denotes premium content | May 20 2013 Feature
posted 1 Jan 1998 in Volume 1 Issue 3
Managing for Knowledge: Managing for
Growth
Richard Cross
, Managing Partner, Xerox Quality Services examines the differences between
information and knowledge and focuses on the different initiatives taken by
Xerox to create an atmosphere where knowledge can thrive.
Xerox has both a
theoretical and a practical interest in Knowledge Management. In the early
1980's our Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC) brought together anthropologists,
social and behavioural scientists to study work practices along with computer
scientists and engineers. Later in 1987 the Institute for Research on Learning
(IRL) was founded to study how people learned. From this leading edge research
we have derived an understanding of work practices and an appreciation of the
social components of learning.
At a pragmatic level
our strong interest in knowledge is an outcome of our long term focus on the
document and the document's crucial role in knowledge intensive work. Firstly
we believe that, as Peter Drucker has said, 'knowledge and the productivity of
knowledge work is the key resource of the new world economy'. In this respect, in
the United States, for example, knowledge workers make up about 35 per cent of
the work force, while knowledge-intensive companies generated nearly forty five
per cent of the growth in new employment in the last 10 years. For Xerox,
interest in knowledge management is an extension of quality and business
process re-engineering. As Geoffrey Colvin of Fortune has pointed out 'Knowledge has
become the scarce resource constraining most businesses'.
Secondly, as 'The Document Company'
Xerox defines documents as any information structured for use by people -
regardless of form, content or media. And in this multi-dimensional definition
our own internal research and external experience shows that documents are core
to organisational productivity. Recently we mapped out all of the Xerox major
value chains in a large part of our organisation and found some 330 unique
business processes. In turn they generated some 3,200 inputs and outputs to
those processes. We found that over 90% of these process inputs/outputs were
documents and that only 10% of the inputs/outputs represented raw materials,
finished products, people trained etc. in the value chain. Documents are a
dominant link in the value chain of most, particularly service
organisations.
Our own experience then suggests that documents are the widely used
vehicle for articulating knowledge. Over the last eighteen months three
significant studies (partially sponsored by Xerox), were conducted by the
American Productivity and Quality Centre in Houston, TX and Ernst & Young in
Cambridge, MA, and in the summer of this year by the Research Centre at the
Cranfield School of Management in the UK. Out of these studies and knowledge
worker research conducted by Xerox a picture is beginning to emerge showing the
main areas of interest, focus and challenges for the future.
We call the ten areas of
focus we have identified as the emerging Knowledge Domains for Knowledge
Management (See Figure 1).
Figure
1 - Knowledge domains
The domains also show the link between
Knowledge Management, business strategy and an organisation's core competencies.
They also emphasise that Knowledge Management takes people into account in a big
way; changing technology is the easier part of the problem and changing people's
behaviour the hardest. This is further borne out by our most recent European
survey with Cranfield where people and cultural issues are both the means and
key inhibitors to sharing and exploiting knowledge.
In these domains there is a difference
between data, knowledge and information (See Figure 2).
Figure
2 - Knowledge is different from data/information
Data is a commodity: computers produce far more than we can utilise,
information which makes meaning out of data has also become a commodity.
Knowledge, on the other hand, is about taking action.
Information becomes knowledge through
a social process of shared understanding and sense making. Information is
'converted' into knowledge by acquiring attributes developed through social
interaction, as shown below under Knowledge Attributes.
Knowledge
Attributes
1. Relevance
Timely availability and filtering according to
purpose and priority.
2. Authenticity
Trust in the source and ability to check its
validity
3.
Context
Understanding of related events, alternatives and
trade-offs
4.
Experience
Relation to past events in the personal or organisational life
that reinforces value, judgement, familiarity and gut feelings.
In summary, for us
knowledge involves putting information into productive use. Managing for
knowledge as a foundation requires an understanding of how people work - and
included in this how they use documents. Information is converted into knowledge
through a social process. Managing knowledge starts with stressing the
importance of people, their work practices and their work culture before the
application of technology.
Knowledge management is therefore
different from Information Management. Whilst it may be more difficult to manage
due to the 'social' nature of its origins, organisations should and must (if
they want to survive) create an environment for knowledge to thrive.
In this context our
internal definition is as follows:
'Knowledge Management is the
discipline of creating a thriving work and learning environment that fosters the
continuous creation, aggregation, use and re-use of both organisational and
personal knowledge in the pursuit of new business value...'
From our Cranfield study we also
know that nearly 70 per cent of respondents see knowledge management as: 'a business
focused approach: the collection of processes that govern the creation,
dissemination, and utilisation of knowledge to fulfil organisational
objectives.'
Within Xerox we have then refined the domains into three distinct, yet
interdependent processes critical to creating a knowledge environment as shown
in Figure 4. 
Figure
4
Knowledge Creation
At Xerox we have a number of
initiatives underway in our research and development area. We recognise the need
to accelerate the rate of knowledge creation and have recently established with
our partner Fuji Xerox a Distinguished Professorship in Knowledge at UC Berkeley
School of Business. Professor Nonaka, one of Japan's foremost authorities on
knowledge, is the first to hold this appointment.
Knowledge Aggregation
The systematic
accumulation of knowledge includes the expertise and skills of our people, the
business processes and culture that values and support knowledge work. It also
represents the capacity of an organisation to sustain competitive advantage and
covers explicit knowledge such as documents, the intellectual properties that
represent our patents, license agreements and many more.
Knowledge Use/ Reuse
This is one of the most
frequent knowledge management projects within Xerox, as well as with our
customers. It involves discovering and sharing what the organisation knows, -
best practices within the business for example. To do this requires an emphasis
on the infrastructure and management environment to break down barriers to
knowledge sharing. As an example, in 1993 we completed a project called Team C
in Europe which spread best practices amongst our sales force. By the end of
1994 the combined incremental sales growth was estimated to be $200
million.
To
manage for knowledge requires a holistic business approach and we use what we
call the Xerox Management Model to structure our business. Whilst it is early
days in the knowledge management field, we further maintain that four broad
capabilities need to be developed and integrated if an organisation is to
successfully manage for knowledge.
Firstly there is a requirement
for 'libraries', which is a two fold challenge - many of our best ideas and
experiences are rarely surfaced and, if they are known, they are too difficult
to find. Knowledge bases need to be digitised for coherency and accessibility:
Here technology can help. The library of Congress in the US, for example, has
begun to digitise and put on-line over 5 million documents by the year
2000.
A second
foundation block are the communities of knowledge workers. These informed
networks are where knowledge assets can be mined most effectively. They are not
the same as teams and workgroups, although with the trend towards self managed
work teams there are increasingly characteristics in common.
Amberweb
A virtual workspace
environment called Amberweb was developed within the Xerox Wilson Centre for
Research and Technology. The system was designed to help scientists share files
electronically with no central administration. Anyone could create a workspace
and open an account on the system. Communities of knowledge workers collaborated
within this virtual shared environment.
This model quickly spread beyond the
research centre. 18 months on, the number of users is over 10,000 and climbing.
After successful use internally the company introduced it as a product called
DocuShare in April 1997. DocuShare enables shared access to documents, no matter
what platform or format used.
Knowledge Sharing: The Eureka
Project Experience
The Eureka project was first started as a collaboration between
Xerox France and researchers at PARC. The project was concerned with enabling
service engineers to capture and share the knowledge amassed through experience. In
part the project was inspired through a seminal PARC study that revealed
how technicians used 'war stories' to teach other to diagnose and fix machines.
Eureka built on this research to support engineers in sharing those stories
electronically in the form of 'tips'.
The impetus behind Eureka was the
realisation that service manuals were outdated almost as soon as they were
printed. PARC researchers worked closely with French service engineers to design
Eureka. Essentially it is a technical and social infrastructure for technicians
to build and share their service repair knowledge.
It is the social rather than technical
aspects of Eureka that make it unique. The practitioners themselves are involved
in co-developing work practices, processes and technologies. The Community based
design process provides the service engineers with a stake in sustaining the
success of the system.
Rather than financial incentives, Eureka relies on recognition to
motivate workers to share their knowledge, contribute ideas and help build and
maintain the community knowledge base.
Technicians have grown to use the
system at the rate of more than 5,000 tips per month, with more than 15 per cent
authorised as validated tips. So far Eureka has been rolled out across Xerox
with a 10 per cent improvement in costs.
Navigation
This third foundation concerns how
knowledge can be described, categorised, mapped and accessed. This requires a
navigation system, a road map of a firm's knowledge assets - from individual
expertise, communities of practice through to intellectual properties and
customer as well as competitive databases - or in the future docubases!
Flow
Finally, the fourth
element is flow. Knowledge expands and is of use when it is shared. We use the
analogy of a pump to describe the connections between knowledge providers and
knowledge seekers. However, this pump needs to be sensitive to prevent overdose
- overload. The primary idea underpinning knowledge flow is a system able to
cater to the requirements of users and providers and develop appropriate
profiles.
Within
Europe at Xerox's Grenoble laboratory researchers are working to ensure that
knowledge management delivers valuable information and business results. The
ultimate is the knowledge pump with the capability to integrate all information
stored in a company and turn data into knowledge.
The Current State in Europe
Currently, then, as epitomised by our
studies and our own practice business is focusing heavily on capturing, using
and reusing as well as distributing knowledge. Indeed, according to our
Cranfield survey, over the next three years European businesses plan to increase
their knowledge across all areas. The demand for business knowledge is on the
rise.
Knowledge
management as a people and process issue is also underlined in this survey.
Conventional need-to- know cultures are disappearing. Ninety one per cent of
those surveyed believed it requires people to share what they know with others
in the organisation. The role of Information Technology is seen as important,
with the corporate intranet as the most significant growth area.
Overall, to increase the
use of knowledge means installing more formal processes to break down the
inertia between people, groups and whole cultures. Almost 90 per cent in the
survey estimated they had some formal mechanism for capturing knowledge already
in place but - 40% admitted they did not protect their key knowledge
assets.
Finally,
with respect to their own organisation, about 84% agreed that knowledge is a key
power determinant.
To a great extent, in the organisation of the future, it is not just who
you know but what you know. In this respect, documents and their use form a part
of any knowledge initiative; the document is the network. However, as our CEO
says, the soft stuff is the hard stuff. This calls for a dramatically new model
of organisation and leadership. Technology can be copied, products cloned - but,
for now, people and knowledge cannot.
Richard Cross is Managing Partner at
Xerox Quality Services, part of Xerox Professional Document Services. He can be
contacted at:
richard_cross.rxl@eur.xerox.com
Bibliography
1.Information Strategy, Volume 2 No.
7, September 1997, The Facts about Knowledge.
2.Xerox Professional Document Services
(XPDS) News Issue 11 May 1997.
