My current thoughts repository on the web

Karl Sveiby's key note speech at KM in Europe 2002

As I wrote before, I
visited the KM in Europe 2002 convention in London November 13-15th. On the last
day Karl Erik Sveiby held his key note
speech. I did not find time before to make a report from my hand written notes,
so I'm doing it now. The powerpoint presentation (even though he thinks
powerpoint is a very bad way of 'pushing' information at people) of Sveiby's
talk can be found at the KM
Europe download page. You will also find all the other key note
presentations there.

Sveiby started his talk with an
exercise: close your eyes and touch your nose with your right index finger.
About 3 people couldn't. Now talk your neighbour trough the same exercise by
giving him precise instructions on what to do. About 3 people could. That, says
Sveiby, is the difference between knowledge and information. So to him all
knowledge is implicit. "Knowledge is the capacity to act within context." Both
the emphasis on action and context are important I think. He then continued to
define KM, a term coined by Karl Wiig in 1986, something Wiig "now bitterly
regrets". Sveiby defines KM as the management of a company/organisation that
consists only/mostly of "knowledge workers". Knowledge workers here are highly
educated, highly skilled and experienced. So to Sveiby not everybody is a
knowledge worker, as can be heard quite often lately. The latter would also
render the term useless by the way, as it does away with all the distinctive
qualities of the phrase. The next step was connecting the definition of
knowledge to the definition of KM. In essence he closely follows his own 1997
book The New Organizational Wealth. He talked of internal structures, external
structures and competences in both the book and his speech. However, where in
the book all three are presented more or less at once, in his speech he
explained more clearly the way internal and external structures come forth from
individual competences. And this deepened my own insight.
As an individual uses his knowledge,
his capacity to act within context, to do just that, act, he "stretches" himself
into the outside world, he is reaching out. The result of this, relations,
transactions, etc, are the external structures. It is by putting individual
competences to use that external structures are built. So now you have two
circles, competences and external structures, with a two-way link between them.
The third circle, internal structures is added as you become succesful in the
outside world. You start to need other people to help you, you start building an
organisation. The internal structures are the translation of your own individual
competences into a larger scale. This cluster therefore has a two way link to
your own competences, but also starts to interact with the already existing
external structures in its own right. You end up with three circles, each dually
linked. Value is created in the overlap of all three circles, and is the product
of all interaction taking place. The one thing I value the most in this
description is that it takes the individual as a starting point. This also
emphasizes to me that humans are at the heart of KM, whatever the IT-boys might
think. (Sveiby: "Alas, Knowledge management has been hijacked by IT") The three
circle picture identifies 10 strategic issues. One for each circle in itself
(3), two for each two way connection between circles (6), and the tenth is the
overall question how the value creation capacity of the whole system can be
maximised. In the sheets, examples of all ten strategic issues are described. I
will give a list of them here: The three circles:

Individual competences: Improve the transfer of competence between the
people in our organisation

External structures: Support our customers' conversation with their
customers

Internal structures: Integrate systems, tools, processes and products The
two-way links between each pair of circles:

External to Competence: transfer competences to customers, suppliers and
other stakeholders

Competence to External: learn from customers, suppliers and other
stakeholders

Internal to Competence: improve individuals competence by using systems,
tools and templates

Competence to Internal: convert individually held competence to systems,
tools and templates

Internal to External: allow customers and suppliers to learn by accessing
our systems

External to Internal: use competence from customers and suppliers to add
value to our systems processes and products And, as mentioned above the tenth
strategic issue is how the value creation capacity of the whole system can be
maximised. You can now proceed by identifying bloccades on each of these ten
issues. Sveiby gave some good and bad practices he encountered concerning these
ten issues. The last part of his talk was about the benchmark system he helped
make, the Collaborative Climate Index. In three years of testing, with 20
questions, 12.000 respondents in 80 organisations he created a database for
benchmarking. Some of the general results can be seen in the sheets. Most of
what is described above, you are propably already dealing with in some way or
another in your organisation. But not consciously as Sveiby pointed out.
And that is precisely what I am constantly pleading for: conscious choice
making, based on self knowledge (in this case of your competences). Sveiby also
named trust as the one vital ingredient for knowledge sharing. One last
remark that Sveiby made: "Value is independent of the way it is
measured." Euro's and Dollars are not equal to value, but merely one way of
trying to measure it.

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The
New Organizational Wealth: Managing...

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(posted by Ton Zijlstra at December 1, 2002 05:09 PM)