Country Focus

Sandra Higgison talks to Tom Knight, managing consultant at Fujitsu Services, about the evolution of knowledge management in the UK.

Since this feature became a regular fixture in the Knowledge Management editorial calendar in August 2001, it has travelled to locations as exotic as Brazil, New Zealand and South Africa, has profiled the relative newcomers to knowledge management, such as Colombia, Poland and Malaysia, and the long-standing KM stalwarts of the US, Scandinavia and Germany. Having ventured to countries near and far, it is curious that, as a London-based publication, we have yet to turn a narcissistic gaze upon the UK’s own relationship with knowledge management. June is a fitting month in which to do just that as Ark Group launches KM UK, the first event to focus solely on the development of knowledge management within our nation. As with every Country Focus piece we write, it is nigh on impossible to give a full account of the work and achievements accomplished in one country within such a limited space. Tom Knight, a managing consultant at Fujitsu Services, steps up to the fold this month to share his perspective and experiences on the growth of knowledge management in the UK.

To many people, the UK has undertaken much of the world’s pioneering KM work within both its public and private sectors. Today, the debate continues as to whether the US or UK leads the field, however, looking back at the movement’s early days, it was the US that spurred its neighbour across the pond to take the subject seriously. “It is logical that that UK, with its extremely strong business and academic ties, shared language and business culture with the US, should be the first ‘export’ market for knowledge management,” says Knight. “In the beginning, though, interest came from very large organisations, often with US links, typically focused on information dissemination via emergent intranet technology.” Indeed, that knowledge management got off the ground in the UK is a triumph in itself, according to Knight. “Many companies were sceptical in the 1990s, having come through trends such as large-scale business-process re-engineering and the fad for quality initiatives,” he says. “If it were not for a few champions who went out and made the business case, KM may have died an early death as an initiative too far."

Similar to other countries, large multinational professional-services firms, financial institutions, oil and gas companies, and manufacturers have led KM’s development in the UK. The technology and consulting industries supporting such initiatives, however, have struggled over the past two years. “Some of the major consulting organisations no longer have specific resources for knowledge management, having diverted their specialists to other projects due to blank order books,” he says. “From a technology perspective too, software providers are still in the middle of a shake-up of closures and mergers, leaving behind only those with viable products.” Despite this gloomy picture, Knight is hopeful that a renaissance is on the horizon. A recent Gartner report placed knowledge management as approaching the ‘path of productivity’ on its Hype Cycle having been in the ‘trough of disillusionment’ for some time. “Those of us that have stuck with KM throughout this period have learnt a lot about what works, what doesn’t, and what makes a realistic business case,” he says, “It stands us in good stead as the recovery picks up. It is much easier to demonstrate the relevance of leveraging what people know and re-using knowledge assets in good times than it is in lean times.”

The troubled global economy has also had a negative impact on the development of KM practices in many organisations. However, as Knight notes, certain sectors have remained strong. “Throughout the downturn, and despite little evidence of a major breakthrough, one of the main institutions quietly investing in this area has been in the public sector,” he says. “Perhaps surprisingly, the National Health Service – or at least pockets of it – along with some government departments have demonstrated real thought leadership.” Much of this work has been led by central government initiatives that can potentially produce the ideal conditions for an explosion of KM success.

Projects to foster joined-up government, with the goal of integrating policy development and implementation across departments, have been at the heart of the New Labour agenda. But as Knight says, few have fully realised their goals. “Early wins, such as the Government Secure Intranet, have been very technology focused and have had little cultural impact among civil servants,” he says. “Broad KM strategies do exist, but efforts towards more far-reaching knowledge management have been diverted to meet the Freedom of Information deadlines.” Knight predicts there will be increased focus on KM as the civil service addresses the challenges from the growth in public expectations and the complexity of factors it has to attend to, as well as pressure to do more with less resources and tackle information overload.

Knight draws on his own experiences within the private sector at Fujitsu to demonstrate how UK organisations are evolving to harness the value of knowledge management. “Going back to the late 1990s, we have followed an approach with three significant elements,” he says. These include a sophisticated intranet with company-wide, personalised information access, content management and transactional capabilities. “Our approach to communities of practice involves a mix of support for formal communities of practice, with facilities for informal, self-organising, self-selecting communities of interest to get together and share information, electronically and face to face.” In addition, the company has undertaken a fairly radical workplace redesign by introducing widespread hot desking, the creation of comfortable areas for tacit knowledge sharing, quiet rooms, and support for an expansion in mobile and remote working.” Although issues of culture change are ongoing and the communities model is being redrawn to reflect structural changes and shifts in business focus, the steps taken so far and the implementation of new tools and approaches have had a significant impact on the company, demonstrating the vast potential of KM techniques.

Knight has identified some individuals and organisations that have, over the years, become notable exponents of knowledge management in the UK. Although he questions the continued relevance of much of the work discussed by some of the industry’s self-appointed gurus, he recognises the value many individuals have brought to the field. “I believe David Gurteen and David Skyrme are doing excellent work,” he says. “TFPL a recruitment, training and research firm, has influenced the shape of job descriptions in knowledge management and has produced some interesting ideas on HR issues. Joe McCrea and Chris Hancock had a big impact on government with the Knowledge Network intranet and helped generate much of the early momentum.” Other figures that are not British born but who Knight considers to have had a significant impact on KM’s development in the UK include Dorothy Leonard, Tom Stewart and Larry Prusak. However, the real KM heroes that Knight holds in high esteem are the practitioners themselves. “I have a strong focus on the practical and most of the individuals I rate in KM are the people quietly working in companies or government departments that are not high-profile individuals but have an instinct for what will work in whatever environment they are operating in.” he says. “I am often humbled by the insight they have and, to a large extent, I see my job is to spread what they do around as good practice.

Having lived through many KM implementations in the UK himself, Knight recognises the nation’s cultural traits that can hinder the take up of the practice. “KM techniques work best among a flexible, empowered workforce,” he says. “There is still a lot of dinosaur command and control thinking among managers in the UK, he says. “This sits uncomfortably with the idea that their job is to facilitate knowledge work and that their teams may know more about many areas than they do.” Knight finds that in these circumstances, support for KM from individuals, in terms of dedicating time to knowledge sharing or information management, is not likely to be forthcoming. “More enlightened organisations know that flexibility and the exploitation of knowledge assets is crucial to survival in a turbulent 21st century,” he says. “The quality of UK management, however, which is on the whole less well trained or business qualified than its European counterpart, remains an enduring concern.”

The UK’s media plays a role in educating senior management on the value of KM and showcasing examples of good practice, but coverage in the mainstream press and media has not been extensive. “KM is a tricky idea to turn into a soundbite, and for that reason the non-specialist media have had a hard time grasping it as a big idea,” he says. “I have, however, seen specific knowledge-sharing initiatives highlighted, especially cross-community or cross-industry projects. Individual programmes undertaken to achieve a specific goal are easier for mainstream media to grasp. This sort of attention is always welcome.” The conference circuit in the UK has long been filled with seminars, exhibitions, masterclasses, one-to-one meetings and study tours, to name a few. “Ark Group has led the way with its conferences and publications that are always on top of the agenda,” says Knight.

“It will be interesting to see the impact of KM UK, which I believe is an inevitable development given the increasing pan-European breadth of KM Europe, which was originally UK dominated.” He also praises the work of the EU-sponsored KnowledgeBoard programme as being important to UK practitioners, even though it is European based. “David Gurteen’s newsletter and meetings that link people with a professional interest across the UK are a valuable resources for the industry’s practitioners.”

The issues playing on the minds of KM practitioners today are all about generating value. “As it is still early days in the recovery, investment decisions need a cast-iron case,” says Knight. “For this reason, initiatives like storytelling, which are hard to measure, are out. In their place are things like working incrementally for project efficiencies, managing sales intelligence, workgroup support through improved information-management processes and enhancing stakeholder communications.” Knowledge management is also influencing and being targeted on performance measurement, as well as efforts to pull together management information from across the enterprise.”

As the recovery kicks in, Knight expects the corporate focus to switch from sheer survival to the search for competitive advantage, which will once again bring the exploitation of knowledge assets to the top of the agenda. “In the UK government, for example, the real interest will come post-2005 when, having implemented strategies to manage electronic documents and records, the question of exploiting the opportunities generated by these systems and the wider issues of worker productivity will dominate,” he says. For how much longer this work continues to sit under the KM banner as a distinct activity remains to be seen, however the lessons learnt and the principles behind successful knowledge management are already engrained in many UK industries and organisations. As delegates, speakers and exhibitors at KM UK will know, the work we are doing today will reap major rewards for the UK as a whole to secure our position at the forefront of the knowledge economy. N

Factfile: UK

Area: 244,820 sq km

Capital: London

Population: 60,094,648

Currency: British Pound

GDP: $1.528 trillion

Av. annual growth in real GDP:

1.8%

Structure of employment:

Agriculture 1.4%

Industry 24.9%

Services 73.7%