KM is automation

I was teaching third year students on a BA information management course the other day and after class one of them approached me to ask me about one of my statements, which was that KM is nothing but automation.

I had explained that KM is basically just like automating any other kind of production and that should the full potential of KM ever be reached (which I doubt for my lifetime) a brainless monkey could do the job a highly specialised lawyer does today. Provided that all know-how has been made explicit of course.

I couldnt remember where I first saw the notion of KM being comparable to industrial automation at the beginning of the industrial revolution, but essentially it is not really different. We, who work in KM, work on making knowledge workers more efficient but not essentially at making them more knowledgable. They have to recognise the patterns and apply existing know-how. Where it does not exist however, they still need to be smart and highly qualified.

So, two unanswered questions:
1. Am I right with this understanding of KM?
2. Where on earth did I read this on KM being automation?

Predicting the success of KM

In my research I have been aiming to validate the link between efforts by the knowledge management function and profit. The good news - for us legal KM people - is, the link exists.

Using regression and correlation, productivity can be predicted by 26,8%.

The bad news however is that the key predictor is again not a straightforward number that can be monitored on a daily basis and easily influenced. In the case study it is yet another - difficult to monitor - intangible: The value perception of KM among fee earners. This predictor is survey-based and therefore prone to errors.

Drilling further down however brings some predictors to light that can be traced in a sensible way. This is also where the benefit of the masurement exercise comes in. When people start to understand relationships they will start to understand how to turn KM into an obvious success factor.

If measuring the contribution of KM to the business becomes normal practice, we can finally move away from anecdotal evidence only and move towards facts.

How about this for a change: KM is investment, not overhead cost of doing business. And the return on investment is what we are after. If we know what the the key predictors are for improving that return on investment, if we achieve transparency, then we can manage it better and achieve much more than now.

More on this - and more clarity on what the predictors mean - when I am ready to publish my thesis...

Abstract from my thesis on impact of KM

Please click here to open a pdf with the abstract of my draft PhD thesis. The entire thesis will be available once I had my "viva voce" (or defensio as we would call it in Austria).

EKNOW, Meritum, Danish Guidelines and now Melbourne Protocol?

Ross Dawson writes about a congress on knowledge capital taking place in Victoria in November. The event is organised by Global Access Partners and what I particularly like about their announcement website is the recommended background reading by the Steering Committee and the invited speakers for Congress delegates (see a selection below):

"The 2nd wave of knowledge management: The management control of knowledge resources through intellectual capital information" [PDF 206KB]
- J. Mouritsen, H. Larsen, Management Accounting Research, 23 June 2005
"Valuation and reporting of intangibles - state of the art in 2004"
[PDF 602KB] - G. Roos, S. Pike, L. Fernstrom, Learning and Intellectual Capital
"Managing organisational learning and intellectual capital" [PDF 90.1KB]
- J. Mouritsen, K. Flagstad, Learning and Intellectual Capital, 2004
"Measurement issues in Intellectual Capital" [PDF 165KB] - A review by S. Pike, G. Roos
"Accounting Recognition of Intangible Assets: Theory and Evidence on Economic Determinants" - By A. Wyatt, The Accounting Review 80, 3, 2005
"Measuring Intangible Capital: A review of current practice"
L. Hunter, E. Webster, A. Wyatt, Australian Accounting Review, 15(36), 4-21, 2005

The Real Reasons You're Working So Hard...

[via Business Week] The article is about how well educated people become the slaves of their email and a lot of communication demands without purpose rather than everyone benefiting from automation and information revolution that boosted productivity by 70%.

"And the long-hour marathons aren't a result of demanding corporations exploiting the powerless. Most of the groggy-eyed are the best-educated and best-paid -- college grads whose real wages have risen by more than 30% since the 1980s. That's a change from 25 years ago, when it was the lowest-wage workers who were most likely to put in 50 hours or more a week, according to new research by Peter Kuhn of the University of California at Santa Barbara and Fernando A. Lozano of Pomona College."

Conference on measuring KM

There is a conference by the American Strategic Management Insitute on Performance Measures for Knowledge Management Initiatives , which seems to be a practicioner focused conference. It features sessions around innovation, measuring the effectiveness of blogging in business and linking KM directly to organisational growth. There is also workshops on how to get measures in place step by step. Very few organisations currently have measures in place specifically linking KM to organisational performance but the topic is certainly up and coming.

Another positive observation I made lately is that KM conferences tend to have more practicioner speakers from reputable companies and less of the same 5 - 10 guys who have been giving the same presentation over and over again for the last twenty years on conferences around the world (by same 5 - 10 guys I mean Leif Edvinsson, Dave Snowden, Robert Buckman and similar "founding fathers of KM". I have seen exactly the same presentation by Dave Snowden once in 2001 and in 2004)

Efficiency, as in ... ?

I was finishing the the added interview section for my thesis draft earlier on and even though efficiency was the top value driver mentioned by the interviewees, one needs to look at the different meanings that the word has to different people.

• One understanding is the view towards availability of know-how in so far as it allows lawyers to commit to closing a matter quicker if they know that there is relevant know-how available
  
• The efficiency of well trained KMLs is another point emerging from the interviews, just as
• Efficiency gains that are understood as simply making the task easier while incurring less cost

A key requirement for increasing efficiency was identified by one interviewee as the constant feedback loop from users of know-how to those maintaining it.

People find it easier and more satisfying to reinvent the wheel

Dave Pollard has some thoughts on knowledge failures. Interestingly, these come shortly after the sentence "I spent much of my last year, as global Knowledge Innovation leader at a major professional services firm" in his posting. My favourite is definitly People find it easier and more satisfying to reinvent the wheel. It does ring a couple of bells :-)

back from bye

after a break from this blog due to a large variety of factors, trouble with domain provider , focus on internal blogging, moving country and many many more I felt it was about time to revisit the personal blogging concept.

i did not purposefully decide on the platform, i used Blogger because i had used it before and it was alright. what i do miss from Nucleus CMS is categorization and the option to split up the text in an intro and a section that only apprears when clicking Read More . I quite like the templates and the ease of changing settings on Blogger though.

a blog software i was quite impressed with lately however is this one by permalink.info It even does folksonomies, the idea of taxonomies based on how users see the(ir) world(s).