By: Eng. Mousatafa Wahba, Competency Assurance & TVET Consultant

What is Knowledge Management KM within Enterprises & TVET Institutions?

1. In the present day, in a very simplified manner, Knowledge Management KM within an Enterprise or Technical and Vocational Education and Training TVET Institution can be considered as an approach that enables each member of the Enterprise / Institution to individually know and apply what the Enterprise or TVET Institution knows as a whole, enables the Enterprise or TVET Institution to know what each member knows individually and reuse it at group level, and allows each member to recognize what he / she do not know and should learn.

2. Think of a coded welder as a simplified example of a knowledge worker. Coded welders do more high standard welding works than normal welders. When asked, a coded welder will give advice to other normal welders who can derive a benefit from the coded welder's advice such as a particular ‘TIG’ welding job. If a coded welder is willing to share what he knows with other normal welders, then they all may eventually earn more money.

What Constitutes intellectual or Knowledge-based Assets?

1. Not all information is valuable. Therefore, it's up to individual Enterprise or TVET Institution to determine what information qualifies as intellectual and knowledge-based assets. Intellectual and knowledge-based assets are either “Explicit Knowledge” consists of anything that is fully and clearly defined and can be documented, archived and codified, often with the help of IT or ‘Implicit Knowledge”, in which the knowledge that implied though is not directly expressed or the know-how contained in people's heads.

2. Shadowing and joint-problem solving are two best practices for transferring or recreating implicit knowledge inside an Enterprise or TVET Institution. In shadowing, less experienced staff observes more experienced staff in their activities to learn how their more experienced counterparts approach their work dialog and crystallize the knowledge transfer. As the trainees / students are often unaware of how they approach problems or do their work and therefore can’t automatically generate step-by-step instructions for doing whatever they do, the joint problem-solving support the trainees / students to work together as beginners with expert on a task / project with a view to bring the expert’s approach in solving problems to light.

Why we need Knowledge Management KM within Enterprises & TVET Institutions?

We need Knowledge Management KM within TVET Enterprises & TVET Institutions due to the following specific business factors:

1. Achieving substantial savings, significant improvements in human performance, and competitive advantage.

2. Reductions in staffing create a need to replace informal knowledge with formal methods.
3. The amount of time available to experience and acquire knowledge has diminished.
4. Early retirements and increasing mobility of the work force lead to loss of knowledge.
5. There is a need to manage increasing complexity in knowledge.
6. Enterprises & TVET Institutions compete on the basis of knowledge.
7. Provision of competent workers and training services are increasingly complex, endowing them with a significant information component.
8. The need for life-long learning is an inescapable reality.

What are the benefits and motivations leading Enterprises & TVET Institutions to undertake a KM project?

An effective KM programme should help an Enterprise or TVET Institution to do one or more of the following:

1. Promote innovation by encouraging the free flow of ideas

2. Improve customer (enterprise as end user) service by streamlining response time
3. Boost revenues by getting products (competent workers) and training services to market faster
4. Enhance Enterprise or TVET Institution’s retention rates by recognizing the value of employees' knowledge and rewarding them for it
5. Streamline operations and reduce costs by eliminating redundant or unnecessary processes
6. A creative approach to KM can result in improved efficiency, higher productivity and increased revenues in practically any business function
7. Making available increased knowledge content in the development and provision of competent workers and training services
8. Facilitating and managing innovation and Enterprise or TVET Institution’s learning
9. Leveraging the expertise of staff across the Enterprise or the TVET Institution
10. Solving intractable or wicked problems
11. The concept of KM embodies a transition from the recently popular concept of 'information value chain' to a 'knowledge value chain.' What is the difference? The information value chain considers technological systems as key components guiding the organization's business processes, while treating humans as relatively passive processors that implement 'best practices' archived in information databases. In contrast, the knowledge value chain treats human systems as key components that engage in continuous assessment of information archived in the technological systems. In this view, 'best practices' are not implemented without active inquiry by the human actors. Human actors engage in an active process of sense making to continuously assess the effectiveness of 'best practices.' The underlying premise is that 'best practices' of yesterday may not be taken for granted as 'best practices' of today or tomorrow. Hence, double loop learning, unlearning and relearning processes need to be designed into the Enterprise or TVET Institution business processes.
12. KM is necessary for Enterprise or TVET Institution because what worked yesterday may or may not work tomorrow. Enterprise or TVET Institution that were providing enterprises with competent workers became obsolete regardless of the efficiency of their learning, education and training processes since their graduated workers didn't keep up with the changing needs of the market. The same holds for assumptions about the optimal Enterprise or TVET Institution structure, the control and coordination systems, the motivation and incentive schemes, and so forth. To remain aligned with the dynamically changing needs of the business environment, Enterprise or TVET Institution need to continuously assess their internal theories of business for ongoing effectiveness. That is the only viable means for ensuring that today's 'core competencies' do not become 'core rigidities' of tomorrow.

What are the KM Strategies?

1. Knowledge is accessed through three stages: before, during, or after KM-related activities.

2. The traditional Performance Measurement System in the industrial era is losing its relevance in today’s fast changing environment where Enterprises & TVET Institutions are re-shaped into flat multi-functional hierarchies and their business models, teams’ roles and responsibilities are becoming more complex. It is therefore becoming more essential to move towards Performance Driven Enterprises & TVET Institutions and include KM in the performance appraisals with a view replace the traditional Performance Measurement System and improve the Performance Measurement Plans
3. One strategy to KM involves actively managing knowledge (push strategy). In such an instance, individuals strive to explicitly encode their knowledge into a shared knowledge repository, such as a database, as well as retrieving knowledge they need that other individuals have provided to the repository.
4. Another strategy to KM involves individuals making knowledge requests of Subject Matter Experts SMEs associated with a particular subject on an ad hoc basis (pull strategy). In such an instance, SMEs can provide their insights to the particular person or people needing this.
5. Other Knowledge Management Strategies for Enterprises & TVET Institutions include:
   • Rewards (as a means of motivating for knowledge sharing)

   • Storytelling (as a means of transferring implicit knowledge)
   • Cross-project learning
   • After action reviews
   • Knowledge mapping (a map of knowledge repositories within an Enterprise or TVET Institution and accessible by all)
   • Code of practice
   • Best practice transfer
   • Risk management
   • Benchmarking
   • Competence management (systematic evaluation and planning of competences of individual Enterprise or TVET Institution
   • Proximity & architecture (the physical situation of employees can be either conducive or obstructive to knowledge sharing)
   • Master-apprentice relationship
   • Collaborative technologies (groupware, etc)
   • Knowledge repositories (databases, etc)
   • Measuring and reporting intellectual capital (a way of making explicit knowledge for companies)
   • Knowledge brokers (some TVET Centre / CoC’s members take on responsibility for a specific "field" and act as first reference on whom to talk about a specific subject)
   • Social software (wikis, social bookmarking, blogs, etc)

Categorization of Knowledge Management Approaches

1. Mechanistic approaches to Knowledge Management
Mechanistic approaches to KM are characterized by the application of technology and resources to do more of the same better.

2. Cultural / behaviorist approaches to Knowledge Management
Cultural / behaviorist approaches, with substantial roots in process re-engineering and change management, tend to view the "knowledge problem" as a management issue. Technology — though ultimately essential for managing explicit knowledge resources — is not the solution. These approaches tend to focus more on innovation and creativity (the learning Enterprise or TVET Institution) than on leveraging existing explicit resources or making working knowledge explicit.

3. Systematic approaches to Knowledge Management
Systematic approaches to KM retain the traditional faith in rational analysis of the knowledge problem: the problem can be solved, but new thinking of many kinds is required.

How to promote a KM project in an Enterprise or TVET Institution?

• Don’t label the project as KM because the term causes so much confusion. Everyone has a different definition of KM (if they even know what it is) and those who have heard of it and have heard of all the failures associated with KM projects will be inherently biased against the KM project.

• Instead of calling the project as KM, consider it as a project designed to solve a particular learning / education / training problem within the Enterprise or TVET Institution. The KM project is much more likely to succeed if it addresses an actual learning / education / training goal or specific pain point, like improving collaboration in order to bring a product to market faster than the competition.

How to Demonstrate the Value of a KM Project?

• In order to highlight the pay back of a KM project it’s often wise just to promise that the project will pay for itself (if indeed it will) and therefore is worth trying out to see if incremental benefits can be gained. That approach works well if you’re trying to get funding from executives who habitually doubts generally accepted belief of KM.

• Instead of attempting to demonstrate the Enterprise or TVET Institution wide value for a KM project, look for value at the individual level. For example, if the project will reduce the amount of time for the Enterprise or TVET Institution’s training life cycle, you might be able to sell the project on that basis.

What is the Best Way to Approach KM?

• Start with smaller projects in order to have more control over the outcome, and less failure. Getting funding for a series of smaller projects is more feasible than getting funding for an Enterprise or TVET Institution wide initiative, especially if the benefits are hard to quantify.

• Define the achievement value of the KM initiative and establish at the outset metrics that will prove the success of the KM initiative
• Do not divorce the KM programme from a business goal. While sharing best practices is a commendable idea, there must be an underlying business reason to do so. Without a solid business case, KM will be an exercise having no useful result.

What Are the Challenges of KM?

Getting Enterprise or TVET Institution’s Staff on Board

The major problems that occur in KM usually result because the Enterprise or the TVET Institution ignore the people and cultural issues. In an environment where an individual’s knowledge is valued and rewarded, establishing a culture that recognizes implied knowledge which is not directly expressed and encourages employees to share it is critical. The need to sell the KM concept to employees shouldn't be underestimated. In many cases employees are being asked to deliver their knowledge and experience to prove that they are valuable as individuals.

KM Requires Ongoing Maintenance

As with many physical assets, the value of knowledge can erode over time. Since knowledge can get loosing freshness stale fast, the content in a KM program should be constantly validated, amended and updated. Relevance of knowledge at any given time changes as do the skills of employees and therefore, there is no endpoint to a KM programme.

Dealing with a Great Flood of Data

Enterprises & TVET Institutions deal with a great flood of data and KM programme has to identify and disseminate knowledge from a sea of information on the basis that quantity rarely equals quality.

How Can KM Project Be Supported?

In order to support a KM project and get the Enterprise or TVET Institution’s staff use the systems and processes designed to facilitate KM, we should:

• Pilot the project among Enterprise or TVET Institution’s staff who have the most to gain and would be the most open to sharing their knowledge. This will vary depending on the TVET Centre / CoC.

• Involve a selected group of influencers & employees in the pilot who are well-respected by their peers and whose opinions are highly regarded in the Enterprise or the TVET Institution with a view to convince others of the merits of KM.
• Transform the knowledge collection and make easily accessible and suitable for dissemination into everyday jobs of the Enterprise or the TVET Institution.
• Link KM directly to job performance, create a safe climate for the Enterprise or TVET Institution’s staff to share ideas and recognize people who contribute to the KM effort.
• Many Enterprises & TVET Institutions create incentive programmes to motivate employees to share their knowledge. This can work, but the danger with incentive programs is that employees will participate solely to earn incentives, without regard to the quality or relevance of the information they contribute. Ideally, participation in KM should be its own reward. If KM doesn't make life easier for employees, it will fail.

What is the Most Important for Enterprises & TVET Institutions to Do in Knowledge Management?

The most important KM issues for Enterprises & TVET Institutions are:

Focus on the cooperative interaction of data and processing capacity of information technologies IT and the creative and innovative capacity of the human members. Advanced information technologies can increasingly accomplish 'programmable' tasks traditionally done by humans.

If a procedure can be programmed, it can be delegated to Information Technology in one form or another. The information and control systems in an Enterprise or TVET Institution are intended to achieve the 'programming' for optimization and efficiency. However, checks and balances need to be built into the Enterprise or the TVET Institution’s learning, education and training processes to ensure that such 'programmes' are continuously updated in alignment with the dynamically changing external environment.

The Enterprise or TVET Institution’s learning, education and training processes need to implement what is called 'loose tight' Knowledge Management Systems. The tightening is in the reinforcing linkage between the archived Enterprise or TVET Institution’s 'best practices' and the actions taken by Enterprise or the TVET Institution’s members based on that information. The loosening is in the reverse separating linkage between actions taken by Enterprise or TVET Institution’s members that serve as a continuous check for renewing the archived 'best practices.' This is where human creativity and innovation comes into the picture.

Eng. Moustafa Mohamed Moustafa Wahba
Competency Assurance & TVET Consultant
Contact:
Egypt
Mobile: 0020101469376
Res. 002/03/5831540, 5854769 (Alexandria) - 002/046/4063005 (Marina)
E-mail address: mmm_wahba@hotmail.com