ECM Report

I am sometimes questioned about what the term “Knowledge Management” (KM) actually means. My standard, default answer is “I don’t know.” If probed further, you might get something cryptic and useless like “it means something different to everyone” or “it changes every day”. And if I’m in a really cranky mood you may be the unfortunate recipient of the can of worm opening “what is knowledge anyway?”. Setting some of these philosophical discussions aside for the moment, let’s discuss the real meaning of “Knowledge Management”. At least, the real meaning as defined by me.

To the misconception of most people, KM is often defined as tools that help people manage information. Typically, this “knowledge” is nothing more than information or data already contained in a tangible form like a web page, a document, a database, an email or a piece of paper. This type of information is typically referred to as “explicit” knowledge. The holy grail of today’s KM industry, however, has nothing to do with finding new ways of managing existing mountains of data errrrrrrr knowledge. Instead, they are looking to find new ways of getting at the “tacit” knowledge of organizations. That is, the knowledge that exists in the collective mass of brain tissue in an organization.

As good as the indexing engines are that exist today, most cannot crawl your thoughts. Today’s KM tools are usually file managers, taxonomy creators, automatic indexing tools and data aggregators (spiders). Google.com could probably be considered a big, specialized example of an old school-defined KM system.

One major problem that users of traditional document/content management systems have is in locating relevant information. The systems are very good at storing and indexing mountains of information but the seeker is still required to make judgments about what they want to see and to sift through it all looking for something specifically relevant. Newer KM systems, on the other hand, are leaping into newer, more collaborative ways of finding, utilizing and maximizing this information. While they do purport to manage documents, web pages, content and other structured and unstructured data, they take the retrieval of this information to the next level. Not only do they assist with locating this explicit captured information, they also enable the non-experts to quickly and easily tap into any potential human knowledge that might make their task easier.

I hear something frequently that illustrates this very well. This is a fairly typical statement: “I don’t know how to do very much, but I know how to find the people that do.” This has become an art form in many large organizations. Ask ten different people who the best person is to answer X, you are likely to get ten different responses. The people that know how to leverage the expertise of the organization have a tremendous advantage over those that do not. This skill, however, should not be limited to a select few. Knowledge management systems should not only manage data, but they should also manage the intellectual capital of the organization such that the path to locating the people that can assist is as streamlined as possible. Being able to find and utilize the right people is every bit as crucial as finding and utilizing the output of their previous work. The experience, the knowledge and the expertise of the specialists needs to be easily tapped by the entire workforce.

The key to defining knowledge management is to make sure you are separating “explicit” knowledge from “tacit” knowledge. Explicit knowledge is anything easy to quantify, write down, document or explain. Tacit knowledge is the everything else. The knowledge based on ones experiences, and often times, at a subconscious level. It is information that you don’t necessarily know you know until you are reminded of it. If you were asked to write down everything you know, could you do it? If there were a way to quantify all knowledge in this manner, the concept of the repurposing of information becomes moot.

In the realm of human beings and physiology, knowledge has a certain definition. But in the world of bits and bytes that is technology, knowledge is just a fancy term for data. Let’s not kid ourselves. By my definition, in one way or another, any technology that manages information could be considered an “explicit” knowledge manager. That only makes sense right? Is an accounting system a knowledge manager? You bet. It manages data/information/knowledge of an accounting practice. Where I differ from most in my definition of KM is less in my definition of knowledge and more in the tools that could or should be defined as knowledge managers. For example, if a document is considered knowledge, then why would a “document management system” NOT be considered a knowledge manager? If a web page or web site is considered knowledge then shouldn’t a “content management system” also be considered a knowledge manager? And yet that is a distinction that is made in the industry. Those are separate, different, disparate technologies.

The tools of the past have focused on very specific types, or formats of knowledge. If I have a bunch of Word documents that I want to manage, I might buy that document management system. If I have a project that needs to be managed, I might buy that project management tool. Oops, what happens when a project contains documents? Which tool do you use? This seems so trivial but that scenario is one that has preyed on many a large corporation. By my definition, both of these tools are explicit knowledge managers. And both of these tools should not only coexist, but know how to talk to each other. The knowledge worker should not have to differentiate between formats of information in order to locate it. To them, it is simply data, or knowledge to be sought. This universal access to existing, captured data and knowledge is slowly becoming a reality. From there, however, the “tacit” knowledge managers should kick in. Who created this information? What else do they know? How can you best use their experiences and their expertise to assist? This tool is the real knowledge manager.

What is the bottom line? To me, knowledge management is too broad of a term. It should not be used to define tools that assist with the management, aggregation or storage of structured or unstructured information (explicit knowledge). Instead, it should define tools that help locate, track, and collaborate with the subject matter experts. After all, it’s the collective experiences and know-how of an organization’s workforce that give it real value. Being able to tap into this knowledge is a critical factor of success.

Rick Taylor
415-420-4200