Simon Buckingham writes:
>Hello there- I have recently been investigating "knowledge management"
>and "intellectual capital" specifically and wanted to post my initial
>impressions to the list for interest and comments.
Thank you for opening up this discussion area. In the growing fields of
learning organization, knowledge management and intellectual capital,
there is a need for clarity and constructive structure.
Simon States: There is much talk about the high importance of "knowledge
management" and "intellectual capital" in the unorganized world in which
we work with our heads and not with our hands. In the unorganized world,
the only property worth owning is intellectual property- the only matter
that matters is brain matter.
Useful to set the stage - "Intellectual Capital" and "Knowledge
management" come at matters from different perspectives. Intellectual
Capital points to the value to the enterprise of the "brain matter" and
experience of the human beings who work for the organization. This human
capital set of assets need to be supported by the structural capital of
the organization. The structural capital includes computer systems,
policy and procedure manuals etc. The purpose of the human beings and the
structural component is to service the customers. As customers become
loyal to the organization through this service, they become "customer"
capital.
"Knowledge management" concerns the interaction between human capital and
structural capital. From a self serving point of view, the organization
needs ask itself what it needs to know to survive - that is to serve its
customers. It needs to ask itself what it does not know and what it does
know! These questions are part of the analysis of structural capital, as
are the questions that relate to moving what is not known to the known
category.
Simon notes "Knowledge is relevant, useful information about things that
are important to the organization such as its customers, competitors,
product development processes and so on. Knowledge management is all about
capturing and leveraging valuable information and making it available
widely for use by other people throughout the organization."
Verna Allee shines perspective on "knowledge" in her "The Knowledge
Evolution" when she distinguishes between data, information, knowledge,
meaning, philosophy, wisdom and Union. She charts out the various
thinkers and schools of management/knowledge management in terms of where
these approaches fit into that hierarchy of knowledge.
It is useful to distinguish the various levels in terms of this dialogue
on "knowledge management" and "intellectual Capital". Both terms imply
the management process. There is significance within Intellectual Capital
to measurements.
Simon raises the issue of Required Contributions:
"It is very easy to imagine the implementation of knowledge management
exercises as mandatory. Information "components" would then be passed up
the hierarchy and signed off and agreed by managers before being posted to
the knowledge management database. The knowledge sharing and collaboration
is not voluntary but mandatory. Compulsion is never the best way of
achieving something. All that changes is that the information is posted to
a central database as well as to customers and close colleagues. "
There is a hierarchy of knowledge and within that hierarchy, there is a
difference between establishing a sales automation database that requires
a salesperson to provide customer data, sales call records and sales
opportunity tracking, and a system that records the sales person's
response to the question "How did you make that sale?" . Companies are
moving from "I don't care about customer information as long as sales
quotas are being met" to recognizing that customer information can be
shared more efficiency between the sales force and the sales management if
it is organized in a database that can be accessed from the sales person's
lap top.
There is yet another level added when the sales person is asked to answer
" how I made that sale" - We are then asking that person to think and add
to the knowledge and know-how of the organization. The answers can then be
shared with other sales people.
A next level would then be " what are the needs of this customer and how
can we respond to those needs?" The answers here can then be shared with
product managers and corporate planners. There might be a team of
geographically distributed experts assigned to the answer. Collaborative
software would be used to pose the challenge and collect the responses
from the members of the team. Here we move into knowledge creation and
management means more the management of the structural components such as
the networks, modems, servers and software that makes this collaboration
possible.
Companies have a right to require contributions to its survival. We need
to recognize that. Companies out of their own self interest are slowly
coming to understand that the more the structural capital supports the
needs of the human capital, the more successful the company will be in the
development of use of knowledge and know how to generate that customer
relationship which can be capitalized.
Simon - Thanks for the opportunity to respond to your thinking!
Nicolas L. Behrmann
Intellectual Capitalist Newsletter
250 Kenwood Court
Grosse Pointe Farms, MI 48236
313-882-4923
jmb30x@internetmci.com
--jmb30x <jmb30x@internetMCI.com>
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