Knowledge Management Toolkit

Citation

Giannetto, K. and Wheeler, A. (2001), "Knowledge Management Toolkit", Industrial and Commercial Training, Vol. 33 No. 5, pp. 178-186. https://doi.org/10.1108/ict.2001.33.5.178.5

The Knowledge Management Toolkit is a very different beast – from the pseudo‐academic to the ultra pragmatic. This 113‐page folder of material, with permission to photocopy the latter half, is intended “for creating policy and strategy, with practical guidance for managing knowledge”.

The material is structured into three parts and starts with describing knowledge, data and information. Next is where to find knowledge and the importance of documenting it. Why management knowledge is considered and a link is made between KM and organisation learning which is achieved from “sharing knowledge”. Ways of sharing knowledge are presented with a list of pitfalls and the authors suggest a KM project as the way forward.

Preparation of a business case is recommended to gain support for a KM project, and the value of knowledge and the costs and benefits of the old and new systems must be identified. Also included is standard material about cost benefit analysis (CBA), return on investment (RoI), payback, net present value (NPV) and internal rate of return. We believe it is not easy to apply these to knowledge but this toolkit ignores any difficulties. The section concludes with the benefits of a “knowledge audit” and a description of “knowledge mapping” to show where knowledge is in an organisation.

Implementation of KM involves knowledge capture, classification and providing technology for storing and dissemination. Lists of issues about technology and definitions of various technology options are provided. “Next steps” suggests providing a basic electronic document management system with a “collaborative working tool” incorporating e‐mail and Internet.

Lists of responsibilities are given for:

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  a “chief knowledge officer”;

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  a “knowledge department manager”;

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  a “knowledge coordinator”;

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  a “knowledge management analyst”; and

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  a “knowledge administrator”.

The section finishes with a list of Web sites under various headings such as “data mining”.

Part III presents the tools and gives an introduction. It is strange to be halfway through before finding the introduction and the fact that the target audience is HR specialists, IT specialists, managers, trainers and project managers. To investigate current practices in KM, three checklists are presented with advice on using the information collected. Conducting a knowledge audit is described using interviews, workshops and questionnaires. Knowledge mapping is a way of presenting the results of the audit. Brainstorming is used to build a knowledge map with the comment that “it does not matter what it looks like so long as everyone understands it”. How a knowledge map from one brainstorming group will make sense to everyone is not considered.

Three ways of classifying knowledge are described: a priori, free fall and templates. Selecting technology is a list of questions with the observation that “specific recommendations are impossible”. A workshop outline is provided with no timings and poor visuals. The last section is a list of questions to review any project with action planning to follow. Half a page on each illustrates the depth of treatment. Finally, a list of suggested further activities is provided.

This is the traditional toolkit folder with generic techniques not tailored to KM. Different font sizes and typefaces make it difficult to decide what are main headings and subheadings in places.

Advice such as “when you have sufficient items”, “employees who hold most critical knowledge”, “summarise tacit knowledge” we found unhelpful. We feel that those coming new to KM need practical examples of what KM processes look like and criteria to make judgements.