Do you have Knowledge Capability (or are you still stuck with KM)?
Do you have Knowledge Capability (or are you still stuck with KM)?
Today's organisations need high levels of Knowledge Capability, the ability to deploy knowledge to constantly design, develop, deliver and maintain products and/or services that its current and future stakeholders will find valuable - put another way, an organisation's Knowledge Capability is an indicator of it's adaptive capability (it's ability to anticipate (sense) and react to change).
If you agree with this, then what does a high level of Knowledge Capability look like in relation to a lower level of capability? Knowledge Capability is fundamentally underpinned by a combination of people and technology. It is a nonlinear world, a space driven by hyper-connectivity and hyper-interdependence, which results in a constant state of flux and ambiguity. So, how can you gain insight into the level of capability available to an organisation?
The problem is that Knowledge Capability, you will notice that I am not referring to Knowledge Management here, exists within an environment that is sometimes simple (best practice), other times complicated (better practice), mainly complex (emergent practice) and, on the rare occasion, chaotic (novel practice) - yes, those are the Cynefin domains (brilliant model!) and you can see slides on how we develop practice according to these domains (where questions drive solutions) here.
The Cynefin domains, and the practice-based responses to those domains (the interplay between stakeholders and situational factors that inform policy and practice), are the reasons why I detest the use of the term, Knowledge Management - "management" being the bastion of traditional MBA driven linear thinking (e.g. root cause analysis - is there anything more displaced than a "root cause" in a complex world), best practice and "wo/man the controller." Capability speaks to a dynamic phenomenon, a self-organising, behaviours driven, phenomenon that has to deal with the dynamic interplay of cooperation and competition (think about this, does your organisation attempt to "control" learning in a complex environment by using training principles?), a phenomenon that looks at how people acquire, store, share, deploy and develop knowledge for the good of themselves, their community (group/team/organisation) and the wider world.
The challenge here is how to "measure" the "maturity," the difference in capability, in an environment where the outcomes cannot be predetermined. In 2009 I developed a "maturity" model (the K-Core©) to address this problem (see below for the variables or situational factors that underpin the model), which was one of the pieces of research that persuaded the University of Edinburgh to start up my company - the reason I mention this should become clear by the end of this article (the outline descriptors for the variables that underpin this model can be found in our free report, "the top 2 reasons why KM fails"). As a side note, the K-Core© approach has now been adopted by Juran Benchmarking within their KM benchmarking program.
The world of Knowledge Capability is not the place for traditional "best practice" maturity models. Knowledge Capability is a space that has to deal with emergence (change) - the type of change where you do not "recover" to a previous state when an incident takes place, you bounce forward into a new state; in other words, when an incident occurs things will never be "the same" again.
Think of a colleague you work with, someone you are close to and trust. Imagine that they tell you a lie, something to do with work that has implications for the way you do your job. The lie puts you in an awkward position and causes friction with your team. Upon learning of the lie you meet with your colleague to discuss it. They admit their mistake and why they purposely lied to you. You talk it through. You say you understand and that all is now fine and back to normal. Is it? Have you recovered to how things used to be before the "lie?" Or has something permanently changed in your mind and theirs? Accepting that you practice true forgiveness, have you, in fact, recovered to a previous state before the lie or have you bounced forward into a new state, a state where the knowledge of the lie has changed things forever for the both of you?
This is the problem for organisations interested in Knowledge Capability, the landscape is constantly changing. Therefore, the challenge, for those interested in improving Knowledge Capability, has to be to understand the situational factors (the variables) at play in their environment, as well as the their interconnectedness/interdependence and how they contribute to longer term consequences.
Our award winning research in this area brought about a method for this analysis , but, as with this sort of IP, it remains "black-boxed." However, this week we launched an online Knowledge Maturity Insight Tool that can help you begin to understand the variables at play. The statements you will be responding to within the insight tool have been designed to nudge and develop your reflective thinking. The tool itself asks for user detail up front (the usual name, email etc.), but, please, if you don't want to speak with us about the tool, Knowledge Capability in general or what your answers could mean for your organisation, just put an "x" in each box and let the process prompt your thinking.
There are always more questions than answers with blog's such as this one and so, to help:
you can find slides on High Performance Knowledge Capability or what we have referred to as High Performance Knowledge Management here.
you can gain understanding for the need for organisations to focus on "capability" over "management" through our Business2020 white paper, which also includes free tools.
you can begin to understand the challenges facing the traditional KM field by reading the second edition of our 2015 Knowledge Management Observatory Report (729 respondents form 59 countries).
