Put a fork in me, I'm done! It's been a great journey but I have to admit that I'm looking forward to getting more then two hours of sleep each night. Between taking my final three courses, raising a three year old boy and a four year old girl, and getting abused at work, I have to say this is one hell of a way to exit my graduate journey. My KM proposal is submitted and I have just answered the Elevator Questions.
Elevator Questions
1. "I see from your transcripts that you took a course in KM. What is KM?"
· Knowledge Management is the process in which an organization can identify, capture, and disseminate information or knowledge in order to gain a competitive advantage.
2. "Tell me how you would apply KM in my organization."
· Knowledge Management can be used to close the gaps between IT and the business.
3. "What KM technologies would you recommend here?"
· Knowledge Management consists of many toolsets and methodologies that can help your organization gain a competitive advantage. To start off I would consider a good portal solution that contains out of the box solutions such as collaboration and search tools. By building a taxonomy that works for your organization you can shorten the communication gap between your technical groups and your business teams.
4. "KM sounds great, but how do I justify KM here?"
· Every organization is unique in the fact that they all have their unique problems and issues. Where KM can be justified is in how it will reduce the organizations knowledge gaps. Performance improvements will come about by use of lessons learned and procedural documents that are now more easily available to the organizations employees.
5. "KM sounds great, but what KM metrics do you recommend?"
· Metrics I recommend for a Knowledge Management solution are ease of use and user acceptance. You don’t want to implement a complicated toolset that will never be used by anybody in your organization.
6. "Tell me the main barriers to adopting KM I can anticipate. How would you overcome them?"
· You will always run into the users that don’t accept change very well. Focus on the early adopters and the rest will eventually follow.
7. "Summarize for me what you learned in that KM class."
· I learned that KM is a lot more than just a portal. It is more than just a collaborative tool set. It is a combination of technology and methodology that when put together correctly for your specific organization, can close the knowledge gaps and improve collaboration and understanding among the different units within the organization.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Friday, May 30, 2008
Week 7 – Discussion and Guest Speaker Dave Simmons
Guest Speaker – Dave Simmons
I enjoyed Dave Simmons presentation. His rules of thumb segment was particularly interesting. Some of the rules I will probably use in my life are as follows:
1. write once – use many times,
2. connect knowledge management to you daily life/work
3. Rollouts are over rated.
4. Build lexicons, taxonomies, and definitions
It makes only makes since if you want to be productive that you create something that can be used again and again with time instead of having to recreate the wheel each time. As our professor states again and again every problem can be a KM problem if you want it to be. Therefore, why not connect knowledge management to your daily life and work. Finally, working quite a bit with websites and portals I have spent a considerable amount time working on taxonomies and definitions. I expect that my future will hold a lot more of that.
Last thing I did want to make not of was Dave’s last comment about the importance of knowing how to persuade others to do things that normally they don’t want to do. You can't always expect the easy sell, most of the time you will have to work for it.
I enjoyed Dave Simmons presentation. His rules of thumb segment was particularly interesting. Some of the rules I will probably use in my life are as follows:
1. write once – use many times,
2. connect knowledge management to you daily life/work
3. Rollouts are over rated.
4. Build lexicons, taxonomies, and definitions
It makes only makes since if you want to be productive that you create something that can be used again and again with time instead of having to recreate the wheel each time. As our professor states again and again every problem can be a KM problem if you want it to be. Therefore, why not connect knowledge management to your daily life and work. Finally, working quite a bit with websites and portals I have spent a considerable amount time working on taxonomies and definitions. I expect that my future will hold a lot more of that.
Last thing I did want to make not of was Dave’s last comment about the importance of knowing how to persuade others to do things that normally they don’t want to do. You can't always expect the easy sell, most of the time you will have to work for it.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Week 6 – Discussion and Articles
Few key points I took away from lecture six were 1. Use stories as a way of transferring knowledge and 2. The knowledge solicitation process. I guess I am very fortunate because I feel that I am a very good story teller the only issue there is that according to the professor my stories should be true. This may through a little kink in some of my knowledge transfer sessions.
In regards to the knowledge solicitation process in its most basic form, you will have a source (Al Burns), you will have a channel on which information flows through, and then there will be a recipient (Ben Casillas). Then there is this whole concept of laminar verses turbulent data flow where laminar has one expert and one recipient in turbulent flow everybody is a so called expert.
Knowledge Management and Organizational Learning
After reading this article and viewing figure 1 (the KM cycle model) you start to realize that a lot of terms and idea’s are kind of reiterated by the different authors. Of course there are variations but quite a few similarities. Within this KM article, I feel that learning really occurs within the Utilization step of the KM cycle model. This is the step where you actually do something useful with the information you acquired. Yes you can say that you learn as you are going through the creation and acquisition phase but if you think about it, at this point you are just gathering data not necessarily knowing what you have yet.
Huber 1991
Looking at the 4 branches of the diagram in figure 1, I would have to say that media richness would mostly be found within under the Information Interpretation step as stated by the diagram. This branch is meant for deciding on how to pass on information and how you want the information that is passed on to be interpreted. We all know that the same piece of information can mean a million different things to a million different people. This is why this branch is important in making sure that the correct media is selected in the dissemination of the information.
According to the Author of the article, unlearning is the step that must take place before a new interpretation could take place. This too falls under the Information interpretation branch. Basically, that is saying that if you have a certain belief instilled in you, it may be difficult to accept another version of the truth even if presented to you with facts.
In regards to the knowledge solicitation process in its most basic form, you will have a source (Al Burns), you will have a channel on which information flows through, and then there will be a recipient (Ben Casillas). Then there is this whole concept of laminar verses turbulent data flow where laminar has one expert and one recipient in turbulent flow everybody is a so called expert.
Knowledge Management and Organizational Learning
After reading this article and viewing figure 1 (the KM cycle model) you start to realize that a lot of terms and idea’s are kind of reiterated by the different authors. Of course there are variations but quite a few similarities. Within this KM article, I feel that learning really occurs within the Utilization step of the KM cycle model. This is the step where you actually do something useful with the information you acquired. Yes you can say that you learn as you are going through the creation and acquisition phase but if you think about it, at this point you are just gathering data not necessarily knowing what you have yet.
Huber 1991
Looking at the 4 branches of the diagram in figure 1, I would have to say that media richness would mostly be found within under the Information Interpretation step as stated by the diagram. This branch is meant for deciding on how to pass on information and how you want the information that is passed on to be interpreted. We all know that the same piece of information can mean a million different things to a million different people. This is why this branch is important in making sure that the correct media is selected in the dissemination of the information.
According to the Author of the article, unlearning is the step that must take place before a new interpretation could take place. This too falls under the Information interpretation branch. Basically, that is saying that if you have a certain belief instilled in you, it may be difficult to accept another version of the truth even if presented to you with facts.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Week 5 – Discussion
This week we covered decision making and problem solving. I have to say that one thing I did take away from this week’s lecture is that there is no such thing as a bad decision. There is on the other hand, an irrational decision. Every decision ever made, even if at the time made absolutely no sense to you, had to have some sort of rational by the decision maker. Even then, it is impossible to make a perfect decision because you never have all the information you need to make the most rational decision. Mind boggling isn’t it?
I did want to make a quick note about the effect Multimedia has on decision making. I’ve been playing the Metallica song over and over on my Xbox (Guitar Heroes III) and never really thought about the lyrics or what the song was really about. Reading the lyrics, hearing the song, and finally watching the video was an excellent way of proving how multimedia can string you along and make you see/think what they want you to. Create Bias.
Action Learning
The six steps of the “problem solving process” are, in my mind anyway, fairly straight forward and can apply to any problem. By following each individual step you are assuring yourself not only that you are finding the proper solution to a problem but that you are focusing on a real problem that needs solving. Each of the six steps: 1. presenting the problem 2. Reframe the problem. 3. Determine causes of the problem 4. Develop alternative solutions 5. Evaluate alternatives and select actions and 6. Implement the solution, play a crucial piece in the solution as a whole. In my opinion though I would have to put a little more weight on step number two, Reframe the problem. The reason being is that by taking this step you are making sure you are dealing with a real problem. You are forcing yourself to look at the issue as a whole and make sure that the problem you think you have is not really just a subset of a much bigger problem. By taking all this into consideration you actually start the process of answering questions to the remaining steps. That being said, this is just a piece of the whole process and relies entirely on the other five steps to come to some resolution to some problem.
Understanding and Supporting Decision Making
An Interview with Gary Klein
This article covers a different perspective on Decision making. Instead of following the more traditional decision making model, Naturalistic Decision Making (NDM) basically deals more with real life decision making in a person’s natural environment. I understood NDM to be a framework that will study how a person would do at any given moment, with current surroundings, pressures, etc. NDM also takes into consideration the quality of decision making based on a person’s experience on a particular subject.
What Data Mining Can and Can't Do
According to Professor Peter Fader, more data is in not necessarily a good thing. I have to say that I agree and speaking from experience, I can see where he is coming from. It is always better to go for quality versus quantity when it comes to data. If you start collecting all the data available to you without really doing any filtering you will end up with bad data which will skew your information.
I did want to make a quick note about the effect Multimedia has on decision making. I’ve been playing the Metallica song over and over on my Xbox (Guitar Heroes III) and never really thought about the lyrics or what the song was really about. Reading the lyrics, hearing the song, and finally watching the video was an excellent way of proving how multimedia can string you along and make you see/think what they want you to. Create Bias.
Action Learning
The six steps of the “problem solving process” are, in my mind anyway, fairly straight forward and can apply to any problem. By following each individual step you are assuring yourself not only that you are finding the proper solution to a problem but that you are focusing on a real problem that needs solving. Each of the six steps: 1. presenting the problem 2. Reframe the problem. 3. Determine causes of the problem 4. Develop alternative solutions 5. Evaluate alternatives and select actions and 6. Implement the solution, play a crucial piece in the solution as a whole. In my opinion though I would have to put a little more weight on step number two, Reframe the problem. The reason being is that by taking this step you are making sure you are dealing with a real problem. You are forcing yourself to look at the issue as a whole and make sure that the problem you think you have is not really just a subset of a much bigger problem. By taking all this into consideration you actually start the process of answering questions to the remaining steps. That being said, this is just a piece of the whole process and relies entirely on the other five steps to come to some resolution to some problem.
Understanding and Supporting Decision Making
An Interview with Gary Klein
This article covers a different perspective on Decision making. Instead of following the more traditional decision making model, Naturalistic Decision Making (NDM) basically deals more with real life decision making in a person’s natural environment. I understood NDM to be a framework that will study how a person would do at any given moment, with current surroundings, pressures, etc. NDM also takes into consideration the quality of decision making based on a person’s experience on a particular subject.
What Data Mining Can and Can't Do
According to Professor Peter Fader, more data is in not necessarily a good thing. I have to say that I agree and speaking from experience, I can see where he is coming from. It is always better to go for quality versus quantity when it comes to data. If you start collecting all the data available to you without really doing any filtering you will end up with bad data which will skew your information.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Week 4 – Discussion and Articles
One of the main items I took away from week 4 is an introduction to some pretty nifty information capturing and storing software. Mindmapper was pretty cool but I have to say I would probably never use that software in my lifetime. Microsoft Office Onenote on the other hand did get my attention. I downloaded the software and installed it on my personal PC and I have to say, it is rather excellent. I’m one of those students that creates a new folder for the current term and within that folder I place sub-folders for each course I am taking. Within each course folder I add folders for weeks, assignments, midterm, and final. I basically follow this same process at work and at home for my media collection. It is my way of keeping organized. Onenote somewhat captures what I do manually into a software package. I found it fairly easy to use with no learning curve and till now fairly useful. I will keep using it till I find that my old way is more affective or till I find something better.
I have to be honest, I never really put too much thought behind the process of capturing Knowledge, Capture, Structure, Store, Codify, Disseminate, Integrate, Use and finally regenerate. In my current company we use a portal mainly for its KM and collaboration functionality. We use what SAP calls collaboration rooms to store company information and make it available to those with authorization. The portal does basically follow most of these processes. It captures information and provides some structure when it stores it. It then disseminates the information to the entire organization, or those that should have access to it anyway. Use these tools have had an enormous impact on the company. One thing worth mentioning though is since most organization always look at the bottom line (how much does it cost) before investing in these software packages, Knowledge Management software I found is not the easiest to sell. It is rather difficult to capture a solid ROI.
Last but not least I would like to mention PKM or Personal Knowledge Management. I guess I indirectly spoke about it earlier when I mentioned how I structure my folders to capture different information. PKM is just another one of those terms that you never really think about but just do. We all use PKM whether we are aware of it or not. After years of trial and error I am pretty much set in my ways on how I go about learning new things and how I retain that knowledge.
7 things you should know about… Wikis
Yes I’ve used Wikis before, in today’s age who hasn’t stumbled across Wikipedia once or twice. I do have to admit though that I never really thought about what a Wiki really consisted of. For those who really don’t know what a wiki is this article is a fast, easy read that does a fairly decent job of describing Wikis.
I have to be honest, I never really put too much thought behind the process of capturing Knowledge, Capture, Structure, Store, Codify, Disseminate, Integrate, Use and finally regenerate. In my current company we use a portal mainly for its KM and collaboration functionality. We use what SAP calls collaboration rooms to store company information and make it available to those with authorization. The portal does basically follow most of these processes. It captures information and provides some structure when it stores it. It then disseminates the information to the entire organization, or those that should have access to it anyway. Use these tools have had an enormous impact on the company. One thing worth mentioning though is since most organization always look at the bottom line (how much does it cost) before investing in these software packages, Knowledge Management software I found is not the easiest to sell. It is rather difficult to capture a solid ROI.
Last but not least I would like to mention PKM or Personal Knowledge Management. I guess I indirectly spoke about it earlier when I mentioned how I structure my folders to capture different information. PKM is just another one of those terms that you never really think about but just do. We all use PKM whether we are aware of it or not. After years of trial and error I am pretty much set in my ways on how I go about learning new things and how I retain that knowledge.
7 things you should know about… Wikis
Yes I’ve used Wikis before, in today’s age who hasn’t stumbled across Wikipedia once or twice. I do have to admit though that I never really thought about what a Wiki really consisted of. For those who really don’t know what a wiki is this article is a fast, easy read that does a fairly decent job of describing Wikis.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Week 3 – Discussion and Guest Speaker Ed Brill
Week 3 - Discussion
What did we cover in this week’s lecture? Let’s start out with the question of the week, what is the difference between collaboration and Knowledge Management? First off all I believe that you need collaboration for a Knowledge Management system but the same does not hold true the other way around. Having a worked with Portal in the past for example I have seen that most if not all Knowledge Management software solutions come with some sort of collaboration toolset. There are real-time and non-real-time collaboration tools. An example of these would be forums/blogs where users can create discussion forums or comment on them or Instant Messaging where users can literally communicate with each other instantly via text messaging. Of course there is the all too popular email which I guess falls somewhere in between real-time and non-real-time collaboration.
So what exactly is collaboration? Merriam-Webster has collaboration defined as “to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor. It is basically two or more people working towards the same goal. Knowledge Management is more or less a set of procedures and best practices used by a company/organization to gather, create and distribute knowledge. Collaboration would definitely be one of the tools used within Knowledge Management to gather, create and distribute knowledge.
Another interesting question asked during the lecture was do we need technology for collaboration. In my opinion, I don’t think we need technology for collaboration. Where is the technology in two people having a conversation in the lobby? If the question was “do you need technology for affective collaboration?” then I might think twice. Technology is there to help the collaboration process, key word being HELP.
Guest Speaker – Ed Brill
There are two points that Ed Brill brought up that really touched home for me. One of them being the whole idea of the virtual workplace. It is amazing how it is more common place in today day and age to not only be able to work outside of the office but not have to meet with your management team on a regular basis. With so many companies being global and with today’s technology making this possible, why not. From my experience I find that I actually get more done when I work from home then I do when I am in the office. This is partly because of less distractions and of course not having to factor in the daily three hour commute to and from the office.
Two years ago my company started the work from home pilot and being such a big success we have expanded the benefit to other departments within the organization. My company is global so I meet with people all around the world from the comfort of my office, at home or at the Wrigley Facility. What makes this possible is technology. We have an Enterprise Portal that we use for Knowledge Management and collaboration. We built the portal using a taxonomy that fit the organization making navigation straight forward. The Document repository is indexed so it is easy to search for information. If we needed to hold a meeting we can easily use WebEx conferencing. And we are always reachable thanks to like Ed Brill calls them the all famous “CRACKBERRY”.
The other quick point that Ed brought up in his presentation was how a company’s assets walk out the door every day at 5 PM. That was such a great line when you think about it. We all agree that Knowledge is an asset. A lot of organizations knowledge is stuck within its employees because it is tacit knowledge that cannot be easily dispersed. I suppose this is where Knowledge Management is supposed to help. How do we collect this unstructured information? Do we really need to collect the information or are we fine with using a hybrid network model for Knowledge Management?
What did we cover in this week’s lecture? Let’s start out with the question of the week, what is the difference between collaboration and Knowledge Management? First off all I believe that you need collaboration for a Knowledge Management system but the same does not hold true the other way around. Having a worked with Portal in the past for example I have seen that most if not all Knowledge Management software solutions come with some sort of collaboration toolset. There are real-time and non-real-time collaboration tools. An example of these would be forums/blogs where users can create discussion forums or comment on them or Instant Messaging where users can literally communicate with each other instantly via text messaging. Of course there is the all too popular email which I guess falls somewhere in between real-time and non-real-time collaboration.
So what exactly is collaboration? Merriam-Webster has collaboration defined as “to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor. It is basically two or more people working towards the same goal. Knowledge Management is more or less a set of procedures and best practices used by a company/organization to gather, create and distribute knowledge. Collaboration would definitely be one of the tools used within Knowledge Management to gather, create and distribute knowledge.
Another interesting question asked during the lecture was do we need technology for collaboration. In my opinion, I don’t think we need technology for collaboration. Where is the technology in two people having a conversation in the lobby? If the question was “do you need technology for affective collaboration?” then I might think twice. Technology is there to help the collaboration process, key word being HELP.
Guest Speaker – Ed Brill
There are two points that Ed Brill brought up that really touched home for me. One of them being the whole idea of the virtual workplace. It is amazing how it is more common place in today day and age to not only be able to work outside of the office but not have to meet with your management team on a regular basis. With so many companies being global and with today’s technology making this possible, why not. From my experience I find that I actually get more done when I work from home then I do when I am in the office. This is partly because of less distractions and of course not having to factor in the daily three hour commute to and from the office.
Two years ago my company started the work from home pilot and being such a big success we have expanded the benefit to other departments within the organization. My company is global so I meet with people all around the world from the comfort of my office, at home or at the Wrigley Facility. What makes this possible is technology. We have an Enterprise Portal that we use for Knowledge Management and collaboration. We built the portal using a taxonomy that fit the organization making navigation straight forward. The Document repository is indexed so it is easy to search for information. If we needed to hold a meeting we can easily use WebEx conferencing. And we are always reachable thanks to like Ed Brill calls them the all famous “CRACKBERRY”.
The other quick point that Ed brought up in his presentation was how a company’s assets walk out the door every day at 5 PM. That was such a great line when you think about it. We all agree that Knowledge is an asset. A lot of organizations knowledge is stuck within its employees because it is tacit knowledge that cannot be easily dispersed. I suppose this is where Knowledge Management is supposed to help. How do we collect this unstructured information? Do we really need to collect the information or are we fine with using a hybrid network model for Knowledge Management?
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Week 2 - Blog away
Looks like I’m still afloat, just barely. As of this morning, I have successfully made it through another project go live at work. I am pretty much caught up in my other two courses here at DePaul and it is time to invest a little more time into this course. Funny thing is, the more I read and listen to the lectures the more questions open up. I suppose this is a good thing, gets the old gears in my head turning.
A very good question was asked during the second lecture, “which would I rather have, truth or knowledge?” At first thought my answer was truth hands down. What is the point of having knowledge if the knowledge you have is not correct. What good is knowing something if what you know is a lie? Having incorrect knowledge can lead to wrong decisions in life. The definition of truth is “that which accords with reality, truth tends to foster success”.
Then somebody might argue that knowing the truth is not necessarily always good. Example you ask? Let’s say that your wife asks you if you like the new pink dress shirt with purple polka dots she bought you for your birthday. Do you think she wants the truth or a truth that might sound a bit more pleasing to the ear?
Now we are going to shift gears a bit and discuss some of the articles.
CFO - It’s who you know
This was a very short easy reading article. What I got from it was quick talk about a repository model versus a network model. It’s true, you always hear about companies trying to take inventory of their employees and what their competencies are. This knowledge is invaluable to an organization for multiple reasons. Quick one that comes to mind is project management, it is essential that you assign the right person to the task/role.
One quote that did stick out was from Michael Idinopulos and Lee Kempler from McKinsey & Co. “Don’t try to bottle the expertise, just be content to find it when you need it.” This goes back to knowing the right person versus trying to extract all the knowledge from everybody in your organization and attempt to store the information. Sometimes it is easier and faster just to know who to ask.
CFO - That’s why we use lots of acronyms
Another very short read. This is an interesting article simply stating the increase of information in our world. So it would take 2,108 years to watch every film and video ever produced. The article does a nice job of making you take a step back and realizing that there is way more information out there then you or I will ever be able to consume in our lifetime. I guess this is where knowledge management would come in, weed out all the relevant and useful information and not bother with the garbage.
Bohn - Measuring and Managing Technological knowledge
Bohn’s article on technological knowledge had some very interesting and very valid points. Of course he throws in a few definitions describing the difference between raw data, information and knowledge but what this article is mainly about is how he puts a process in place describing the different levels of knowledge within any organization. Bohn believes that technological knowledge can be defined by understanding the effects of the input variables on the end state or output. That being said, knowledge towards something can be either at stage one which is complete ignorance which we know is not unlikely for many cases or stage eight which is Complete Knowledge which is almost impossible to get to this stage.
I can appreciate how he breaks his information into simplistic, very common scenarios such as the process in baking cookies. Using this example he is able to better explain the eight stages of knowledge and the correlation between the different stages of knowledge and procedure changes when baking cookies. Once you have a better understanding “knowledge” of all of the variables that can and will affect your procedure you can plan accordingly. By doing so you will have improved your process therefore saved time and money.
One paragraph towards the beginning of the article that did stick out was “although an organization’s knowledge base may be its single most important asset, its very intangibility makes it difficult to manage systematically.” To me, this is the whole issue with knowledge management. You will hear time and time again how a company’s most important asset is its knowledge. How do we capture all the tacit, unstructured knowledge? Stay tuned, we will find answers.
A very good question was asked during the second lecture, “which would I rather have, truth or knowledge?” At first thought my answer was truth hands down. What is the point of having knowledge if the knowledge you have is not correct. What good is knowing something if what you know is a lie? Having incorrect knowledge can lead to wrong decisions in life. The definition of truth is “that which accords with reality, truth tends to foster success”.
Then somebody might argue that knowing the truth is not necessarily always good. Example you ask? Let’s say that your wife asks you if you like the new pink dress shirt with purple polka dots she bought you for your birthday. Do you think she wants the truth or a truth that might sound a bit more pleasing to the ear?
Now we are going to shift gears a bit and discuss some of the articles.
CFO - It’s who you know
This was a very short easy reading article. What I got from it was quick talk about a repository model versus a network model. It’s true, you always hear about companies trying to take inventory of their employees and what their competencies are. This knowledge is invaluable to an organization for multiple reasons. Quick one that comes to mind is project management, it is essential that you assign the right person to the task/role.
One quote that did stick out was from Michael Idinopulos and Lee Kempler from McKinsey & Co. “Don’t try to bottle the expertise, just be content to find it when you need it.” This goes back to knowing the right person versus trying to extract all the knowledge from everybody in your organization and attempt to store the information. Sometimes it is easier and faster just to know who to ask.
CFO - That’s why we use lots of acronyms
Another very short read. This is an interesting article simply stating the increase of information in our world. So it would take 2,108 years to watch every film and video ever produced. The article does a nice job of making you take a step back and realizing that there is way more information out there then you or I will ever be able to consume in our lifetime. I guess this is where knowledge management would come in, weed out all the relevant and useful information and not bother with the garbage.
Bohn - Measuring and Managing Technological knowledge
Bohn’s article on technological knowledge had some very interesting and very valid points. Of course he throws in a few definitions describing the difference between raw data, information and knowledge but what this article is mainly about is how he puts a process in place describing the different levels of knowledge within any organization. Bohn believes that technological knowledge can be defined by understanding the effects of the input variables on the end state or output. That being said, knowledge towards something can be either at stage one which is complete ignorance which we know is not unlikely for many cases or stage eight which is Complete Knowledge which is almost impossible to get to this stage.
I can appreciate how he breaks his information into simplistic, very common scenarios such as the process in baking cookies. Using this example he is able to better explain the eight stages of knowledge and the correlation between the different stages of knowledge and procedure changes when baking cookies. Once you have a better understanding “knowledge” of all of the variables that can and will affect your procedure you can plan accordingly. By doing so you will have improved your process therefore saved time and money.
One paragraph towards the beginning of the article that did stick out was “although an organization’s knowledge base may be its single most important asset, its very intangibility makes it difficult to manage systematically.” To me, this is the whole issue with knowledge management. You will hear time and time again how a company’s most important asset is its knowledge. How do we capture all the tacit, unstructured knowledge? Stay tuned, we will find answers.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Week 1 discussion
Let’s begin with my take of knowledge versus information. Information is nothing more than data or facts about something. That being said about information, knowledge is how you would use this information to accomplish a certain goal. Knowledge is something you pick up as you move through life, an experience maybe. This may sound fairly simple and straight forward but there is definitely a lot more to it the more you think about it.
Let’s take Steve Jobs Stay Hungry Commencement Address for example. The speech itself is one of the most inspirational speeches you will find out there. His goal is very evident in his speech, live your life with passion and meaning. He shares with us what he has discovered throughout his life. He shares with us his knowledge on life.
Knowledge management is not the simplest of subjects in my book. It is however very intriguing. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve worked with Knowledge Management Systems. The most current is SAP’s Enterprise Portal. It has many of the tools sets used in KMS such as a document repository, search and retrieval software, and collaboration functionality. We have spent a great deal of time coming up with a good taxonomy to make the Portal as intuitive as possible so the information and be found easily, structured or unstructured. Even though I still work quite a bit with the Portal, lately I’ve been working more with the Business Intelligence software. Working in a global company, it is extremely important to have an effective communication process in place. Being able to supply everybody within the company with information such as standards, templates, strategy, business model, and key learning’s among other information is of high importance. If I can walk away from this class with at least one way to improve the dispersion of information throughout my company, I will be happy.
Let’s take Steve Jobs Stay Hungry Commencement Address for example. The speech itself is one of the most inspirational speeches you will find out there. His goal is very evident in his speech, live your life with passion and meaning. He shares with us what he has discovered throughout his life. He shares with us his knowledge on life.
Knowledge management is not the simplest of subjects in my book. It is however very intriguing. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve worked with Knowledge Management Systems. The most current is SAP’s Enterprise Portal. It has many of the tools sets used in KMS such as a document repository, search and retrieval software, and collaboration functionality. We have spent a great deal of time coming up with a good taxonomy to make the Portal as intuitive as possible so the information and be found easily, structured or unstructured. Even though I still work quite a bit with the Portal, lately I’ve been working more with the Business Intelligence software. Working in a global company, it is extremely important to have an effective communication process in place. Being able to supply everybody within the company with information such as standards, templates, strategy, business model, and key learning’s among other information is of high importance. If I can walk away from this class with at least one way to improve the dispersion of information throughout my company, I will be happy.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
My First Blog
I have to be honest; I have never blogged in my life so this promises to get interesting. Here is a little bit about me. I am an ECT major with this being my final quarter here at DePaul. It’s been a great run but I have to say that I’m ecstatic to be graduating in June. Feeling a bit brave this quarter I have signed up for three classes. On top of the excessive school load I also have a very demanding job and am a father of two (a two year old son and a four year old daughter).
Currently I work for the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company within its IT department. I started out as a web developer and was introduced to SAP via its Enterprise Portal. Being the Portal administrator/Developer I went onto SAP Business Intelligence, Customer Relationship Management, and Strategic Enterprise Management (what a mouthful). Anyway, going back to the portal. We initially used the portal mainly for its Knowledge management and collaboration capabilities. I guess this is one of the main reasons I was drawn to this class. I have some knowledge of the terms used and I would like to believe that I somewhat have a grasp of what knowledge management is but I guess we will see as this quarter progresses.
That was my quick intro and this will conclude my first entry.
Currently I work for the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company within its IT department. I started out as a web developer and was introduced to SAP via its Enterprise Portal. Being the Portal administrator/Developer I went onto SAP Business Intelligence, Customer Relationship Management, and Strategic Enterprise Management (what a mouthful). Anyway, going back to the portal. We initially used the portal mainly for its Knowledge management and collaboration capabilities. I guess this is one of the main reasons I was drawn to this class. I have some knowledge of the terms used and I would like to believe that I somewhat have a grasp of what knowledge management is but I guess we will see as this quarter progresses.
That was my quick intro and this will conclude my first entry.
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