Zisman on knowledge management

For an audience viewing knowledge management from many perspectives, Michael Zisman attempted unification while presenting that of Lotus/IBM to a keynote audience at KMWorld'99 Conference and Expo in Dallas. Zisman, director of the IBM/Lotus Institute for Knowledge Management, offered definition, value propositions and a context for the technologies driving it. And, he did it with analogies.

Zisman reiterated how a few months back he overheard a conversation among consultants where one said: "Knowledge management, what a crock that is." If that consultant could have only been in the audience--likely his thoughts would have changed.

In refuting the naysay, Zisman presented some credible points. First, a study conducted for the Foundation for the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award, where CEOs ranked improving knowledge management second only to increasing globalization among their priorities. Second, Zisman pointed to competitor Microsoft, who in his eyes once dismissed KM as a new word for groupware, and their increasing interest in knowledge management today. Third, Zisman pointed to the growing difference between book values and market values of companies. While book values stick strictly to accounting numbers, the market values measure what investors feel the company is worth by their stock purchases. What's the difference? Accountants are not considering the value of brand or the value of intellectual property, according to Zisman.

That difference in value, the advances of technology, the threat of the Web getting between "us and our customers" and Y2K are among the drivers of knowledge management. Y2K's role in Zisman's eyes, is pivotal in terms of timing-"a new inflection point." Y2K has driven all large companies to the same point, he said. Years ago companies could adopt technology at their own pace, but this event has brought everyone to the same point. What once was competitive technology now is part of a company's relationship with its employees, said Zisman, who gave the example that "part of my relationship with American Airlines is getting on their Website."

Zisman illustrated the value of tacit knowledge through a lawyer example. In it, a lawyer solves a client's problem in 20 minutes by pulling a passage from a legal reference then billing the client $20,000. The client's complaint receives the response that "you didn't pay for the 20 minutes, you paid for the 20 years of experience that told me where to find that answer."

The point is hard to deny, there is a lot of explicit information out there. But the knowledge--the ability to act and leverage that-is much more valuable.

In addressing explicit and tacit knowledge, Zisman made a clear analogy. An X-ray (representing the explicit) in front of the average person's eyes is of little value. Likewise, the world's best radiologist (representing tacit knowledge) in a room without any X-rays is of little value. However, when the two come together, there is great value.

Following that view, Zisman helped to explain the value of the technologies found on the showfloor at the Dallas Convention Center.

Lotus breaks KM into five technologies. Business intelligence-datawarehousing, OLAP etc.--a great source of explicit information. Collaboration--the groupware, Email and synchronous messaging systems that provide the environment for sharing. Knowledge transfer technologies are those that take explicit information and help make that into knowledge-learning tools such as computer based training systems and distributed learning systems. Query and mapping tools--the way to dig for information: search tools, document management. Finally, expertise systems--expert networks, corporate yellow pages-which can lead a user to the people within the organization that have the knowledge.

While all companies-particularly a 250,000 organization like his own--seem likely to gain by making knowledgeable decisions quickly, Zisman pointed out that tackling all five technologies is rarely needed or even advisable. Companies must focus on their priorities, see what technology is out there that can help them. With that move, a cultural change is also necessary, he said.

For instance, a system that allows consultants to share their tactics via a database. A company can't expect consultants to contribute if their pay scale is still based on billable hours. A change in compensation combined with the technology is the way to go, said Zisman of that example.

Of the five technologies, Zisman spoke most highly of expertise systems. He spoke of a developing Lotus technology that will allow users to blast questions to online users. While some might think that a distraction and fear the thought of being overloaded with requests, Zisman likened it to having a phone. Phone users potentially open themselves up to having every other phone user call them. In reality, that doesn't happen. Likewise, with this type of system, most users are likely to breeze right over it while a handful--the right handful--are likely to answer "I had that problem last week, here is what I did."

In that example, the user is taken "right to the cheese," he said