Friday, 30 September 2011
Week 11: Knowledge Management - Question
This week's case (p.179 of course notes) is the last one for the weekly blog and mini-analysis assignment. The case outlines how HP Analytics, an internal consulting division of HP, built a knowledge sharing culture over a four year period. Think of another organisation in which knowledge sharing would be beneficial. If you were the CEO of this organisation, what would your first steps be in developing knowledge sharing? What would be your key challenge(s) and what would you do the same/differently from the HP case?
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An organisation in which i think Knowledge sharing would be very useful would be Google Plus. The reason why i believe that it would be beneficial is because they are trying to compete with a well established social networking media in Facebook. The only way in which they will be able to compete with Facebook will be to use knowledge sharing.
ReplyDeleteGoogle Plus can use knowledge to understand what customers want and what Facebook doesn't provide them with, they can they distribute this information througt the organisation and develop it into their product.
The first steps would be to develop specific teams in the organisation to handle certain tasks. An individual within each group would then be apart of another knowledge sharing group whose aim it is to distribute information learned from other teams across the organisation. Specific teams should then have specific roles, ie. one team will monitor facebook and blogs etc as to what they are doing right. This way if anything comes up then Google Plus can quickly act and capatilise.
The key challenge is that Google is a very large company and the social networking site is a small part of the organisation. Social networking is also not the main focus of the organisation where as in Facebook it is. It will be very hard to compete with Facebook and it will be very hard to share information across such a large organisation.
Similiarly to HP I would implement collaborative tools to help in the knoweldge sharing process. But the difference with the HP case is that i would tailor them specifically to teams monitoring another organisation and passing knowledge back. Where HP was trying to improve through innovation etc because they are well established, Google plus will be trying to capatilse on Facebook as their strategy of Knowledge Management.
Victoria University of Wellington. Knowledge sharing would be benefical in maintaining the same quality of marking and proportionate grade to the effort put into work. Work with its result can be uploaded to a wiki and moderated by other faculty markers to see how similar the grades are. The first steps I would take will be:
ReplyDelete1. Gather the deans of each faculty and discuss the need for knowledge sharing between schools. The head of each ‘department’ needs to be briefed first on the goals and milestones in implementing knowledge sharing between faculties.
2. The technology and processes would be set up and all the staff members involved in marking will be educated on how the system will be used. Moderators and admins of the system will be appointed.
The key challenge I believe to be would be trying to get each faculty to participate. Not all faculties use VUW’s resources equally and some use different systems altogether (the design school). Although an online grading wiki might be adopted readily by the commerce and computer science faculties, education may not bother. This will be a challenge because user participation in a system like this is important to its success.
The scale of HP’s system is huge; VUW doesn’t need such a complex and large system. I would cut the size of the system down. I would also implement less technology and focus on only a few key technologies and maximize the benefit given from those.
Police/FBI etc.
ReplyDeleteHaving a knowledge sharing culture could be beneficial for everyone in the organisation so that they can access knowledge and be up to date. This will improve consistency in the organisation and allow for fast access to information for anyone that needs it.
The first steps to develop knowledge sharing is:
(1) Change organizational culture
(2) To ask the users what they want out of it and what makes it easier for them to access and understand the information
(3) Find what technology they should use to support knowledge sharing that is compatible, user-friendly and secure.
The key challenges for knowledge sharing is the culture of the organisation. Getting everyone to change will be difficult and not everyone will agree to share knowledge.
Another challenge is security. Knowledge sharing must have the highest security available to ensure that the knowledge shared is only shared with those that are allowed to access and must ensure to prevent outside intrusions.
The Blogging Idol is what i would do the same as it encourages employees to post about the knowledge and to read everyone else's posts. This is a good way to start knowledge sharing and to change the organisations culture.
An organization I think knowledge sharing would be beneficial is Apple because of its innovative products. Such innovative products include the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, and a selection of apps that ranges over 250,000. Although not all of its products have been revolutionary, for example Apple TV. Therefore there is still room for improvement and knowledge sharing will help improve this.
ReplyDeleteFirstly, I would make sure that knowledge management is not implemented all at once, and divide it into phases. This would ensure that initial success can be measured and so that employees can slowly develop the knowledge sharing process.
I would make sure that everyone participates in the knowledge sharing process and the managers understand the vision for knowledge sharing.
For example, the value chain would be a large and important part of the organization for which knowledge is essential. Each part of the chain is knowledge intensive due to technological developments, market trends and product designs. To deal with this, I would make sure that online platforms and offline initiatives are available for employees. Online platforms involves the collaborative technologies such as blogs/forums that are easy to use, where employees can participate and discuss matters. It will also be useful for collecting any feedback from customers. Using blogs and forums will allow any newly hired employees to become productive earlier due to the easily accessible pool of information that is already there. By monitoring and moderating who posts, the managers can see who is not adequately participating and focus on that particular employee. Offline initiatives will include physical face-to-face meetings.
Some of the key challenges will be that not all employees will share information, but over time this behavior can change with the help of knowledge management. Another challenge will include the vision of what the organization is trying to achieve and how knowledge management will fulfill the goal. Knowledge management is also difficult to measure.
What I would do differently from HP Analytics: perhaps have training centers and workshops to improve employees' knowledge sharing soft-skills and also how cultural values and beliefs will differ, so having training centers and workshops the employees can get to know each other better which will be useful for future projects.
What I would do similar to HP Analytics: discuss and address any skepticism to employees as well as collecting and discussing responses/feedback. From there, new initiatives can be developed as well as make any changes to existing ones. Also to group those employees with similar interests and ideas that are relevant to the business to share their knowledge or come together to form a team to allow for a more decentralized ownership of knowledge sharing.
There are many organisations that can use knowledge sharing. An organisation which I believe could benefit from knowledge sharing is Samsung. With Samsung competing device with Apple in terms of mobile devices, knowledge sharing could give them the competitive advantage over Apple that they need.
ReplyDeleteSamsung would have different departments within their organisation all working on a separate parts which would eventually come together to form a new flagship mobile phone device. The use of knowledge sharing will enable these departments to communicate and share ideas amongst each other. This could result in a broader range of ideas and more potential of coming up with a innovative idea.
If I was the CEO at Samsung, I would first address any misunderstandings of knowledge sharing by providing examples to the employees of how the move towards knowledge sharing will benefits the organisation as a whole.
Having address this, employees will be more willing to share their knowledge that they have gained. To encourage more employees to share their knowledge, a blog competition could help. This would mean setting up a point systems align with the number of posts by the employees and a voting system which lets employees vote blog post they consider to be helpful. The points and votes could then result in prizes for the employees.
If employees are still reluctant to post ideas because they may feel it is not a good idea, the website could also have an anonymous posting sections where they can post ideas without the risk.
Organisation for knowledge sharing would be the insurance industry as this is a highly competitive industry in New Zealand and would all for a substantial gain over their competitors.
ReplyDeleteIf one firm was to use knowledge sharing and another wasn’t, then the one who was using it would be in a more advantageous position to offer services and plans to potential customers that other firms are not offering.
To do this they need to have a good understanding of what their competitors are doing. This could be done by monitoring their advertising strategies such as tv and web pages. Information gathered from this process can be sent around the organization and be used to form plans and products that the other companies are not doing and how they can create something new that’s better or make something offered by a competitor better.
there should be a dedicated team to develop, create and tweek all products offed by the company and conduct research on what should and should not be offered. These people should also be responsible for data gathering and sharing.
Aligning with HP tools that assist the knowledge sharing would be beneficial such a collaborative wikis or similar, broken into sections for each research/ product development team to use and get feedback on products and services.
An organisation which would benefit from knowledge sharing is Sony. This is due to the size of the organisation and the market they are in which is highly competitive.
ReplyDeleteThe first steps taken to develop knowledge sharing would be to identify the areas which knowledge sharing would be beneficial, obtain full participation from employees and then implement it in multiple stages.
A key challenge would be from users resisting to share knowledge, because if they share too much of their information, employees may not feel like a valued asset to the organisation anymore.
I would follow the blogging idol as used by HP. This encouraged all their employees to share information through blogs, and they were motivated through the rewards offered by HP. This blogging idol would work very well as most people would want some form of incentive in return for sharing their knowledge
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ReplyDeleteFirstly, sorry for the late blog post, I encountered internet difficulties at home.
ReplyDeleteAn industry which I believe knowledge sharing would be beneficial for would be the Mobile phones industry, and in this particular industry the mobile phone company Nokia would greatly benefit from knowledge sharing. Nokia has many different departments in their organisation, and by knowledge sharing they will increase productivity and thus get a competitive advantage over other mobile phone companies such as Sony Ericson and Samsung.
If I was the CEO of Nokia and wanted to develop knowledge sharing, I would firstly, change the organizations culture so that it encourages knowledge sharing across and within different departments. I would then ask the employees in what ways I could make it easier for them to knowledge share and which technology they would need for it to work. To also encourage knowledge sharing I would have incentives in place, such as stocks and shares in the company.
One of the challenges I will face is actually changing the culture of the organisation. The departments would have not been use to knowledge sharing, and so I will need to encourage them to knowledge share, which they will not be used to.
I would d the same from the HP case, about the Blogging Idol, this proved to work as it encouraged employees actually visit and read the blogs, and thus knowledge sharing was achieved.
An organization that would benefit from knowledge sharing would be the NZ Army. Nearly all of the areas of the Army would benefit from knowledge sharing, whether within the division or between divisions. This would give them a strategic advantage and increase their efficiency.
ReplyDeleteIf I were the organizer of this project I would start by working specifically with the different divisions of the Army as they all have different functions and requirements about how their information is shared. For obvious reasons security would be a major issue of knowledge sharing, even within a division. This would mean that there would have to be many different levels of access throughout the system.
Once I had implemented the knowledge sharing system within the divisions I would work of creating the links between the divisions. This would increase efficiency and knowledge between divisions.
One of the biggest challenges that would be encountered implementing this system is the already high level of security that exists in the Army. It would be hard to get the requirements for the whole system, as the information would be relatively secure to the specific divisions.
I would not do the blogging that HP Analytics did as it is too informative for the Army and would release too much sensitive information.
One industry that would benefit from knowledge sharing would be the telecomunications industry. The telecomnuications industry deals with various different departments such as internet and telephone. These departments however do need to work together using knowledge management.
ReplyDeleteA support team needs to be set up within the various departments the industry will have. They would need to set up department facilitators just like HP had set up. this is to help each individual department in facilitating its knowledge with the organisation as a whole.
Once a support team has been gained throughout all the departments. Facilitators are to provide information to other staff member and answer questions regarding knowledge information Facilitators need to understand that their role is important in order for the organisation to get its staff to actively participate in the organisation as a whole.
An organisation in which knowledge sharing would be beneficial would be the Inland Revenue Department (IRD). The reason why I believe that it would be beneficial is because they are a public service which affects everyone from taxes to child support to domestic purpose benefits. Also, they deal with people every day and are heavily flooded with questions and enquiries from people. During peak times most people can’t get through to them because IRD spend a lot of time trying to direct people to the right department for them to deal with. The only way to deal with this situation is through implementing knowledge sharing.
ReplyDeleteIRD can use knowledge sharing to up-skill individual employees and learn what different departments are doing and also if someone is accidently put through to their department, they can assist them instead of wasting time putting them through to the correct department.
If I was the CEO of this organisation, I would implement similar procedures undertaken by HP Analytics. I would undertake the top-down approach and start small by working in a section of the organisation. From there, if all goes well, I will implement the initiatives undertaken into other departments and eventually through the entire organisation.
The key challenges would be culture change and getting employees to change their current working habits and implementing initiatives for knowledge management. Every employee is different – some may be open to sharing, some may not be open to sharing. Bottom line is, there needs to be some incentive in place in order for this to work.
Similarly to the HP case, I would implement both online and offline collaborative tools to help with the knowledge management initiatives. Also, to counter restrain by employees, I would use incentives similar to the HP case to get employees hyped up and motivated to implement knowledge management initiatives.