Understanding Knowledge Management and Learning Essentials

Organization, People, Knowledge, and Technology for Learning

OLIVIER SERRAT

Principal Knowledge Sharing and Services Specialist Knowledge Sharing and Services Center Regional and Sustainable Development Department Asian Development Bank

DATA, Data are discrete and objective facts, measurements, or observations INFORMATION, that can be analyzed to generate information.

AND KNOWLEDGE Information is data that have been categorized, analyzed, summarized, and placed in context in a form that has structure and meaning.

Knowledge is a combination of data and information, to which is added expert opinion, skills, and experience, resulting in a valuable asset that aids decision making.

Knowledge is what you learn from experience—before, during, and after the event.

KNOWLEDGE TACIT KNOWLEDGE IS ASSETS • Know-how from deeply personal experience, aptitudes, skills,

perceptions, insights, and intuition.

• Difficult to communicate in forms other than personal contact and regular interaction.

EXPLICIT KNOWLEDGE IS • Know-what that has been or can be described, articulated, codified, and stored.

• Readily shared in formal language, print, or electronic media.

EXPLICIT KNOWLEDGE = Media-based

20%

TACIT KNOWLEDGE = In people’s heads

80%

Organization, People, Knowledge, and Technology for Learning

Paper-based, multimedia, digitally indexed, digitally active, etc.

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CORE KNOWLEDGE CORE KNOWLEDGE ACTIVITIES are what activities are widely used ACTIVITIES by an organization to manage knowledge.

REQUIREMENTS 1. Activities should be aligned or integrated into business processes.

2. Activities should be balanced according to the specificities of each organization.

A knowledge management solution should not focus only on one or two activities in isolation.

CREATE KNOWLEDGE

IDENTIFY KNOWLEDGE STORE KNOWLEDGE

USE KNOWLEDGE

SHARE KNOWLEDGE

Identify

Create

Store

Share

Use

Inventorize people and system-based knowledge assets.

Gather knowledge assets from people or systems that hold it.

Organize knowledge assets into codifiable and noncodifiable categories.

Pass knowledge assets between people or systems.

Use the knowledge assets for benefit.

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KNOWLEDGE KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IS MANAGEMENT • The formal and directed process of enabling vital individual

and collective knowledge resources to be identified, created, stored, shared, and used more easily to improve organizational performance.

• The fusion of information management and organizational learning.

KNOWLEDGE • Knowledge agents comprise individuals, groups, the intra-organizational AGENTS domain, and the inter-organizational domain.

• Knowledge management often involves a spiral process across knowledge agents.

Knowledge Assets

IntraOrganizational Domain

InterOrganizational Domain

Individual

Group

Tacit Knowledge

Cross-cultural negotiation skills

Team coordination in complex work

Corporate Culture

Customer expectations and attitudes toward products and services

Explicit Knowledge

Knowledge calculus

Quality circles

Organization charts

Patents and documented practices

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KNOWLEDGE • An architecture must be built to initiate and implement organization-wide knowledge management initiatives.

MANAGEMENT ARCHITECTURE • Four pillars are critical to success: (i) leadership, (ii) organization,

(iii) technology, and (iv) learning.

• Leadership develops the strategies necessary to position for success in an environment.

• Respect for knowledge must pervade an organization: introducing knowledge management requires organizational change, and knowledge management inevitably acts as a catalyst to transform an organization’s culture.

• Technology is essential to achieving knowledge management strategies; however, any technical solution must add value to the process and achieve measurable improvements.

• Organizational learning is the ability of an organization to gain insight and understanding from experience through experimentation, observation, analysis, and a willingness to learn from failure, not just success.

Society

Economy

Polity

Environment

Technology Strategic Framework

Leadership

Organization

Technology

Learning

Leadership

Organization

Technology

Learning

Multiple Disciplines, including Management Science

Organizational Development

Organization, People, Knowledge, and Technology for Learning

Computer Science

Cognitive Psychology

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KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT ARCHITECTURE Pillar

Function

Leadership

Cross-cultural negotiation skills

Organization

Organize to support values for knowledge management.

Technology

Collect and connect knowledge.

Learning

Cultivate and utilize virtual teams and exchange forums for knowledge management.

Typical Activity • • • • •

Identify knowledge critical to learning.

Conduct work-centered analysis.

Plan high-level strategic approach.

Establish goal and prioritize objectives.

Define requirements and develop measurement program.

• Promote values and norms.

• Implement strategy.

• Identify critical knowledge gaps, opportunities, and risks.

• Develop business process model.

• Engage key audiences with incentives.

• • • • •

Enhance system integration and access.

Deploy intelligent agents for people.

Exploit semantic technologies.

Reuse existing capabilities in new ways.

Monitor, measure, and report knowledge performance metrics.

• • • •

Enliven collaboration.

Facilitate communities of practice.

Encourage storytelling.

Recognize and reward knowledge sharing.

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BALANCED The architecture of knowledge management must be strenghtened KNOWLEDGE in support of organization-wide initiatives. Its four pillars require MANAGEMENT balanced interconnectivity.

Leadership

Organization

Technology

Learning

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THE WHAT, WHY, Learning is the acquisition of knowledge or skills through study, AND HOW experience, or instruction.

OF LEARNING

Learning is an integral part of knowledge management. Its ultimate end is to raise performance.

In the corporate world, learning is driven by organization, people, knowledge, and technology working in harmony.

LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE

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LEARNING LOOPS In single-loop learning, people spend the bulk of their time detecting and correcting deviations from the rules and procedures.

In double-loop learning, people continuously challenge assumptions (status quo), categorize second-order problems from patterns, and rethink underlying strategy based on insights. They are able to reflect on whether the rules might need to be altered.

In triple-loop learning, the highest order of organizational learning, people question the raison d’être of organizations; reconsider its principles and policies; and arrive at renewed statements of identity, values, culture, and worldview (learning about learning) that may even impact their external environment. Capacity to think creatively and act innovatively is multiplied. People deliberate at length on the meaning of rules, not just whether the rules should be changed.

Context

Assumptions

Actions

Results

Single-Loop Learning (Are we doing things right?)

Double-Loop Learning (Are we doing the right things?)

Triple-Loop Learning (How do we decide what is right?)

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LEARNING LOOPS Single Loop

Double Loop

Triple Loop

Adaptive Learning

Generative Learning

Radical Learning

• Apply existing rules/ procedures • Coping • Deal with symptoms of problems

• Examine underlying causes • Question assumptions and rules/procedures

• Examine core values and identity • Rethink fundamental purpose and principles

• Efficiencies • Improved application of rules/procedures

• New knowledge and insights • Revised rules, systems, and strategies

• Renewed statement of core values and purpose • Renewed identity

Quadruple-loop learning is rarely associated with organizational learning: reflective and comparative, it analyzes systemic options and evaluates the foundational claims of each.

Quadruple-loop learning investigates the deep assumptions of paradigms and the principles they are built on, ethics, horizons, and approaches to knowledge creation. The payoffs are breakthroughs by perpetual practice in humane, built-for-change organizations.

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MODEL OF LEARNING PROGRESSION

Data

Information

Know What

Reductionist

Organization, People, Knowledge, and Technology for Learning

Knowledge

Wisdom?

Know How

Know Why

Systemic

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MOTIVATIONS BEHIND KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT EFFORTS

Typical considerations include: • Making available increased knowledge content in the development and provision of products and services.

• Achieving shorter product development cycles.

• Facilitating and managing innovation and organizational learning.

• Leveraging the expertise of people across the organization.

• Increasing network connectivity between internal and external individuals.

• Managing business environments and allowing staff to obtain relevant insights and ideas appropriate to their work.

• Solving intractable or wicked problems.

• Managing intellectual capital and intellectual assets in the workforce.

To clarify vision, purpose, values, and organizational behavior For client relations For innovation For an energized committed workforce

To produce a wide range of solutions to organizational issues

To reduce the likelihood of repeated mistakes

To balance the demands of stakeholders

To reconcile the pressures of long-term effectiveness and short-term efficiency To increase ability to manage change

For superior organizational performance and competitive advantage

Organization, People, Knowledge, and Technology for Learning

To understand risks and diversity more deeply

For independence and liberty

To expand the horizons of who we are and what we can become

To engage in community For awareness of the critical nature of interdependence To avoid decline

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CULTURAL ROADBLOCKS TO KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SUCCESS

Psychological Factors • Reciprocity • Repute • Altruism

WHERE ARE YOU IN THE JOURNEY?

Culture has been characterized as the glue that holds organizations together.

Culture is critical to • Setting and executing strategy.

• Determining the success or failure of operations.

• Establishing employee satisfaction, job commitment, and turnover.

• Managing knowledge, for example through knowledge sharing.

Knowledge Sharing

Social Factors • Organizational culture • Social networks

Have you started discussions on knowledge management?

Have you developed a knowledge management strategy?

Have you been deploying knowledge management solutions?

Do you have knowledge management pilots underway?

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EARLY SIGNPOSTS • Knowledge products and services are strategic and must be accounted for and valued accordingly.

TO KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT • Knowledge management requires integration and balancing • • • • • •

of leadership, organization, technology, and learning in an organization-wide setting.

Knowledge management must both meet the requirements of and conditions for success and the desired benefits and expectations of the organization.

Organizational culture affects knowledge management, especially at lower levels of corporate hierarchies.

Streamlined organization with strong organizational culture have a higher chance of success in knowledge.

An atmosphere of trust is a precondition to knowledge sharing.

Proposals for knowledge management should include both soft and hard measures if managers are to support knowledge management initiatives.

The success factors for knowledge management are dominated by management concerns for people, process, and outcome orientation. They are interspersed throughout the knowledge management architecture of leadership, organization, technology, and learning.

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KNOWLEDGE Knowledge Management in ADB moves ADB to improve its MANAGEMENT AND organizational culture, management systems, business processes LEARNING IN ADB and information technology solutions, communities of practice, and learning and development mechanisms.

Enhancing Knowledge Management under Strategy 2020: Plan of Action, 2009–2011 delivered knowledge solutions and knowledge services from four strategic thrusts: • Sharpening the knowledge focus in ADB’s operations.

• Empowering communities of practice.

• Strengthening external knowledge partnerships.

• Further enhancing staff learning and skills development.

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RESULTS-DRIVEN MANAGEMENT MODEL

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THE PROMISE OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT ORGANIZATION

PERFORMANCE TOMORROW

PEOPLE

PERFORMANCE TODAY

Organization, People, Knowledge, and Technology for Learning

KNOWLEDGE

TECHNOLOGY

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FURTHER READING •

ADB. 2008. Building Communities of Practice. Manila. Available: www.adb.org/publications/building-communities-practice

•

ADB. 2008. Notions of Knowledge Management. Manila.

Available: www.adb.org/publications/notions-knowledgemanagement

•

ADB. 2008. Picking Investments in Knowledge Management.

Manila. Available: www.adb.org/publications/picking-investments

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ADB. 2009. Glossary of Knowledge Management. Manila.

Available: www.adb.org/publications/glossary-of-knowledgemanagement

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ADB. 2009. The Roots of an Emerging Discipline. Manila.

Available: www.adb.org/publications/roots-emerging-discipline

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ADB. 2009. Building a Learning Organization. Manila. Available: www.adb.org/publications/building-a-learning-organization

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ADB. 2009. Enhancing Knowledge Management Strategies.

Manila. Available: www.adb.org/publications/enhancingknowledge-management-strategies

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ADB. 2009. A Primer on Organizational Culture. Manila. Available: www.adb.org/publications/primer-organizational-culture

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ADB. 2009. A Primer on Organizational Learning. Manila.

Available: www.adb.org/publications/primer-on-organizationallearning

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ADB. 2010. Seeding Knowledge Solutions Before, During, and After. Manila. Available: www.adb.org/publications/seedingknowledge-solutions-during-and-after

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ADB. 2012. Knowledge as Culture. Manila. Available: www.adb. org/publications/knowledge-culture

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ABOUT THE ASIAN DEVELOPMENT BANK ADB’s vision is an Asia and Pacific region free of poverty.

Its mission is to help its developing member countries reduce poverty and improve the quality of life of their people. Despite the region’s many successes, it remains home to two-thirds of the world’s poor: 1.8 billion people who live on less than $2 a day, with 903 million struggling on less than $1.25 a day. ADB is committed to reducing poverty through inclusive economic growth, environmentally sustainable growth, and regional integration.

Based in Manila, ADB is owned by 67 members, including 48 from the region. Its main instruments for helping its developing member countries are policy dialogue, loans, equity investments, guarantees, grants, and technical assistance.

For more information, contact Knowledge Sharing and Services Center Asian Development Bank 6 ADB Avenue, Mandaluyong City 1550 Metro Manila, Philippines Tel +63 2 632 6710 Fax +63 2 632 5264 knowledge@adb.org www.adb.org/knowledge-management/

Knowledge Primers serve as quick introductions to knowledge management and learning applications in development work.

In an attractive package, they are suitable for interactive presentations and self-learning for action. They are offered as resources to ADB staff. They may also appeal to the development community and people having interest in knowledge and learning.

© 2012 by Asian Development Bank. All rights reserved.

July 2012