Knowledge Management can help meet organization needs at the local, national and international levels.

1. Knowledge Management - a National and
International Perspective
©David G. Jones (2013)

3. Some Common Myths
“There’s no problem replacing those departing employees, just hire more
consultants!”
“We just need everyone to have personal training plans”
“We need to spend more on technology for us to communicate better”
“Fred can document everything he knows before he retires”
“We need a better policy framework to become a learning organization”
“You can’t ‘manage’ knowledge, so Knowledge Management can’t exist”

4. Some Common Truths
“We need to break down the barriers between the silos”
“We need to function more like a team”
“We need to improve the decision-making process”
“We need to be more responsive to changes in public sector drivers and
priorities”
“We need to know how to deal with the HR issues of the future”
“We need to be more efficient and effective in times of shrinking budgets”

5. What are today’s organizational
challenges?
 Ambiguity and discontinuity between mission and activity
 Continuous change in organization, rules and processes
 Moving targets, moving methods (BPR/TQM/BsC)
 Stovepipes / silos / low to nil communication
 Partner / regulator / stakeholder right to play
 Conclusion: Ends are debatable, means are all over the place, and we are not all
too sure about what we are. And, as we drive ourselves and our organizations to
sort this all out,
 We know we can make it all happen only though a workforce suffering from
“Initiative Fatigue” – or “IF”

6. The old paradigm

7. Context and Drivers
Changing workforce: brain drain, “Baby-boomer” retirements
Innovation in service delivery: ASD, partnerships
Governance, accountability and risk management
“Modern Comptrollership”
For government - citizen focus, public service values, managing for results,
responsible spending)
Emphasis on recruitment, workplace well-being, and learning and development
Modernizing Human Resource Management
Program Review, Innovation, Security, global competition

8. Characteristics of a high performance
organization
• What and how work to be done is known
• Debate focuses on methods, not goals
• Highly efficient and effective decision-making
• Continual process review (adaptivity)
• The necessary tools are in place
• Roadblocks are minimal
• Energy / resources expended only on essentials

9. Example of a high performance
organization (real estate) 1
• Well defined processes including:
• a process for continuous improvement
• a process for managing business intelligence
• A culture of information sharing, tips and advice and collaboration
• A business model focused clearly on:
• organizational and individual success and sustainability
• selling property and protecting the agent

10. Example of a high performance
organization (real estate) 2
• Masses of structured data (transactions, state of economy, street resident
index, telephone directories)
• Large information holdings: (mortgage rules; lenders and interest rates;
maps; marketing methods and costs; existing and potential customers;
communications practices; intellectual capital)
• Great knowledge in: (qualifying, finding / matching properties and clients,
selling, closing)

11. If we described an organization’s performance in this
way, we’d say it was….
Achieving enterprise-wide definition, establishment, operation and
continuous improvement of the organization and its capability; its
information and knowledge; and its collaborative information technologies
– all directed towards ensuring the organization remains firmly focused on
operational effectiveness.
 ……….I would call this “Knowledge Management”

12. Knowledge…….
What one has when information, people and
process are brought together so that
information can be applied effectively in
achieving results.

13. Value
 The information issue in knowledge management in the degree of utility
of the information
 The organizational issues in knowledge management include the degree
to which:
• Decisions are based on high quality knowledge (intelligence)
• The parts of the organization work together
• Activity relates to mission and mandate

14. Mark Addleson’s View
˜ KM is embedded in (communities of) practice – It is the way wedo things.
It is not an 'add-on'. You become a ‘knowledge centered’ organization.
˜ Everyone does KM - from mail rooms to board rooms and police officers to
city hall.
˜ We understand better what KM is not: it is neither simply ‘improved
communications’, ‘better training’, nor ‘new technology’.
˜ Much of what is important in KM cannot be measured and trying to make
it measurable means we pay attention to the wrong things

15. Some Federal organizations use KM as “one” instrument for
strategic change management………
˜ A learning strategy vehicle; a model and process for information sharing and
collaboration; communities of practice
˜ A set of principles guiding management practices including decision-making
˜ Information product identification and marketing (intellectual capitalization
and intellectual capitalism); knowledge mapping
˜ Methodology for knowledge capture and exploitation to deliver a knowledge-
based continuous learning and improving organization
˜ Information Management
˜ A guide for IM/IT architecture development

16. The “Information” in “Information Technology / Information Management”
issue
organizations do ‘corporate think’ - they capitalize
 “Intelligent
on making tacit knowledge part of their infrastructure. They
automatically process and deliver information necessary for the
achievement of objectives across the entire organization.
Combining raw data, facts and figures with validating insights
and making the results available enterprise-wide enables an IM
paradigm shift.”

17. What is Knowledge Management?
Knowledge management refers to the processes of creating, capturing, transferring
and using knowledge to enhance organizational performance. Knowledge
management is most frequently associated with two particular types of activities:
- Those activities that attempt to document and appropriate knowledge that individuals have
(sometimes called the codification of knowledge) and activities to disseminate that knowledge
throughout the organization.
- Those activities that facilitate human exchanges in which knowledge that is not codified (tacit
knowledge) can be shared.
Public Service Commission of Canada, 1998
Knowledge Management is a multi-disciplinary approach to using and managing
organizational knowledge that is based on sound information management
practices, focussed on organizational learning, recognizing the contribution and
value of employees, and is enabled by technology. It is primarily concerned with
the content of knowledge within the organization and how that knowledge can
improve organizational performance.
Interdepartmental Knowledge Management Forum, 1999

18. Coordinates
 David G. Jones, Ottawa Canada
 @shibumimc
 Shibumi.management@gmail.com