Massive Income

20 Knowledge Management Initiatives and Practices (2)

 Foster Communities and Networks of Practice. Facilitate collaboration and socializing by people with similar or identical responsibilities within an organization (community of practice). The purpose is to enable these individuals to share experiences and insights and collaborate to find innovative solutions applicable to their daily work. Networks of practice are formed by people with similar functions from different organizations (Dawson 2003).

 Conduct Town Meetings and Conduct Knowledge Cafés. Town meetings refer to assemblies of many employees in one facility to be briefed on a topic (such as new corporate strategy) and to then discuss the topic and provide feedback on how it is perceived by the attendees. Knowledge cafés refer to group sessions in which a number of people (from a small number to several hundred) are assembled to discuss the implications of some topic that affects them and their organization. Typically, the knowledge café is conducted by presenting the topic and its background to the group. This presentation is followed by brief
(5 to 15 minutes) discussions by small groups (five or fewer persons) of the implications and what they may mean for the participants. The groups are then scrambled, and discussions are repeated, often for four or five cycles before summaries are collected. Often, continued informal discussions are encouraged
for days or weeks.

 Build and Operate Expert Networks. Provide formalized capabilities for workers in the field to consult or collaborate with topic experts on complex or unfamiliar tasks. Several mechanisms and infrastructure elements may be used to create and support an expert network. They include: (1) guides to “who knows what” in the form of “yellow page” systems on intranets, knowledge inventories, or knowledge roadmaps; (2) policies that permit knowledge worker access to experts; (3) budgets for experts to help knowledge workers; (4) communication channels that range from on-site expert visits, face-to-face meetings,
telephone consultations, e-mail, groupware-based communication, video conferencing, and so on; (5) learnings capture systems to build frequently asked questions (FAQ) help systems; and (6) outcome feedback analysis and capture systems.

 Capture and Transfer Expert Know-How. Communicates concepts, judgments, and thinking by exceptional performers and experts to other knowledge workers to help them develop improved “this is how we do it” knowledge to perform better.2 One approach uses experts to demonstrate, identify, and characterize their work methods. By observing experts at work and in simulated situations, the experts communicate directly with workers. They explain their approaches, thinking, and perspectives for handling routine and particularly, nonroutine, situations and engage less experienced workers in discussions and explorations. This approach allows these workers to learn by building and internalizing new knowledge. They particularly build mental models in the form of beginning routines, operational models, and scripts for how to perform the new tasks.

 Capture and Transfer Expert Concepts to Other Practitioners. Similar to the capture and transfer of know-how but instead of focusing on how to perform work, it focuses on the concepts, thinking, and reasoning foundations for why work may be performed in different ways under different conditions. A typical approach is for experts to describe, identify, and characterize their associations, concept hierarchies, mental models, content knowledge, and metaknowledge as best they can—first by telling the other practitioners and, as sessions evolve, by being drawn into discussions. This approach allows practitioners to build and internalize new knowledge by building mental models in the form of operational models, scripts, schemata, general abstractions, and metaknowledge.

 Capture and Transfer Expertise from Departing Personnel. This is a valuable practice when competent people retire or are promoted. Many approaches are used. For example, some use trained observers who document routine and semi-routine work in job descriptions, reports, or video recordings. Others utilize
“self-elicitation” by writing or audio or video recording the departing individual as they perform their work or when they provide explanations of their expertise. Others use KM professionals to elicit and document pertinent knowledge. Still others use apprenticing or shadowing to learn on-the-job. Shadowing
is particularly useful when the expertise covers a highly variable domain such as for managers, internal consultants, “troubleshooters,” and similar broad fields.

Taken from : “People-Focused Knowledge Management” How Effective Decision Making Leads to Corporate Success.