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Infrastructure, IT, and the Knowledge Base: The Interrelationship
One reason KM initiatives fail is that organizations lack theoretical frameworks to explain the relationship between KM and IT. Without such an understanding, the structure of the two systems may counteract each other. Installing new IT tools and systems without identifying the role they will play in KM is a futile exercise. As explained in Chapter 5, the design of the IT infrastructure and choice of tools should be tailored to enable the knowledge creation processes that are specific to each business. The Navy's model addressed this both on the theoretical and practical levels.
On the theoretical level, Bennet's insightful analysis of how information management (IM), IT, KM, and infrastructure interact and support each other provided the basis.12 As shown in Exhibit 6.3, Bennet explained that "knowledge management cannot be effective without both information management and IT, where all are supported by the organizational infrastructure." Additionally, all of the various layers have intellectual capital components, which Bennet classifies as human, social, and corporate capital. The effective management of each of these components should be aligned through the layers of KM, IM, and IT. The structure and tools of IT and IM should be designed to enable effective KM by accommodating the social, human, and corporate aspects of knowledge creation and transfer.
On the practical level, the IT and IM architecture and tools should be designed in a way that activates both explicit and tacit knowledge transfer, across the Navy as a whole, and within the various departments and organizations. The first step was to build an enterprise-wide portal to replace the Navy's shore-based networks—the Navy Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI). The NMCI gives civilians, sailors, and Marines on the front lines direct access to the network of people and information available in government, industry, and academia. In addition, NMCI enables each organizational unit to support local information, of suppliers for example, through a common framework. The main purpose of the NMCI is to provide enterprise content integration (centralized) while at the same time allowing local user focus and content contribution (decentralized).
Though the enterprise-wide portal allows for enterprise content integration, there are knowledge content areas that are unique for certain organizations or departments and thus need to be both created and maintained at the organizational level. As mentioned in Chapter 5, a knowledge
fsons Learned Relationships |
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The Essence of Information Management he Essence of Information Technology Infrastructure |
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EXHIBIT 6.3 Interaction between KM, IM, and IT
base has two main functions: (1) creating and managing content in a way that makes knowledge accessible when needed, and (2) locating experts in defined knowledge areas. The choice of the taxonomy and method in which knowledge and information resources are stored in the knowledge base is of critical importance since it directly impacts its effectiveness in supporting knowledge/business needs. For the second function, the adoption of appropriate tools that facilitate communication and exchange of information are essential. In addition to providing guidelines on how to develop taxonomies, the Navy's CIO identified two main ways in which knowledge resources can be grouped for future reference—clustering and clumping.
The Toolkit explains that, traditionally, knowledge and information resources have been clustered by reference to topic areas. Another approach called clumping can also be used, in which knowledge and information resources are grouped by reference to the decisions that they support. Each of these approaches can be used for their respective advantages. While clumping enables effective decision making, clustering is useful for comparing and contrasting sources in one area to determine best practices, for example. Despite this, it seems that for the Navy's purposes the use of clumping as the main approach for building the knowledge base is the preferred approach, for its support of the decision-making process. Bennet notes that "[I]f the Knowledge-Centric Organization is able to help the human process of 'clumping' by organizing information and knowledge around key decision points, decisions can be made more efficiently and effectively".
By following the order in which decisions are made in an organization, clumping facilitates the classification of knowledge and information resources according to the knowledge creation cycle. To aid the various organizations across the Navy in designing their own knowledge bases, the CIO provided a guideline on the steps involved14:
1. Identify the core strategic process. The strategic process is defined as the core process that each command follows to accomplish its mission. The core process is mapped to identify the actions taken, decisions to be made, flows, and documents used.
2. Identify critical actions. In this step the actions (or tasks) that are critical to the success of the mission of the given process are identified.
3. Identify critical action personnel. Those are the people that make the decisions or perform the critical actions involved in the process. This helps identify the expertise (tacit knowledge) and the explicit knowledge resources that are needed to support the various actions, leading to Step 4.
4. Identify knowledge, skills, and information requirements. This step goes deeper into identifying the types of knowledge, skills, and information required to enable choosing the appropriate taxonomy.
5. Aggregate knowledge needs into content centers. Resources are aggregated in various centers based on clustering (i.e., around topic areas). It is suggested that the resources be prioritized in hierarchies of importance. Content centers are formed by listing resources under their different types (e.g., documents, databases, and personnel).
6. Design a communication strategy. The final stage involves examining the existing IT architecture and tools and determining how these should be augmented or changed to support the information flow and social interaction between those who know with those who need to know.
This leads us to the next step as to the choice of tools to facilitate KM. On the enterprise level, the portal and the intranet provided the necessary IT tools. But more important than IT tools are "social" and analytical tools that enable the creation of an effective KM system.
The Navy's model emphasizes the use of two major types of tools for KM: social tools to facilitate transfer of tacit knowledge and analytical tools to facilitate implementation of KM initiatives. For social tools, the Navy uses storytelling to transfer such of the tacit knowledge that cannot be made explicit. Storytelling has been facilitated by the creation of databases of Lessons Learned and success stories. For analytical tools, the Navy advances two main approaches—systems thinking and KM performance measures. Systems thinking is advanced as a tool that enables management to go beyond the surface into discovering the mental modes and behavioral patterns of an organization that preclude change. Once discovered, they can be dealt with, and hence the KM initiative can be effectively implemented. Performance measurement, the Navy way, is presented as a tool to monitor the progress of the KM initiative and to adjust it along the way. Below is a presentation of these tools.
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Infrastructure, IT, and the Knowledge Base: The Interrelationship