Do You Know That? What Kind Of Knowledge Management Strategy Do You Adopt?

This paper discusses how to make correct knowledge management strategy and puts forward two different strategic modes, namely, coding strategy and personalization strategy.

It involves the overall competitive strategy of enterprises, the knowledge characteristics of enterprises and the corresponding information technology.

It is believed that this study provides a deep inspiration for managers who are seeking knowledge management solutions.

Knowledge management is nothing new.

For hundreds of years, the business wisdom of the family business has been handed down for generations; the masters of the craft have worked hard on the apprentice; the workers have been exchanging their experiences and skills together for a long time.

But it was not until the 90s of this century that business leaders began to talk about knowledge management.

The foundation of modern economy has changed from natural resources to knowledge assets. This change forces managers to look back at the knowledge base and their utilization of enterprises.

At the same time, the increasing popularity of computer networks enables people to more easily and economically carry out knowledge coding, storage and sharing.

two types

For some enterprises, the core of knowledge management strategy is computers.

Well coded knowledge is stored in the database, so employees can easily call it.

We call this the coding strategy of knowledge management.

In other enterprises, knowledge is closely related to knowledge developers. Knowledge is mainly achieved through direct contact among personnel.

In such enterprises, the main function of computers is to help people communicate, not to store knowledge.

We call it the individualized strategy of knowledge management.

Choosing the knowledge management strategy of an enterprise is not arbitrary. It must consider the way of serving the customers, the economic conditions of the enterprises and the specific conditions of the employees.

Some consulting firms have found that if the enterprises focus on knowledge management strategies or try to implement two strategies at the same time, the strength of enterprises will soon be weakened.

Some large consulting companies such as Andersen Consulting and Ernst & Young have followed the coding strategy in knowledge management.

Over the past five years, they have developed a variety of subtle ways to code, store and invoke knowledge.

Knowledge coding is achieved through "personnel to document", that is, knowledge is first extracted from developers, separated from developers, and widely used for various purposes.

Ralph Poole, director of the business knowledge center of the Yang Yang company, points out: "we delete information that is applicable to specific customers only, then extract key knowledge such as interview guides, work schedules, reference data and market segmentation analysis from documents, and store them in electronic databases for calling, thereby establishing knowledge" objects ".

This approach allows many people to search and invoke coded knowledge without having to contact the original developer of the knowledge.

In this way, it is possible for us to achieve scale effect through knowledge reuse and enable enterprises to develop.

In contrast, Bain, Bain, Boston Consulting Group, and McKinsey strategy consulting firms emphasize the individualization strategy of knowledge management. In addition, the strategy consulting firms is a company that focuses on knowledge management.

They focus on direct communication among personnel, rather than knowledge objects in databases.

Knowledge that is not encoded and may not be encoded can be pmitted through brainstorming and one to one conversation.

Consultants have repeatedly discussed the problems they need to solve.

In order to make personalization strategy effective in knowledge management, Bain and other companies invested huge sums to build a network of personnel.

Knowledge sharing can be achieved not only by face-to-face, but also by telephone, e-mail and video conferencing.

McKinsey Co also nurture personnel networks through many ways, such as mobilizing off-site staff, advocating instant reply to colleagues' corporate culture, setting up expert catalogues, and using the company's "consulting supervision" to help consulting project teams.

These enterprises also set up an electronic document system.

But its purpose is not to provide knowledge objects, but to let consultants consult relevant documents quickly and grasp relevant knowledge in a specific field, and thus understand who has engaged in a certain topic within the company, and then directly contact them.

How to choose knowledge management strategy

The knowledge management strategy of an enterprise should reflect its overall competitive strategy.

For example, how to create value for customers and how to put that value into an economic mode, how can employees achieve this value and economic mode.

As an enterprise manager, it must be able to clearly explain why a customer buys an enterprise rather than a competitor's product and service.

What value does a customer expect from an enterprise? How does the knowledge contained in an enterprise increase its value for customers? If the enterprise does not have a clear answer to the above questions, it should not rush to establish knowledge management strategy, otherwise it will easily go astray.

If the competition strategy of the enterprise is clear enough, managers should consider the following three questions to help them choose the basic knowledge management strategy.

Although the meaning of the answer seems self-evident, it is necessary for managers to point out the relationship between competitive strategy and knowledge support.

Do you provide standardized products or customized products? There are few changes in products that provide standardized products.

Although DELL (Dell) assembled computers based on orders is larger than the products listed in large quantities, DELL's products can still be regarded as standard products.

For enterprises producing standard products, knowledge management strategy based on knowledge reuse is more appropriate.

Enterprises that provide customized products or services focus on meeting the unique needs of specific customers.

Because of the large differences in these requirements, the role of encoding knowledge is limited to them.

Enterprises that adopt customized product strategy should consider personalized knowledge management strategy.

Is your product a mature product or an innovative product? Business strategies based on mature products usually benefit a lot from reuse patterns.

The development and sales process of mature products includes a variety of work known to everyone and knowledge that can be encoded.

Conversely, a strategy based on product innovation is best suited to a personalized knowledge management strategy.

In innovative enterprises, employees must share information, because such information is often lost in documents.

Do employees rely on explicit knowledge or tacit knowledge to solve problems? Explicit knowledge refers to knowledge that can be encoded, such as simple software code and market data.

If employees rely on explicit knowledge to complete their work, the "personnel to document" approach is most effective.

On the contrary, tacit knowledge is hard to express in writing and needs to be acquired through personal experience.

It includes scientific expertise, operational know-how, industry insight, business judgement and technical expertise.

If people often use tacit knowledge to solve problems, the way of direct communication between people is absolutely effective.

Sometimes, managers try to put this to be

Knowledge becomes explicit knowledge.

This will bring great trouble.

For example, Xerox Co (Xerox) once attempted to implant the relevant skills of service and maintenance technicians into an expert system and install it on a photocopier.

They hope that technicians who receive maintenance telephone calls can accomplish long distance maintenance tasks under the guidance of the expert system.

But the end result is that technicians can't solve the problem with this system alone.

Further research by the photocopier designer found that technicians learned from each other by sharing examples of their own maintenance machines.

The expert system can not reproduce the details of face-to-face conversation.

The answers to these three questions often indicate what kind of knowledge should be adopted.

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But sometimes two other factors often complicate the problem: the co-existence of multiple departments within the company and the commercialization of knowledge.