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· Can I create a test FAQ entry? by Kevin

Yes, you can.

And can I post a comment for this entry?

· How can an organisational culture be created that enables knowledge sharing?

Organisational cultures that enable knowledge sharing tend to evolve, rather than change overnight. It is rarely a logical linear process. It is often messy and takes a long time. The key is creating space, i.e. mechanisms and incentives, encouraging people to share, rather then hoard knowledge. The process should be demand driven – responding to an internal or external need for improved knowledge sharing – rather than just a “good idea” dreamed up by someone in the organisation. External pressure from clients, donors or partners can be a critical factor - internal and external alliances are essential to drive the process. It is important early on to create the space for informal exchange, and encourage internal champions to try out some new ideas. Living examples of improved KS within an oganisation are often the most effective way of convincing senior managers of its value. Establishing a holistic approach to KS throughout an organisation may require a major change process, which will require the support and active involvement of senior management. This may include:

Reviewing the Organisation’s Vision, Mission, Objectives and Current Programmes;
Intensive internal and external consultation, possibly including external consultants, and continuous communication to all staff (management included) through various routes, in meetings, workshops, seminars, publications, and on the web.
Training;
Reorganisation - KS seems to work better in Matrix organisations.
New personnel procedures which recognise and provide incentives for KS.

· How can KM tools and models be applied in developing countries?

The application of knowledge management tools and models undoubtedly has value in a developing country setting. However imposing or transferring KM models created in the North to developing countries cannot be done automatically. Rather stakeholders should be involved and their needs taken into account; tools and models can then be adapted to create a meaningful approach applicable to the stakeholders’ own context and based on their own experience.

The sharing of knowledge is already developed to some extent in every organisational and community setting, and these existing practices should be built on. Examples of this might be a culture of storytelling or systems for the sharing of indigenous knowledge; these local examples can be used as case studies to demonstrate the creative and appropriate use of KM in the South. As culture and values differ in different parts of the world, it may be that an existing knowledge sharing culture can act as the basis for KM implementation. Cultural differences can of course also be a challenge when working with KM in the south.

The availability and accessibility of information and communications technologies will inevitably affect the application of some knowledge management tools for use in the South, and an awareness of the practical limitations of ICTs should be part of the process of appropriate development of KM tools. Low tech solutions should be used where possible and a number of methods of communication may be needed to keep everyone involved. As in any organisation working in different parts of the world, differences in language and culture may need to be addressed before knowledge can be shared freely.

A useful way to start knowledge sharing may be by targeting small, subject focused groups and using success stories to build on. It is important to avoid jargon and adapt terminology to that used in the local context.

· How do organizations respond to CoPs?

· How do you build a FAQ? by Nancy_White

· How do you facilitate learning and knowledge sharing between organisations?

In order to facilitate learning and knowledge sharing, whether within or between organisations, the following principles apply: it should be driven by DEMAND; a conducive ENVIRONMENT is needed; people’s CAPACITIES may need to be developed; and appropriate TOOLS should be employed.

DEMAND: Learning and KS should respond to practical needs and concerns, and should not be based on assumptions. Assessing learning & KS needs not only helps identify key areas to focus attention, but can also build demand where there is little awareness of how KS can help. Understanding demand should be a continuous process.

ENVIRONMENT: The following elements can help to build a conducive environment for learning and sharing:

Promote the value of learning, and encourage it to be rewarded
Recognise that power relationships can present barriers to learning
Promote trust
Ensure continuity of organisational commitment to learning and KS
Encourage a common vision and collaborative culture
Provide leadership, particularly leading by example

CAPACITY: People need to have the time, resources and skills to learn and to share their knowledge. Learning is not something you do alone, so networking and partnerships are complementary elements.

TOOLS: An appropriate mix of tools should be developed and applied to enable learning and sharing (visual, word, etc). These might include face to face as well as online interaction, databases of lessons learned, communication technology including email, and other KM processes such as peer assist and after action review. Technology should be considered an enabling, not an essential element.

· How do you monitor the success of the strategy?

You can monitor the success of a KM strategy when by measuring the following conditions:

The number of staff is increased in subscribing and actively participating in Knowledge Networks
The increase in volume of traffic in he knowledge networks
When you mention knowledge management in meetings, you don't get a queer look from the staff
The efficiency of the organization is increased
Redundancy in projects and programmes is avoided
True and working rewarding or incentives are put in place for sharing knowledge
Enough budget and time are allocated for staff training and organizational learning
Face-to-Face discussions and forums are organized for knowledge and information sharing periodically

· How do you start and support CoPs?

Bring together practitioners with concrete issues and questions to mobilize and identify the right players.
For management buy-in the CoP should support core organizational function (top management buy-in is a helpful but not sufficient condition for the success of the CoP).
Start demand-driven and with concrete objectives: avoid setting up a CoP around a theoretically deduced topic (you may also want to start with clients’ and partners’ interests, rather than with those defined by your organization).
Mobilise or redirect efforts that are already there: link to or empower existing groups.
Timing is essential: if it simply appears too difficult to mobilise the CoP, “hibernation” may be an option.

· How does KM have an impact on the implementation of development goals (practitioners and the poor)?

The closer KS/KM gets to the ultimate beneficiaries of international cooperation, the better. Hence KS/KM has to involve developing country partners (government, non-government, private sector, not for profit sector).

Only this kind of comprehensive approach to KS/KM will allow partners to "'scan globally and act locally'";. And it will be more effective if donors share amongst themselves (e.g. through SWAPs and PRSP) and thus partners can readily scan across donors knowledge bases. This will also help donors, developing country partners and developed country partners to learn together and more consistently from mistakes and from positive experiences.

KM/KS has the potential to give a voice to the poor by allowing a better horizontal flow of knowledge: e.g. by connecting practitioners to researchers, governments and donors and facilitating a two-way flow of knowledge from communities in need to service providers and vice versa. This has the added advantage of moving development agencies away from a guidelines/blueprint approach to problem solving and towards needs-based guidance and a practice-based approach.

· Is top management buy-in essential? If yes, why? If not, what can you do without it?

Top management buy-in is important to ensure that that a KM initiative is fully implemented within an organization, although KM demands commitment from all parts of an organization. KM also changes the way we work and top management need to understand and accept that it will organizational change. Enthusiasm from practitioners is also needed and KM practitioners need to be prepared to persist. The value of KM needs to be demonstrated to senior staff in very concrete ways so that they are fully engaged from the very beginning. Resources do matter but it is not all about money. KM must prove its value to mobilize management who allot time and money to the effort based on cost effectiveness.

Different levels of commitment from top management can be identified which can effect how KM is accepted in an organization. Here are possible ways to work with them:

Enthusiastic buy-in: top management are champions and put their money where their mouths are (e.g. Issue a statement to the entire organization to engage their support)- best scenario, highest chances of having your KM initiative work.

Blind faith: top management seem very keen at first and talk the talk but may not walk the walk – need to take advantage of the open door for a while and run with the ball before they lose interest, must demonstrate KM potential quickly but in the end might not be enough to ensure success.

Passive acceptance: top management has been exposed to KM and is willing to give the KM team room to work. It can make or break any KM initiative as resources are involved and change be challenged in a budget crunch or cutbacks, also need to show quick results.

Complete lack of commitment: top management are skeptical or unwilling to support KM initiatives – very hard to undertake KM in such circumstances, although some infrastructure (e.g. Intranet) could be put in place to capture explicit knowledge.

· Top Ten Tips?

As CoP moderator:

Wrap up findings at end of a discussion project, put the wrap-up back into discussion and make sure it gets archived
Create a culture of KS through role modeling (e.g. asking questions, emphasizing useful contributions, acknowledging member participation).
Pick up the “what this CoP did for me”-issue within the CoP – strengthens motivation, trust and supplies success stories for further promotion.
Create (virtual) rituals (e.g. celebrations to mark completion or kick-off of work, new members, end of group) to create a sense of identity.
Create opportunities for trust building (smaller group meetings, opportunities for informal meetings).
Reduce the information overload by breaking down into thematic areas (working groups) or subject topics (e.g. in the GKP).
Use success and failure stories for ‘lessons learned’, and include continuous M&E and feedback to ensure you are still relevant and on the right track.
Address the life-cycle! Allow the CoP to disband or ‘hibernate’ when the objectives have been achieved: long-term sustainability is not always necessary. Set time delimitations for online discussions.
Start small (bite-size pieces), scale up from there; e.g.: Plan International uses a monthly email in which people can request help in 3 lines or less; this brings people together in mini-CoP’s on a demand-driven basis.
Regularly and variably use different forms of events, face-to-face meetings and virtual communication to foster sustainability and dynamism of the CoP.

· What are CoPs?

COPs are a group of participants (community) with a commonality of interest and practice (focus), who come together to address a specific challenge, and further each others goals and objectives in a specific topic area (shared practice). Members of COPs share enthusiasm for the topic, ownership of the group, work products and ideas. COPs respond to professional demand and are results oriented. They can serve to develop and evolve knowledge, as well as develop innovative ideas.

· What are the elements of a KM strategy?

The KM strategy should link to organization's mandate/mission/goals AND SHOULD TAKE ACCOUNT OF THE ORGANIZATION'S VALUES AND WAYS OF WORKING
Audit and mapping of KM resources
Statement of the resources available for the initiative
Comprehensive needs analysis
A business case
Articulate objectives of KM strategy - there is an issue of balance between internally and externally focussed objectives

3 major element of KM Strategy:

People
- Training/capacity building
- Improving networking
- Tapping people's knowledge
- Creating incentives for knowledge sharing, INCLUDING REWARDS AND RECOGNITION
Process/organization (e.g. communications strategy)
- Improving processes
- Finding new ways of doing core business
- Finding ways of expressing tacit knowledge
- information management systems
Tools
- IT tools
- Tools must be very simple
- Importance of presenting elements of km strategy in a visual form

Build in plan for monitoring and evaluation system from the beginning
Factors that are likely to contribute to the success of a KM strategy include:
- Sustainability - embed responsibility for maintenance in core staff responsibilities
- Leadership
- Communications
- Acknowledge, celebrate and build on KM that is already happening

· What are the minimum criteria?

To have an active CoP, you cannot do without:

Ability and willingness (trust) of members to help each other;
The purpose of participating being considered more important than the costs;
A dedicated facilitator who keeps the CoP alive and animated;
Lots of goodwill and patience from everybody! – time is needed for culture change within any organization to accept the concept and potential benefits of CoPs.
Allocation of resources (financial, working time) to enable active participation.

· What are the operational aspects?

Use peer assists and/or peer learning support: face to face/online
M&E should be integrated into the process of network formation to capture suggestions and continuous thorough needs assessment from project stakeholders. Continue M&E after formation to monitor progress and continuing relevance. (please define M&E)
The Human Factor is predominant, so maintain a people-based emphasis rather than on Information Systems.
Dedicated facilitation is necessary for a successful CoP to do jobs like member recruitment, event coordination, administrative tasks, etc. (e.g. the Open Knowledge Network (OKN), where a full-time moderator is active).
A CoP for CoP-construction may help to support the work of organizers of CoP and CoP facilitators
Include advisory services to enable access to expertise: CoPs as advisory services or as intermediary to information (“reinvention of library function”)
Quick wins or slow comprehensive approach? Balance between those two depends on situation.
Bring the lab to the field: CoPs can help bring ‘academia’ to practitioners, which benefits both parties (farmer-scientist network example). It can bring practitioners to academia.
CoPs can provide an inclusive KM strategy: a) Access to people & inclusion of stakeholders; b) break through isolation in bringing experts together; c) bundling financial resources for supporting high impact but cost-intensive practices beneficial to the stakeholders (such as workshops, e-platforms, etc).
Use incentives – both formal (as part of staff appraisal) and informal (enhanced visibility) to enhance and promote participation.
Acknowledge member participation by reinforcement, encouragement and interaction.
Harvest learning out of informal interactions, such as chat sessions, phone conversations and lunches.
Make sure sufficient human resources are available to ensure staff has the time to participate in CoPs and KM initiatives.

· What are they not?

COPs are not focused on specific tasks or outcomes, which are the intent of task forces or teams. The objectives of a COP are not pre-defined, as is the case with support groups. However they have a defined common area of interest, unlike informal networks.

· What if I want to add to this? by lucielamour

This is the text that I pu in

· What incentives can help encourage knowledge sharing?

Formal incentives

Incorporate sharing in personnel competencies
Organise lunch presentations
Create an inventory on what people want to be asked about
"Send" people to conferences and ask for reports on the meetings
Reward people for ideas that are picked up by others

In general these aspect can be part of a personal development plan or personal commitment statement. Stimulate people to write down what they want to achieve in a coming period; for example 'publish and update their curriculum vitae on intranet' or 'visit two partner organisations' or 'mentor new personnel' or 'do a lunch presentation'. Most formal incentives can be organised by a HRM department.

Informal incentives

Recognition / awards
Allow people to publish stories (success and failure)
Organise exhibition fairs / showcasing
Invite people to talk about their work / write about their work in internal media
Stimulate people to take part in communities of practice
Organise happy hours
Invite all personnel to contribute to a new year plan for the organisation

Other

Allow self-organisation outside the hierarchy; allocate time for this
Make sure management supports the idea of sharing knowledge
Time spent on sharing must be recognised as legitimate by management / peers
Stress the potential return of investment
Centralise the canteen / coffee machines / water coolers / library
Organise flexible workplace; get people out of their 'cubicles' or relocate people now and then
Make management think about the concepts for a 'knowledge friendly organisation'

· What is a test question

A question should be deleted if it's not relevant for the community, so Lucie feel free to delete this.

· What is KM? A fad, faith, or fact?

What is KM?

Knowledge management (KM) is four things at the same time:

It is a concept;
It is a business discipline or theory that reflects the increasing importance of knowledge as a corporate asset;
It is a collection of technologies; and
A philosophy.

Many of the varied definitions focus on one or more of these aspects. Users of the term don't always emphasize whether they are talking about the concept, the discipline, the tools and/or the philosophy. In some circumstances, KM is used interchangeably with knowledge sharing.

KM: the concept

KM, as a concept, is is about the way that organizations create, capture and re-use knowledge to achieve organizational objectives. Knowledge is created in the heads of people. It can be captured by putting it on paper, entering into a computer system, or simply being remembered. Knowledge is shared. When knowledge is shared and used, it leads to more knowledge creation.

To define knowledge management it is important to look at the two parts that make up the term, knowledge and management.

Knowledge is part of the hierarchy made up of data, information, knowledge and wisdom defined as the following: Data are raw statistics and facts. Information comprises the basic facts with context and perspective. Knowledge is information which provides guidance for action. Wisdom is understanding which knowledge to use for what purpose.

Management is part of another hierarchy that includes supervision, management and leadership.

Supervision is dealing with individuals tasks and people. It works at the operational level of an organization or sub-unit. Management is dealing with groups and priorities at the tactical level. Leadership is dealing with purpose and change at the strategic level.

KM: the business discipline

As a business discipline and theory, KM was developed by management and organisational theorists/practitioners in the 1990s. It may also have taken over the learning organization 'baton' since 1995.

KM: the collection of technologies

The potential and reality of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are an important component of KM. This is very much based on earliest approaches of KM which focused on stocking explicit knowledge or knowledge as a stock. Without the tools, KM would not likely have ever been conceived. Indeed, there is a whole toolkit of technologies which form part of the KM approach. These include, for example, Intranets and yellow pages, as well as a whole range of other technologies which stimulate dialogue between individuals and communities. However, an approach based on technologies alone lacks deeper understanding of the nature of knowledge.

KM: the philosophy

As a philosophy, KM is strongly linked to the business discipline but it is taking it one step further. No longer based only on efficiency, it is about value for human beings for their own sake and for the knowledge in their heads. It is strongly related to the expected third wave/dominant strategy of knowledge management which will focus on social learning. The philosophy stands for non-hierarchical organizational structures, valuing the experience of others - and listening to them, and more fundamental analysis of the nature of knowledge.

A Fad, Faith or Fact?

KM is all three at once - a fad, a faith and a fact..

KM as a Fad/Fashion

Scarborough and Swan (2001) argue that 'KM is not easy to define and many definitions supplied in the literature are highly ambiguous. The ambiguity of the concept, however, is itself a clue to the fashion-setting possibilities of this discourse.'

By claiming that KM is a management fashion, commentators are claiming that it is short-lived, superficial, a question of style rather than substance, with strong bandwagon effects 'a matured wine in a new bottle'. However, as noted by a participant of the KM4Dev community, 'KM has the appearance of being fad but it is going to stick with us for quite a long time and, by doing so, alter the way we do things.'

Scarborough and Swan (2001) argue that 'the fashion model offers some useful explanations for the characteristics of KM. However, 'Instead of the uniform movement of ideas and practices described by the fashion metaphor, we see KM spreading through a ripple effect in which it serves as a trigger for activating locally-situated change processes.'

KM as a Faith

As a faith or religion, KM has believers and non-believers, disciples, key texts etc. As explained by a participant in the KM4Dev community, 'For many people, KM is a faith. They live KM. They are inspired and enthused by it.'

Like faiths and religions, KM also has its myths. For example, KM luminary (or prophet) Dr Yogesh Malhotra, talks of three 'myths'; often associated with KM solutions.

KM as a Fact

'It is a fact that you can draw people together. KM provides you with a bag of processes, tools and methodologies. The stuff in the bag - that is a fact' - KM4Dev Member

It is a fact, even as a fashion, because, for example, even in 1998, 43% of leading UK firms were undertaking some kind of KM initiative (KPMG)

References
KPMG (1998) Knowledge management: research report. London.
Scarborough, H. and J. Swan (2001) Explaining the diffusion of knowledge management: the role of fashion. British Journal of Management Vol 12, p. 3-12

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