On October 7th I'll be taking part in a lunch panel discussing the subject of organizational knowledge retention.  The information is just below, but more details and registration info can be found here .  It should be a great discussion - please join us if you can.

Knowledge Retention: How to Keep Knowledge from Walking out the Door

Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2008
Union League Club, 65 W. Jackson Blvd, Chicago 

“In years gone by the physical plant and equipment were the assets to be guarded. Now, increasingly, our most valuable assets walk out the door at five o'clock every day.  Though the workers leave the machines and computers behind when they go home, they take the experience and skill-sets with them. If they don't come back, we're in deep trouble.”  (Source) 

How do organizations identify and deal with capturing and retaining knowledge from employees who are retiring or leaving? Join SLA Illinois and KM Chicago members for an exploration of this important issue and how information professionals can play a relevant role within their organizations.

Lunch Panel

Three KM practitioners will discuss their experiences, followed by a question and discussion session. Bring your questions and comments on this topic!

• Curtis Conley is a knowledge management professional and doctoral candidate at Northern Illinois University.  Curtis’ KM experience in professional service firms has included the implementation of tools and processes targeting knowledge retention, capture, sharing and reuse. His dissertation and research focuses on the factors critical for the success of KM initiatives in organizations.
• Laura Claggett is the manager of Knowledge & Library Services at UOP LLC - a petrochemical technology company headquartered in Des Plaines, IL.  Her team of knowledge management professionals works on knowledge retention of technical experts, mentoring, technology mapping, social network analysis and document management.  Laura has an MLS from the University of Illinois, an MBA from Dominican University, and is an adjunct faculty at Dominican University’s GSLIS.
• Rich Doody is currently a manager within the Knowledge Management group at PepsiCo in Chicago.  He was formerly the Knowledge Management Program Leader at Kraft Foods and has extensive experience in proprietary knowledge retention approaches with scientific and technical knowledge. He holds a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Afternoon Workshop

Facilitator: Kathy Hagen

In order to meet the challenges of today's competitive environment, organizations must be able to access and use the accumulated experience of their employees.  Experienced employees are retiring and changing positions at unprecedented rates.    What is your organization doing to make sure that this wealth of knowledge is not walking out the door?  This interactive half-day session will focus on identifying critical knowledge, defining knowledge risks and developing a knowledge transfer plan.

Before starting her own business, Kathy held positions that combined knowledge management, process improvement, change management, and information technology in the life sciences, manufacturing, and retail industries. Kathy worked with Deloitte as a Senior Manager heading the Intellectual Capital Practice and served as the Assistant Director of Exploratory Development Informatics and Knowledge Management at Pfizer Pharmaceuticals in Groton, Connecticut. Prior to Pfizer, Kathy Hagen was the principal leading the Global Knowledge Management Practice for Health Care at Computer Science Corporation. Kathy serves on the Leadership Team for the Twin Cities Knowledge Management Forum. She teaches Knowledge Transfer at the Minnesota State College and University System and is a guest lecturer at St. Thomas University Graduate School of Business.   For more information, see http://www.klhagen.com/ .     

• RSS Bankruptcy is discussed over at LawyerKM .  This appeals VERY much to me at the moment!
• Steve Dale discusses Identifying Community of Practice Needs
• Andrew Gent on The Four Paradoxes of KM

A quick dissertation study update.  I'm in the midst of refining the last two chapters, reviewing everything and in general, just seeing if anything new jumps out to me about the results.  The one thing I still can't get over is how absurdly long the list of CSFs for KM has grown.

My literature review was fairly extensive and the list of CSFs for KM that I proposed had 46 different factors which were, in other studies on CSFs for KM, determined to be critical for the success of KM.  My gut told me, "46?  Really?  They're all critical?"  So, my thought was that by including them all in my study, the ones that truly were critical would float to the top and there would be a clear mark of demarcation between the critical factors and the nice to have factors.  While this did happen to some extent, it wasn't quite as clear as I had hoped.

On top of this all, I also asked participants to identify any critical factors that were not identified in the study.  In addition to the 46 already identified from the literature, participants suggested an additional 83 factors which they also felt were critical, for a total of 129 CSFs for KM.  Obviously, I think we need to work on clearly defining not just the factors themselves, but what we mean when we say something is critical.  If all 129 factors are critical, then really none of them are.

This may just be an issue with survey research since so much of the context around each of the factors gets lost.  And as has been discussed on the ActKM forum recently, I'm sure that more than a few folks out there may have wanted to respond "it depends" to a lot of the factors presented.  The good news is that this study clearly paves a path for a follow up qualitative study on CSFs for KM - which brings me to some of the original questions I had about the interrelatedness of CSFs for KM.  Also good news (I suppose) is that I'll have plenty to write about in the limitations section of my study.  Hooray!

• 45 minute audio stream discussing the Army's current efforts in Knowledge Management and how it relates Boots on the Ground
• Really interesting article titled: Knowledge management for agricultural innovation: lessons from networking efforts in the Bolivian Agricultural Technology System
• Article discussing KM at IKEA , and how critical knowledge transfer between employees can be for IKEA

• Something that may interest some of my readers, there is a call for chapters for a book titled: Cultural Implications of Knowledge Sharing, Management and Transfer: Identifying Competitive Advantage - the description on the site goes into more depth and it seems to be a very interesting project
• An interesting and quick read titled: The Leaving Employee: Knowledge Management for Surviving and Thriving

• KM Jobs at Knowledge Management Reporter as well as KMPro both display a feed of KM jobs from Indeed
• KM Jobs at ITtoolbox.com – not surprisingly, they’re very IT-centric
• KM4Dev Jobs Center
• KM Job postings on the Boston KM Forum site
• Additionally, many of the other KM Communities often have KM jobs posted on their site that may not be posted elsewhere.  Sign up for their forum or discussion lists - people post positions on those frequently (depending on the community)
• KMtool.net also has a few links to additional (dated) KM job resources, but they also have links to executive search firms that do KM recruitment as well

• Having gatekeepers who are passionate about sharing knowledge is critical for that attitude spread to the rest of those working in the practice area
• Also, having those gatekeepers work closely with passionate KM team members who can propose new concepts or ideas for constant improvement of the PAC methodology is key
• Using the intranet as a vehicle for not just codification, but collaboration and communication as well gives the PACs more than just one dimension
• Having community members set goals for a PAC, in terms of new deliverables or just more opportunities to share knowledge in person/online, can be a huge motivating factor
• The practice of pollinating new concepts and ideas by showing one PAC what another is doing can also be a catalyst for action.  The idea that, "Hey - we should do something like that too!" can produce great results

“The way we talk about knowledge affects what we do about it. Many KM efforts get bogged down because people have a different understanding of KM.”

“Knowledge management is about using information strategically to achieve one's business objectives. Knowledge management is the organizational activity of creating the social environment and technical infrastructure so that knowledge can be accessed, shared and created.”

For me personally I like this definition because I first because interested in KM from the strategic management perspective.  I like it also because it touches on the People-Process-Technology model without necessarily framing it that way, which I think is helpful.  There are a few other KM definitions I’ll use for a quick elevator conversation, but if I’m allowed to speak for a few minutes on the subject to those relatively new to the concept, this definitely is great for framing the discussion. 

What elevator definitions do you have for KM?  Is there a definition or line of thought that you use to cut away at some of the conceptual confusion?  When a vendor tried to sell you their ‘knowledge base’ solution do you just start hearing ‘wakka-wakka-wakka’?

*Carrillo, P. (2004). Managing knowledge: Lessons from the oil and gas sector. Construction Management and Economics, 22, 631-642.
**Logan, R. K. (1997). The fifth language: Learning a living in the computer age. Toronto: Stoddart.