Driving Performance Through Knowledge Management

By Jacalyn S. Smeltzer, Ph.D.

Studies have concluded that less than 20% of corporate knowledge is captured. Furthermore, less than 20% of that which is captured is reused—or leveraged, in new situations. Most traditional knowledge management systems (KMSs) only focus on the first challenge—capturing knowledge in a corporate repository of information. What about ensuring that the captured knowledge also gets leveraged (that is, re-used)? There is no impact on productivity and efficiency without addressing both the capturing and the leveraging of information and corporate knowledge. If an organization’s KMS is largely a repository of documented information and was not designed to accomplish leveraging of information, it will result in a system full of extraneous information that is optionally used—a quagmire of “stuff”. Although this kind of KMS is common, it delivers little value to the organization.

What can be done in order to ensure the KMS delivers real business impact to the organization?

In this article, I will define knowledge management, briefly describe traditional KMSs and mention five principles that were applied to the design and implementation of a KMS at Triad. Triad’s KMS is a success story in that our evaluation showed there were statistically significant, positive effects on performance. In short, Triad’s KMS drives the performance of its users.

What is Knowledge Management?

You may be asking yourself “what exactly is knowledge management?” The diversity of ideas about knowledge management make it difficult for the layperson to understand what it is. This is compounded by the fact that vendors broaden their product descriptions to appeal to a larger market. Knowledge management refers to the guidelines, policies, and practices that an organization uses to create and transfer information (such as various documents and copyrights, and intangible processes, models and methods that their people use to get work done) to support the performance of the people in the organization. Managing this “knowledge” encompasses such things as ensuring that the right kind of corporate information is acquired, organized, stored, maintained, distributed, and reused in appropriate, new situations. In short, it is ensuring the right information is available to, and used by, the right people at the right time. A KMS is the organized structure, or system, an organization uses to accomplish knowledge management.

Traditional Knowledge Management Systems

Innovations in computer applications and technology have led to an assortment of knowledge management enterprise-wide applications that greatly improve the ability of organizations to document and capture their knowledge. For this reason, executive sponsors of knowledge management are usually from either information systems (IS) groups or knowledge management groups and have IS skill sets and backgrounds. While capturing corporate information (or “knowledge”), storing and organizing it in electronic repositories or databases is important and should not be taken for granted, the goal is not just to make information available but to make sure it is also leveraged. Focusing only on the first half of this equation does not drive performance. The result is a KMS that acts like the Internet; it is full of “stuff”—even great stuff—yet most of it is not leveraged.

Performance-Driving Principles for Knowledge Management

A performance-driving KMS supports performance by 1) clearly linking knowledge items to performers’ critical actions necessary to impact business and 2) putting the environmental supports in place to ensure knowledge is leveraged across people and situations. Consider the following five principles that will help accomplish this.

Principle One: Target Knowledge Workers

A KMS should certainly be designed to store information that will be accessed by everyone in the organization such as organizational charts, phone lists, policies, etc. However, designing the system to support the performance of knowledge workers will result in higher returns for the organization. Knowledge workers are those people in the organization whose work primarily involves exchanging information (such as support technicians, software programmers, engineers, inventors, project managers, scientists, and consultants). A KMS designed to support knowledge workers can actually drive their performance to new levels of consistency, accuracy, timeliness, and quality. Begin by identifying who the knowledge workers in your organization are and then find out what they do. Find out which of their behaviors and work products have the largest impact on business results, and then you will be ready to apply the next principle.

Principle Two: Support Performance

Once you have a good understanding of what these knowledge workers are responsible for accomplishing, you can begin to identify areas of their performance that can be supported through the provision of data or information. Identify those knowledge items that could be re-used in many different situations that are likely to affect the timeliness, quality, or cost associated with their work. For example, are there common reports or documents that could be written more efficiently if there were templates containing the redundant formatting and content? Are there other common work products, such as status logs or forms that might be completed more consistently if people had a sample of an exemplary one to reference? Or is there a quality issue that could be improved if there were a checklist in place? The key is to critically assess the key behaviors and accomplishments of the knowledge workers in the organization and include knowledge items in the KMS that will support their performance.

Principle Three: Make “Rules Of Use” Explicit

Once the KMS contains a given knowledge item, what prompts are in place for the user to know when to use the knowledge item? Are you relying on the user to know? If so, chances are, they won’t know. The KMS needs to be designed to prompt and guide the behavior of the users in order for the information it contains to be leveraged as often as possible—which results in the highest return for the organization. The following are several ideas for making the rules about when to use various knowledge items explicit.

- Incorporate business processes into the organizing structure of the KMS so that for any given process, users can see what knowledge items are available to support their performance.

- Develop a knowledge map or index for users to reference that lists all of the knowledge items available, to what business processes they are connected, and how they are related to each other.

- Expect users to use relevant knowledge items and not always re-invent the wheel; and expect supervisors, managers, and leaders to give appropriate feedback. Turn “building on what already exists” into a goal for everyone.

- Integrate expectations for sharing knowledge into the culture of the organization so that users receive a consistent, pervasive message to use the KMS.

Principle Four: Culturally Integrate Knowledge Sharing Expectations

There are a number of ways to integrate knowledge sharing expectations into the culture of the organization. Culturally integrating knowledge-sharing expectations will not only help make the rules for using the KMS more explicit, it will result in better alignment between the KMS and the rest of the organization and allow users to form implicit rules about the consequences of using or not using the KMS. The following are some ideas for achieving this cultural integration:

- Use terms related to the KMS and to the business consistently-develop a shared vocabulary in the organization. It may be helpful to create a corporate glossary or have a section of the KMS reserved for definitions of common terms.

- Link the KMS goal (and annual system improvements) to the organizational mission statement, business and strategic plans, and business goals and objectives. This keeps knowledge management a strategic concern and ensures it will continue to be aligned with the goals of the organization.

- Incorporate desired knowledge sharing behaviors into job descriptions, reward systems, and evaluation or feedback systems. This lays the foundation for peer and managers to deliver effect consequences for using and not using the KMS.

Principle Five: Check The Health Of Your KMS Annually

Once your organization has implemented its KMS, what comes next? Remember the old adage, “all living systems must continue to adapt and evolve, or they will die.” The same is true for KMSs. Try one or all of the following ideas once a year to ensure the KMS will not deteriorate from neglect after implementation.

1. Conduct a Knowledge Audit

Review the KMS content for accuracy and relevance. Look for duplicates and outdated versions. There is usually a list of need-to-have knowledge items and nice-to-have knowledge items when organizations launch their KMS, take this opportunity to review the nice-to-have list of items that never made it into the KMS and determine if they can and should be added now.

2. Organize KM-SWOT Sessions

A SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis involves a mix of brainstorming and research conducted by small groups throughout a company. This exercise paints a detailed picture of the company's overall health. So, why not use this exercise to check the overall health of your KMS? Organize an annual KM-SWOT session to critically assess the system’s:

- Strengths: the characteristics of the KMS that help employees on the job and promote knowledge sharing

- Weaknesses: the characteristics of the KMS that are less than ideal

- Opportunities: improvements that could be made as well as new knowledge needs

- Threats: those things that are not just a weakness but actually an obstacle to knowledge sharing

3. Conduct a User Satisfaction Survey

The simplest way to check the health of your KMS is to ask your users what they think of the system. A survey can give you a chance to gather measurable data on the frequency of use, estimates of successful or unsuccessful key-word searching, the depth of buy-in and support from business leaders across the company, and the intuitiveness of the organizing structure.

So What Difference Does It Make?

Driving performance through a KMS will impact business results! Triad followed these principles in designing its own KMS and realized a 100% return on investment in 16 months, and now realizes a savings of $4,786 in efficiencies a month, or $57,432 annually. In addition, anecdotal reports indicate a positive effect on employee satisfaction and productivity; and performance measures indicate a significant increase in the frequency of using a specific knowledge item for one of the two subject groups (chi-square for independence test); and a significant improvement in the quality of performance supported by that knowledge item for both subject groups (t-tests for independent samples).

Jacalyn S. Smeltzer received her Ph.D. from Western Michigan University’s Behavior Analysis program and is now a Performance Consultant at Triad Performance Technologies, Inc. She specializes in helping organizations define business processes as well as process improvement and re-design. This, together with her expertise in knowledge management (KM), has positioned her to consult with organizations that have implemented a KM application but are not reaping the expected benefits from it. Mailing address: 30101 Northwestern Hwy., Suite 201, Farmington Hills, MI 48334. E-mail address: Jacalyn_smeltzer@yahoo.com.