I found last Thursday night’s Connect meeting really thought-provoking. Our three speakers highlighted the different business drivers for knowledge and information management in their organisations, and explained how these drivers have influenced their priorities and plans.
Juliet Humphries of Bird & Bird described how a complex, knowledge-intensive international organisation focuses on ensuring that their staff are well-informed, and develop strong personal reputations in their marketplace.
KIM is far from a recent phenomenon: the legal sector was a very early adopter of KIM with one of the main drivers being a change in company law which, until 1967, restricted partnerships to a maximum of 20 partners. As partnerships increased in size the need to formalise processes which encourage knowledge sharing (‘know-how’) were recognised.
As with any commercial business, profitability and efficiency are key drivers and effective KIM is critical to helping the business win clients and maintain successful relationships.
As part of the preparation for the event TFPL asked delegates which functional area sponsors KIM within their organisation; Juliet explained how KIM in the legal sector had evolved from a standalone function (the know how team), through linkages with law firms’ library and information services and business development, to alignment with learning and development.
Juliet’s role is very new, she has been in post for only five months. Her formal job title is Head of Knowledge & Learning but given the remit of her team, who act as facilitators and integrators, as well as service providers, she believes that a more accurate description could be the Conscience of Knowledge & Learning.
Stuart Jackson, Global Knowledge & Information Manager at Actis explained that he joined the company 12 months ago as a strategic hire as part of the company’s business plan.
His remit is ‘everything associated with knowledge and information’ although the current focus is on collaboration, the effective use and retrieval of knowledge, and developing a culture of knowledge sharing and communication. Actis is a private equity firm for emerging markets and the key business drivers are their structure and culture and the importance of working across borders.
They work to a global business plan and have, in the last year, created global sector teams which are industry focused and work across countries. The creation of these teams provided an ideal springboard for KIM and Stuart now reports in to the Head of Global Sector Teams.
Stuart’s recommendations for a successful KIM programme include building strong relationships with your users, being proactive, staying enthused, recognising that implementation takes time, gaining the right sponsor, agreeing a business plan and budget (and managing against this) and making friends with IT.
Karen McFarlane, Deputy Director for Corporate Knowledge & Information, GCHQ, provided a fascinating description of the importance of knowledge and information to one of the UK government’s three main intelligence agencies.
GCHQ is responsible for Sigint (signals intelligence) and information assurance. Their remit is to secure the information advantage for the nation by producing the intelligence and guarding the information: GCHQ is essentially ‘an information factory’.
The large KIM team are multi-disciplined knowledge workers, working with massive and complex IT systems and with close relationships with their suppliers and partners.
Key drivers here are:
- the need for operational excellence based on good practice
- saving time and costs through re-using information and replicating best practice
- effective management of information risk
- improving performance through knowledge sharing and collaboration
- achieving more with less through ready access to knowledge and expertise
- stimulating innovation through collaborative working.
Successful knowledge and information management is achieved through an integrated corporate knowledge and information service (all KIM issues under one umbrella); being part of GCHQ’s senior leadership community; partnering actively with the business (including seconding KIM experts to areas where they can deliver value) and, maintaining a network of KIM champions (Knowledge Sharing Stewards).
The GCHQ knowledge sharing strategy was developed 10 years ago and is well-established. It has meant a major shift from a ‘need to know’ to a ‘responsibility to share securely’ culture and this has entailed the recognition that knowledge sharing is now a core competency.
The KIM team has developed a suite of technology and tools which mirror knowledge sharing applications in the outside world (for example, GCWeb and GCspace which is the equivalent of Facebook) but which are totally separate and isolated to GCHQ.
Finally, Karen explained how the GCHQ building (which was opened in 2003) was specifically designed to encourage knowledge sharing through the use of totally open plan workspaces, with breakout areas and a central ‘street’.
Ian Wooler, the Chair of the event, provided a summary of the results of our brief survey of the delegates:
The role description which particularly appealed to the audience was ‘Bringer of delight to clients’ - so thank you to the Connect member who came up with that J.
The formal presentations were followed by round table discussions and questions for the panel. I’d be interested in your views on the following:
The growing use of collaborative software/social computing means that tacit knowledge is becoming explicit knowledge. This presents both opportunities (to capture and retain this knowledge) and risks. How are organisations addressing these challenges?
Our panel had a variety of views, from valuing the opportunity to capture tacit knowledge and plans to introduce web chat and shared workspaces; through concerns about the risks of using social media (and a culture where users are wedded to Outlook) to significant use of social media to generate content which may subsequently be transferred to the organisation’s EDRMS.
TFPL would like to say a big thank you to our panel of speakers and our chair for making the evening such a success.
A full review of this event, including key drivers and the pre-event survey results, is available in the TFPL Connect members' area.
Melanie Goody
Director of Consultancy
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