Knowledge management is a sharing culture

Eridani W. Sudiono, Accenture, Jakarta

A team at Accenture usually prepares for a project by searching for relevant information through the company knowledge database, called Knowledge Exchange, or KX(tm).

From KX(tm) you can choose the relevant databases for project management purposes. This might include the kind of training the team members will need if there is a lack of knowledge and/or skills to deliver the project.

By doing this, the team saves time compared to searching for information in textbooks or by summarizing general guides or manuals. Nothing can replace the speed of reusing a similar set of ideas, similar document templates, similar work plans, etc. Reinventing the wheel will only add costs, effort and time.

Without KX(tm), the team would definitely need more preparation time, which would be a problem if the project had to be delivered immediately.

To enable the team, help from the entire organization is key. Collaboration among everyone in the organization and the willingness of people to share what they have done to help others are the main elements.

Technology, which in this case is only a packaging tool and an enabler, plays a smaller role in what we refer to as knowledge management. Imagine having the technology infrastructure ready but people who do not want to share their experience. This would result in databases without content, a community of practice without people, or a system that consists of general knowledge with no specialization. The only people who would be busy working with the knowledge management system would be a dedicated group assigned to take care of the system, without the involvement of the rest of the people within the organization.

How can an organization motivate its people to share? Develop a sharing culture, and develop needs to reuse the knowledge. For example, identify experts on a particular topic and organize a gathering to share this knowledge. In addition to this, the material from the gathering should be available on the knowledge management system and accessible to anyone who did not attend the gathering, or for anyone who finds the topic interesting.

To encourage this, the performance management system should support the sharing culture, for example by integrating a reward system for the knowledge contributors as well as for the knowledge users.

Knowledge management is also sometimes considered a knowledge repository system, with the knowledge organization as the custodian. This means that everyone in the company is encouraged to share the knowledge, subject to approval of the knowledge organization. This does not mean to build another step in the organization hierarchy, but it is simply a way to manage the content of the system.

By having a well-managed knowledge repository, irrelevant knowledge in the database will be limited and a company will have fewer problems when one of its employees leaves the organization.

This is especially true if the departing employee has good relations with the company's clients. In this case, the company will only have to focus on developing a current or new employee to fill this particular role, but certainly not the knowledge content.

Imagine a customer service representative (CSR) at a retail company call center whose job is handling problems or complaints from customers. This person can save time by searching the problem solver database to see if the same problems have already been reported. By doing this, the CSR can provide immediate help to the customers. This reduces the necessity of contacting the technical help desk if the problem reported is a technical on, or contacting the finance organization if the problem reported is a payment one. Surely, this will lead to improved customer satisfaction because of the fast response, and eventually to improved revenue.