KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

Tools & Techniques

KMAP

KMAP is such an action space allowing a team to move from strategic understanding to action and energy. When a knowledge focus is translated into something that can be done in "our company, now" it really lives.

Step one - A new lens:
The process begins with a discussion of Karl-Erik Sveiby's (visit www.sveiby.com) intangible assets model - a very powerful & pragmatic model highlighting the 10 strategic issues individuals and companies face on the way to a knowledge focused strategy and its rewards. During this introduction participants are exposed to several best practice examples of what companies are doing worldwide to respond to these 10 strategic challenges.

Step two - getting the flows going - which issues should we focus on?
Knowledge shared is knowledge doubled. How do we get the flows going? Well by asking 47 really good questions. Participants select their top questions out of a list of 47 - these issues relate to the 10 strategic flows in and between the three classes of intangible assets. This serves to really expand what Knowledge focused strategy can be about in a business-focused and pragmatic way.

Participants stick the questions they have selected onto a chart - which visually represents the agenda for action:

Is it balanced? Is it too internally focused? Having made sure that they have created a balanced portfolio of issues to address - participants are ready to move closer to the action….

Getting to the action level - what are we going to do about it?

Having selected which issues are most important to address & how? Each issue chosen leads to another choice: What specifically should we do to address this issue? For each issue participants choose an anchor - specific questions that will direct action in a way that leads to results. Each of these anchors is bar-coded to allow for easy codification. These anchors are stuck to the same chart - stepping back participants how have the "playing field" for their knowledge focused strategy on a single chart, showing the big picture, the issues that need to be addressed and the specifics around which actions need to be designed. Next the creative process starts….

Getting knowledge workers to be…. knowledge creators - designing action.

To the best knowledge workers checklists and rigid best practices seem vaguely offensive, like someone feels so comfortable in her practices that she is suggesting we just adopt them! This is not our approach, we like energy. For us, energy is the scare resource in building change - something that emerges when people are asked to think, to access their creative capabilities. This is what this next phase of the process is all about: Getting teams of creative people to create improvement processes based on the issues and specific actions chosen. This means branding the activity or process & defining what needs to be done, how and by whom by when.

What will we have achieved?

In one day a business team moves to understanding, application and action in their own world with all the planning and commitment to a course of action. This rapid move from a high-level theoretical understanding informed by best practice to customized action that can create business benefit in a set timeframe makes KMAP a powerful energy generator.

The facilitator is put in a position by the support software package to generate a full report of the session very quickly. This report can be collated into a set of organizational priorities supported by great homegrown ideas and access to a network of committed people. Running KMAP across the whole organization is a way of building a powerful bottom-up agenda & action plan for change, linking people across functional silos and levels into communities of practice around issues they care about.