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DISCUSSION: Knowledge Management and the future of opportunity.
Future Focused Innovation.
QUESTION: in the near future what will be one of the main distinguishing factors between organisations that are successful and those that are less successful.
ANSWER: the use of knowledge.
For thousands of years what you know and how you use it has been one of lifes essential survival mechanisms. Now, in a world of rapid change and development, this is increasingly becoming one of the essential corporate survival mechanisms.
Knowledge Management (KM) is more than the simple management of knowledge. KM is the acquiring, the creation, the funneling of specific knowledge - and promoting the use of this knowledge - for business benefit. This is an active and proactive process with the potential of revolutionising the culture of an organisation. This will produce a leading edge market force that knows what it needs to know, predicts what is about to happen - and uses that knowledge to promote its activities, far beyond any competitors who do not have the knowledge or fail to use it.
The world is changing. The speed of change is increasing. For an organisation, maintaining and increasing relevance demands a greater flexibility, a greater understanding of the world around it.
Success in doing so will result in a higher relevance.
Failure to do so will result in a decreasing relevance. In a dynamic world, those organisations that are inflexible and not at or near the leading edge of their market relevance will incur increasingly greater costs. They will slowly but surely disappear from a world that demands greater efficiency and effectiveness.
This is set to become one of the major distinguishing factors between organisations that will be successful and those that are less successful.
This will not be about the available resources at the disposal of an organisation. It will be about foresight, ambition and willingness. It will therefore come down to the abilities of the individuals leading organisations and how successful they want to be.
Knowledge = cost + opportunity.
The use of opportunity = advantage.
Increase the use of knowledge and increase the advantage. The world is full of opportunity ... but is this recognised? Organisations are already paying for opportunity yet in reality few utilise this route to success, relying instead on traditional approaches which rely on organisational resources and of course chance. This is good if the organisation has a lot of resources to burn.
Yet the world is changing fast. The changing and highly competitive world demands a greater level of efficiency and effectiveness. Resources are limited. Competition is fierce.
This means resources have to be targeted more fully than ever before, that there is visibility and accountability in the use of resources. Results matter, what ever type of organisation you are in. This means there has to be learning from success. This means there has to be a learning from mistakes, a learning what the organisation has, a learning from what it needs and how to use it for the greatest effect: a powerful positive feedback system.
Resources are finite. And where as the world is full of opportunity, if an organisation fails to understand and utilise advantage it will be surpassed by those organisations more willing and capable of recognising the process.
As can be seen from the WKID pyramid, the end point is not knowledge.
Based on solid data, the object is to gain wisdom that is, how to use knowledge for benefit.
As data and information changes, so does the knowledge and the use of this knowledge.
in relation to a chain: a chain of information, a chain of events, a physical chain, etc.
Information and Knowledge depend on the integrity of the core data. If the data is wrong or corrupt then the Information and Knowledge will crumble and the pyramid will not stand.
The difference in levels between knowing about the chain and using it for benefit (knowledge and wisdom) may seem an unrealistic distinction. Yet how many organisations have business knowledge but fail to use this knowledge for benefit? They may have information and knowledge but not wisdom. It is this final distinguishing factor based on ABILITY, WILLINGNESS, FOCUS and importantly individual foresight that will increasingly become the single most important characteristic between sustainable success and those who are less successful.
The inability to understand contextual wisdom emerging from information and knowledge will leave any organisation open to forces beyond its control. For example, if the above represents a physical chain and a Captain does not have the wisdom to use this chain to secure his ship in heavy weather, that ship will then be cast adrift. With little control, the ship may then sink.
KM is concerned with the base three layers of the WKID pyramid.
Organisational culture and ambition is responsible for the top layer and the use of what is known.
The top layer is also responsible for sending signals back down the pyramid telling what knowledge is required to produce a needed business benefit.
KM is the mechanism that provides the flow of holistic knowledge to gain commercial advantage.
Knowledge = cost + opportunity = advantage.
The key to recognising advantage is not to leave it to chance. The key is knowledge and the ability to use what you know, to uncover what you need to know based on:
- Inherent and acquired knowledge
- Immediate knowledge
- Future Insight
and the use of this knowledge.
Most organisations focus on the immediate and therefore become reactive to the wider changes taking place. This does little for innovation or increasing relevance.
As Knowledge = cost + opportunity = advantage, using only a part of the available knowledge means only a limited view of opportunity and realising a proportion of the available advantage. And with only a restricted view of future global trends, the inflexible organisation is essentially blind to future advantage. This means those organisations who fail to understand and realise opportunity will slowly and surely become irrelevant as the world moves without them.
Many organisations fail to realise the knowledge they have. They misunderstand the nature of global change. They miss opportunity. Those organisations that do realise the knowledge they have and know how to use it become an unstoppable force, reaping the benefits.
This future will be full of such organisations. Why? Because the inflexible organisations will largely have drifted away through their internal high costs and lack of vision.
Knowledge itself isn't powerful. It is the ability to use this knowledge that brings with it real power, real success.
This takes a special insight.
This means looking at the 3 main strands of knowledge:
- Inherent and acquired knowledge
- Immediate knowledge
- Future Insight
as a holistic process and producing a forward momentum based on business benefit.
This is innovation at its sharpest. Innovation for a fast changing world that demands flexibility based on knowledge, which demands insight and as clear as possible view of future insight to enable visibility of the opportunities and threats developing. This is the same process for a small organisation as it is for a major organisation, public or private sector alike.
This is a framework process to gain advantage. In a fast changing world every organisation needs advantage, and this advantage must be capable of evolving as the needs and requirements of the world evolve.
Some people may well think this is hardly possible. Yet history is littered with people and organisations and societies who became stagnant through a lack of change and development.
Regardless of the services / products an organisation buys / sells / acquires / handles, information is the lifeblood of every organisation. Knowledge is one of the greatest assets of any organisation.
- What knowledge does your organisation need?
- What knowledge has the highest business value?
- Does your organisation know where to find this knowledge?
- Do you have a knowledge acquisition process in place to capture this knowledge?
- What is happening outside your organisation?
- What is taking place in the wider world?
- Do you know what is about to happen in 12 months, 5 years, 10 years?
if you dont know, how do you know where to change and be better than you are?
Knowledge = cost + opportunity = advantage.
Knowledge has a resource cost associated with it. The right knowledge also has an opportunity associated with it.
Having this knowledge and not using it incurs cost and diminishes opportunity, diminishes advantage and therefore decreases effectiveness. This is one of those intangibles that govern the success or failure of an organisation.
The key to progression is the understanding of the knowledge your organisation has and needs - and how to use this knowledge to create advantage and benefit.
The wheel was invented thousands of years ago. Why continue re-inventing it? Why be hampered by not knowing what you should know? Why continue paying high costs for something you already have?
Be interested - be successful in a changing world. Be interested in innovation at its sharpest.
Would you like to discover how YOUR organisation views and uses knowledge?
Sustainable Societies and the Knowledge Advantage
Written by: JAMES STUART http://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesstuart - new direction and development through innovation
Insight through understanding. Advice you can trust.
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