• Business Intelligence
• Collaboration
• Competitive Intelligence
• Communities of Practice
• CRM
• Culture
• E-learning
• Enterprise Content Management
• Enterprise Search
• Intranets & portals
• Taxonomies

• News
• Events

Feature

posted 1 Sep 1999 in Volume 3 Issue 1

Uncommon Knowledge

TransCanada and NOVA Corporation recently completed one of the largest mergers in Canadian history, creating a new TransCanada with over $26 billion CDN in assets. Such an event creates unique opportunities to improve company performance, and many of these appear to be in areas of 'knowledge management' (KM) practice. Anyone who has gone through a merger can attest that such improvements are not easily achieved. In a post-merger environment, management must address the dual challenge of stringent economics and uncertainties surrounding the integration of differing corporate cultures. Carl Calantone and Dave Hawkins look at some issues they needed to address in this situation of flux.

TransCanada is not unique in having a fairly complex, geographically dispersed, multiple business unit, operating environment. Further, as is common in a post-merger environment, there are many related and significant improvement initiatives underway at any given time. Typically, these are managed and executed by individuals and teams with different business

histories. Effective communication and clarity of purpose are essential in assuring individual cooperation and effective coordination of KM and other initiatives. In addition, challenging targets usually contribute constructive tension to the successful merger. In a particularly cost-and-profit-conscious environment, an integrated set of post-merger activities must be carefully planned and executed if ever-elusive synergies are to be captured.

Both of us have been involved with 'knowledge' projects in large and medium-size corporations for the last decade, although these were typically called 'information management' or 'collaboration' initiatives. At the time, the most commonly referenced source for inspiration and guidance on such initiatives was the diverse management literature. More recently, a burgeoning KM literature that appears to treat a vast knowledge-related subject matter spectrum, from the metaphysical to the mundane, has arisen as a primary resource.¹ As practitioners, we find the more application-oriented and case study types of materials, such as that appearing in Knowledge Management, to be of particular value. Indeed, most of our understanding of this area has seemingly grown through trial and error - our own and that of others. We have found that careers with some successes, and many difficulties and failures characterise the field. There are many ways to fail, and many different causes for those failures. The merger context and the opportunity to significantly improve performance at TransCanada prompted a critical review and analysis of our experiences. We needed to find ways of delivering more consistent and successful results from KM initiatives in our business environment.

The KM literature reveals, more than anything else, a great deal of confusion about what KM is, and how to do it. Our suspicions about this confusion were confirmed by our discovery of recent articles by leading practitioners trying to define 'once and for all' what KM is.² Also, we note that when consultants from the KM practices of leading consulting firms visit, they usually start with a discussion of 'what we mean by KM'. We have found very rich, although divergent sets of theories of what KM is and what doing KM implies for organisational activities, and a more meagre and elusive set of useful guidelines - true insights that improve the number of successful KM deployments. Our concern in this area was heightened on finding that in a current and well-known survey of management tool usage and satisfaction, KM was identified as the tool with the highest defection rate (discontinuation of use) and highest level of user dissatisfaction with financial results in the survey.³ This level of dissatisfaction may be due to many causes, but if our experience is a guide, the following factors are significant:

Confusion over the definition of KM

Absence of a simple and consistent framework appropriate to user needs

Poorly defined projects

Focus on technology at the expense of people and process

Underestimation of the cost and time commitments in development and usage

Excessive expectations

The confusion in the literature and pervasiveness of difficulties in applying KM suggested we begin our improvement exercise with a goal of identifying a framework that could clearly classify our own and others' experiences as we understood them. Secondly, we hoped that this framework would provide a useful aid in thinking more effectively about, developing, communicating, and executing KM-type projects.

A conceptual framework

As a leading Canadian energy company progressing through gas and power deregulation, facing an increasingly competitive market environment, and pursuing an aggressive programme to enhance offerings to our customers, there is an intense focus on value at TransCanada.  Any new initiative must have clearly demonstrable value to a broad range of internal stakeholders, and as alluded to above, the merger context adds particular challenges.  Success in KM initiatives requires the support of many culturally diverse management and employee groups, and conceptual clarity is crucial to effective communication and coordination.

Difficulties have arisen with the use of concepts such as knowledge management, knowledge, intellectual capital, intangible assets, or explicit knowledge. In general, we have found that the introduction of new terms into common business use is valuable if the new terms ultimately provide new insight, clarity and resulting action. These terms are accepted if they 'are worth the effort'. The introduction of terms such as 'knowledge management', 'intellectual capital', and 'intangible assets' have resulted in, at best, insignificant new insight and clarity in our business environment. In fact, we noticed a significant increase in confusion and ambiguity, and associated with this, considerable internal resistance.

The most significant source of confusion associated with the concept of 'Knowledge Management' seems to be the lack of consistent distinction between knowledge and information, and the subsequent inclusion of information-related concepts under the heading of 'Knowledge Management'. The term 'knowledge' can be intimidating if it involves the cumulative understanding of humankind, an 'everything that can be known' perspective that conjures the image of a vast and ponderous undertaking - enough to scare off most employees and management.

Alternatively, we have noticed greater acceptance and less confusion in discussions and activities involving 'information management', 'people networking', 'increasing the capabilities of people', and 'increasing the collective capabilities of the organisation'. These are terms that arose repeatedly in our work, and they describe central themes. These terms were commonly understood and easily communicated. These simpler terms appear to be basic to an alternative framework that can explain KM and other issues more effectively. Based in part on the observations above, we distilled the following three guiding principles for the framework:

1. Distinguish clearly between information and knowledge

If the distinction between knowledge and information is maintained, we have found that increased clarity and more focused action result. In our work, we have started using the following definitions for knowledge and information. While these definitions are not rigorous, they do identify significant differences between the two concepts. Our practical interest is less in precise definition of each term, per se, and more in avoiding confusion and collapse of the concepts into each other.
Definition: Knowledge is an attribute of a person, and is the ability of that person to take effective action.
This concept of knowledge has a natural coherence with everyday experience. For example, we typically only apply the adjective 'knowledgeable' to a person. Three implications of this definition of knowledge are (1) knowledge cannot be made explicit or directly shared, (2) knowledge does not exist outside the context of people, (3) utilisation of knowledge requires utilisation of a person. As a result, in many cases it makes more sense to talk about 'people'than 'knowledge'.
Definition:Information consists of recorded facts, data, descriptions and representations.
This concept of information aligns with everyday business use of the term, where information includes files, books, diagrams, pictures, and other physical or electronic documents. Three implications of this definition are (1) information is explicit and can be stored and moved, (2) information exists outside the context of a person, (3) utilisation of information requires interpretation of the information by the user. Many other writers have recognised a similar distinction between information and knowledge,⁴ but the distinction is rarely maintained to the degree we believe is necessary to avoid confusion.

2. Manage People and Information, not Knowledge

In order to manage something, that something must be observable and capable of being manipulated, directed or influenced. Physical objects aside, there are two primary types of assets in companies that are directly observable and which can be manipulated, directed or influenced: people and information. Not surprisingly, the two relevant management activities are 'people management' and 'information management'. These are both well understood business activities. While this fact does nothing to simplify the challenge of managing people and information, at least the concepts are accepted and relatively well understood.

Most of our contacts tend to view knowledge as what an individual knows. Knowledge is not directly observable, but rather is deduced by observing the actions of the (knowledgeable) person. This knowledge cannot be directly manipulated, as it does not exist separately from a person; it is inherently personal understanding. Viewed in this way, it is not really possible to make knowledge tangible and explicit. Knowledge, in this sense, is not really manageable, and proposals for 'knowledge management' are bound to trigger confusion and scepticism in many business people.

3. Use clear and familiar language to describe initiatives

Generally, People Management and Information Management initiatives involve two types of work, 'developing quality and quantity', and 'developing networks and structure'. Combining these types of work with the two types of management, 'people' and 'information', results in four categories of activity, as shown in the 'People and Information Management' (PIM) matrix below:

Developing People deals with people as individuals, and treats issues like, 'do we have an adequate number of people'? or 'do we have the appropriate skills'? Of particular relevance to this discussion is the development of people's competence in the other three activities in the PIM Matrix.

Networking People is ensuring that people are connected, and involves asking, 'are the right people connected'? and 'are the relationships sufficiently strong'?

Developing Information is the creation or gathering of information: 'Do we have a sufficient amount of information'? or 'is the information reliable, accurate'?

Structuring Information is the linking or networking of ideas, such as in an Intranet, and asks, 'can we locate information'? and 'is the information relevant'?

(Note that in order to pursue these activities and answer the questions posed above, a clear understanding of an organisation's objectives is required - an issue which is not addressed in this article.)

Some internal testing indicated that fairly complete and clear descriptions can be made of a company's people and information needs in terms of these four activities, without having to explain 'knowledge' or 'knowledge management', and with no loss in value. This change does, however, lead to an unexpected issue related to the very novelty of KM. The objective of using the matrix and simpler terms is to be more effective in describing required changes in behaviour, not to avoid challenging issues. While the simpler terms are more familiar to business people, one must be especially careful to avoid the trap of allowing individuals to conclude that no new behaviours are required. In most businesses, a rigorous review of the current situation using the PIM framework is likely to reveal significant opportunities for improvement that would require substantial change. Using the PIM framework, it is easier to describe the primary goal of various activities using common language. This makes it easier to understand how various activities are related to each other and to target activities likely to benefit from integrated development or execution. It also makes it easier to identify activities that previously sounded unique, but may fundamentally be duplicative.

It is interesting to view some 'knowledge management' initiatives reported in the literature through the lens of the PIM framework. Two examples are described below:

Buckman Laboratories

It is reported that Buckman Laboratories⁵ concentrates on:

'Organic' networks of people (Networking People)

'Fred' [the individual worker] calls on the rest of the organisation for informatio' (Structuring Information)

'Improving the ability of individuals so they can access anywhere they need for knowledge' (Developing People)

A database of 'data, information, knowledge, experiences' (Structuring Information)

'Connecting people' (Networking People)

Developing People

Networking People

Developing Information

Structuring Information

Dave Hawkins is an independent consultant specialising in information and collaboration processes and systems. He can be contacted at: dave@hawkins.ab.ca