomes a 'raw material' of business, similar to other raw materials that we manage. This view is compatible with 'knowledge experts.' Thus organizations create CKO positions and assume they can incentivize people to do KM even when they are too busy to care, don't have the 'organizational space,' or are told they have to learn on their own time.

The view of knowledge presented above contrasts with that from an Eastern perspective in which knowing means interpreting and sensemaking, and using knowledge means talking -- having conversations, telling stories, listening, and reflecting. Thus practitioners who talk about 'spaces for knowledge sharing' aren't referring to rooms, but to the 'openness' which facilitates a spirit of participation and a commitment to collaboration. Conventional management language and practice, however, don't address 'spirit,' 'collaboration,' or 'community,' and most organizations don't allow people to bring their knowledge to work or, even, to use it at work.

KM likely will disappear some time in the future, and at least two scenarios could lead to its demise. Under the first, more optimistic scenario, we are participants in a social-organizational transformation that will result in organizations becoming spaces for sharing and creating knowledge. Organizations will encourage their people to bring their knowledge to work. Everyone will participate as work becomes interaction, conversations, stories, reflection, listening, and learning. The sharing comes from people caring. In short, everything changes, we stop talking about KM, and just do it.

Under the second scenario, as many predict, knowledge management, an interesting fad, will just fade away. Organizations will abandon KM as they abandoned TQM, BPR, and other management fads. They, instead, turn to the next great management process that promises larger profits and lower costs. In short, nothing changes, and we stop talking about KM

NEXT KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT ROUNDTABLE

Please reserve November 15 on your calendars for the next KM RT meeting and February 21 for the first event for 2002. We have a topic, speaker, and venue for the first meeting next year, but don't yet have firm plans for the November meeting.

Please send suggestions for topics, speakers, and venues for this and other future KM RT events to Virgil Frizzell, Consultant for KM with the School of Public Policy's International Center for Applied Studies in Information Technology (ICASIT) at George Mason University: vfrizzel@osf1.gmu.edu.

Please also send comments on this report format, as well as suggestions for improvements to the KM RT.