Authors Ulla de Stricker, Cynthia (Cindy) Shamel, Connie Crosby, and Constance Ard presented this overview on February 25, 2014 to a Community of Practice via webinar. The slides summarize key points from the recently published book Knowledge Management Practice in Organizations: The View from Inside.

1. Knowledge Management Practice in
Organizations: The View From Inside
A Panel Discussion by the Authors
February 25, 2014

2. A Collaborative Effort
• IGI Global requested a book on KM …
• That was not going to happen without some help!
• Six contributors stepped up …to help produce a volume
of practitioner insight gleaned from a combined ~150
years of experience
http://www.igi-global.com/book/knowledge-
management-practice-organizations/90644

3. Contents:
Preface (Practitioners Speak from Experience) – by Ulla de Stricker (Editor)
1. A Context of Challenges – by Ulla de Stricker
2. Knowledge Culture – by Ulla de Stricker
3. Planning for Knowledge Management: Conducting a Knowledge Assessment
– by Cynthia Shamel
4. Communities in the Workplace – by Connie Crosby
5. Getting Started with Social Media for Knowledge Management – by Connie Crosby
6. Building Smarter Organizations: Culture, Complexity, and Connecting through
Enterprise Social Networks – by Gordon Vala-Webb
7. The Learning Organization – by Deborah Keller
8. Tools for Talking: Conversations are Critical to Knowledge Management
– by Karen Huffman
9. Knowledge Management On Demand: Leveraging External Consulting Expertise
– by Constance Ard and Ulla de Stricker
10: Postscript: Leadership in Knowledge Management – Authors’ Comments
Summation: The Holistic Approach – by Constance Ard

4. Key Points (Speed Read)
• The book’s chapters look at KM from many
vantage points
• All of them practical in the sense that we have
“been there”
• Our pleasure to share the highlights here

5. A Context of Challenges
• Whenever professionals talk - be their topic talent
recruitment, customer service, or product
innovation - they are in fact discussing knowledge
management even though the term may never be
uttered.
• Technology was not the answer to the challenge of
harnessing "what the organization knows" and
applying it for efficiencies and strategic advantage.
• The chapter looks at common stresses experienced
in today's organizations - from dealing with email
tsunamis to facing the question "who owns
knowledge management - and who should?"

7. Challenges
• KM is Intrinsic to Organizations
• External and Internal Information are a Constant
• Information Presence is not the Problem - Volume is
• A Gamut of Other Challenges in KM
– Human nature prevails in the face of common pressures
– Common characteristics of work in contemporary organizations
– Difficulties in ensuring synergies between areas of expertise
– Difficulties for decision makers in funding KM
– Bottom Line: Ownership

8. Knowledge Culture
• Every organization exhibits a culture made up of the
beliefs and norms guiding day to day behavior.
Culture may or may not be in alignment with senior
management's official pronouncements, formal
operational rules, or the public image an
organization's leaders wish to project.
• Culture may support or undermine discipline in
managing and sharing knowledge. Certain key
characteristics are common for organizations in
which knowledge management is a priority
underpinned by funding and by senior management
rewards for behaviors supporting the use of
knowledge toward overall organizational benefit.

10. Culture
• Elements of Knowledge Culture: Characteristics of
KM-focused Organizations
– What gets rewarded gets repeated
• Factors Influencing Behavior
– Lost opportunities
– The trap of “good enough”
– Attention to intelligence

11. Knowledge Culture
• Download the Knowledge Culture chapter at
www.destricker.com

12. Knowledge Assessments
• The knowledge assessment (audit, survey, study)
offers direct benefit to your company’s bottom line.
• Use the knowledge audit to inform your KM
initiatives
• Look at the knowledge audit as a strategic tool
• Advance corporate goals through the knowledge
audit

13. Knowledge Assessments
• Minimize the unknown unknowns

14. Knowledge Assessments
• Use the KA to inform your KM initiatives
– Understand what’s actually going on
– Avoid misplaced energies and resources
• Look at the KA as a strategic tool
– Set priorities within the information center
– Allocate spending
– Feed into the information center’s strategic plan
• Advance corporate goals through the KA
– Align your initiatives with the company’s goals
– Position the information center as a leader in advancing
toward those goals

15. Knowledge Assessments
• Download the Knowledge Assessments chapter at
http://www.shamelinfo.com

16. Communities in the Workplace
• Engaged communities may have regular meetings or
conference calls, storytelling, speaker series, discussion
groups, information sharing and content curation,
sharing calendars of events and key dates, polls and
surveys, review of resources and software, thought
leadership, professional development and business
development.
• Benefits of communities can be augmented through
improved engagement of community members,
community management and administration, and
implementation of a subject taxonomy.

17. Communities in the Workplace
• Benefits and activities
• Management of communities
• Relevance for today’s KM
• Documented knowledge
• Role in mobile work

19. Social Media for KM
• As social media tools and platforms become more
common inside organizations, KM teams will need to
incorporate them into their toolbox. It is necessary to
learn how they work and how they can be used to be
effective in accomplishing the organization’s knowledge
and information related goals.
• The technology is more difficult to set up; getting buy-in
from senior executives is not always easy; and getting a
sufficiently wide adoption of the tools can be a
challenge if employees are not ready for it. Planning
and change management are needed to encourage
success.

20. Social Media for KM
• From Web 2.0 to Enterprise Social Networks
• Unlocking knowledge
• Tools and platforms
• Intermediate to long term uses
• Getting started
• Success factors
• Future outlook

21. Smarter Organizations
• Being a “smart” organization is essential for survival in
this age of hyper-competition, global power shifts, and
technological change.
• There are three matching and inter-linked solutions to
improve knowledge flows: reducing unnecessary
complexity, moving to a collaborative culture, and using
an enterprise social networking (ESN) technology. The
focus of the chapter is a step-by-step approach to
justify, design, measure, and roll out an ESN suite.

23. Smarter Organizations
• Rise of the need to be smart
• People cost of “dumb” organizations
• The maze-trix problem
• Toward a smart culture (collaborative as opposed to
command-and-control)
• Choosing and introducing an ESN suite
• Change Management

24. The Learning Organization
• Using reviews of past events as (often expensive)
investments in learning for the future pays off. Learning
barriers are similar to all other barriers to successful
knowledge management and include such obvious
elements as high level ownership and a culture of
valuing the learning every employee can contribute to
the organization's future.
• A key element is the organizational will to learn from
what happened in the past. The After Action Review is
used to illustrate a model for organizational learning.

26. The Learning Organization
• What is a learning organization?
• Capturing lessons
• Collecting the organization’s knowledge
• Learning from knowledge
• Facilitating collaboration
• The enterprise approach to KM
• Overcoming barriers

27. Tools for Talking
• The simple act of conversing with colleagues and fellow
members of communities of practice is a powerful
vehicle for exchange of knowledge and for learning.
• Fostering opportunities for productive conversations is
a strategy to consider seriously in enhancing knowledge
transfer among individuals.
• Tools for enhancing the effectiveness of conversations -
in person and virtually - are described: unconferences,
mind mapping, and real-time collaboration tools.

29. Tools for Talking
• Conversations are critical and change is inevitable
• Unconferences
• Mind maps
• Pecha Kucha (peh-chak-cha)
• Audio conferencing
• Web conferencing and online meetings
• Virtual communities
• Blueprint for success

30. KM on Demand:
Leveraging Consultants
• In some organizations, certain aspects of KM (typically
large projects) are outsourced to global consulting
firms. In others - often smaller entities - it may be
supported by one-time or occasional consulting
assistance to diagnose requirements, recommend
solutions, and perhaps guide implementation.
• The chapter explores the business model, value
proposition, and success factors in "purchasing in"
consultants who bring to bear their experience and
expertise from many other engagements.

31. KM on Demand:
Leveraging Consultants
• The psychology of purchasing expertise
• Management and staff perspectives
• Short term expense for long term gain
• The partnership model
• Success factors in leveraging external expertise:
Manage the process well

32. Leadership in KM
• Four of the book's contributors comment on their
experience of leadership in the field of knowledge
management.
• Due to the intrinsic nature of the discipline and due to
the ways in which knowledge management manifests in
organizations, leadership in KM requires a wide range
of soft skills and considerable finesse.

33. It May not Feel Natural
• But enthusiasm goes a long way!

34. Leadership in KM
• Advice to a new KM leader: Run!
• The future of KM leadership
• Becoming a thought leader
• What constitutes leadership in KM?

35. Real Life KM

36. Let’s Talk
• Click on the book image at
• www.destricker.com
• for links to the authors