Some Words to the Wise re Knowledge Management
Alton K. Chua, an assistant professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, has published an illuminating article concerning what can go wrong with knowledge management projects.In the the April 28 edition of the Wall Street Journal, Chua describes three all-too-typical cases of knowledge management efforts that started off famously, but then went awry. There are clear lessons to learn from each, as Chua explains.
For example, in the second of the three cases, a provider of telecom equipment and mobile services discovered that building a database of some 150,000 solutions for customer problems, led to reduced problem-solving ability among most of its support engineers.
This happened because the vast majority of the engineers rarely made contributions to the solutions database, but rather largely confined themselves to consulting the database as they rushed to resolve a customer issue. These engineers would "locate and apply solutions directly from the system without first giving the problem some thought." And
engineers said they didn't know what to do when faced with problems that had no solution in the database. Such problems went unsolved and were passed along to research and development for further study.Chua cites three key lessons learned for this type of knowledge management effort:
- Make sure rewards for contributing solutions are commensurate with the time required to do so.
- Regularly review "best practices" to ensure that they really do reflect the latest validated methods for handling given issues.
- Include the assumptions and rationale that underlie each solution to help ensure that the solution is applied appropriately — and adapted, as needed.
Labels: Knowledge management
posted by Karen Nelson @ 11:32 PM
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