‘I am not proposing large extensive Knowledge Management campaigns but simply improving the method by which information flows between the employees and management and how that data can be accumulated, analyzed and understood.’
I was taken aback when she denied me my breakthrough in application of knowledge to deliver results. After all had I not only improved on the method to conduct knowledge flows by organizing dialogue over discussion, but also created a source of intelligent energy to drive dialogue? It took some hard thinking to understand that perhaps Knowledge Management needed to be distinguished from Knowledge Application:
Knowledge Management: It creates the framework for shared thinking:
- Methods & Tools: The method encompasses recording of the key words that communicate meaning and progresses to define a structure for understanding or applying any explicit knowledge. The tools ease the conduct of the method and promote it. An important function of the method is to create a common language, so that when a reference is made everybody knows what is meant. Talking the same language assists the rapid exchange of information within or across projects.
- Cases: A collection of theoretical material or explicit knowledge that has been captured per the method and placed in a repository for swift access.
- Experience: Relates to previous engagement with the method and cases. It assists their interpretation, application and exploitation for better thinking, and may be passed on in a discussion in context at the discretion of the owner.
Personnel must self-organize and follow a discipline to take advantage of the methods, tools, cases and repositories of Knowledge Management. Experience is tacit knowledge and depends upon its owner’s volition to share it. Knowledge Management is known to be the mainstay of successful consulting. The paper Exploring Management Consulting Firms As Knowledge Systems (Werr, Stjernberg, 2003) details successful use of the concept.
Knowledge Application: It enables a group to achieve together what they cannot hope to achieve individually even if invested with the combined intelligence of the group. The context and possession of knowledge is best defined by the Knowledge Management method. Lack of a solution to the problems a team experiences in applying its knowledge for greater ability raise the gap between the possession of knowledge and its effective use on each event or the Knowing-Doing gap.
