Dialog: Running Light One-On-One
Bob Hiebeler is managing director of KnowledgeSpace for Arthur Andersen’s Knowledge Enterprises Group and author of the best-selling book, “Best Practices: Building Your Business with Customer-Focused Solutions.”
RL: As a thought leader on knowledge management, please tell me a bit about your approach to knowledge management at Arthur Andersen.
BH: Our goal is to share lots of information both internally via our knowledge-based Intranet, and externally with our clients through a knowledge-based subscription service associated with our global best practices called KnowledgeSpace.
RL: Tell me a bit more about KnowledgeSpace. What is its purpose and goal? What have you learned from developing KnowledgeSpace?
BH: KnowledgeSpace provides a platform for clients tap into our experts and their knowledge on various topics. KnowledgeSpace has three parts: news, which focuses on news and hot issues facing our industry; a resources area that is like an electronic encyclopedia of content and diagnostic tools; and a connections area that allows clients to participate in dialogues in a chat room setting. Essentially, we have created an any-time, any-where virtual connection with Arthur Anderson that happens on the client’s desktop without the physical presence of a consultant. In our best practices work, we learned that the true value of out work derives from the human network of people, not just the content that comes out of that network. KnowledgeSpace is one way we connect our clients with our human network.
RL: How would you characterize the knowledge management industry today?
BH: I don’t typically think of it as a knowledge management industry. I think of it more as an emerging business discipline. KM is something that every business needs to tackle as a new management discipline, much like human resources is a management discipline.
RL: Why is knowledge management important now?
BH: Knowledge management is important now because there have been some great breakthroughs in the Internet and other technology that make knowledge sharing much more efficient and effective. However, the primary motivation for KM now is companies need to better serve their customers. As part of their competitive activity, companies are using new technologies to deliver better value and service to their customers. In the next five to ten years many e-commerce and e-business solutions will emerge that will create whole new ways to serve the customer and new behaviors for doing business.
RL: It seems to me that knowledge management, at least as I have watched it evolve over the last five years, has focused primarily on improving employee capability. You seem to be suggesting that KM is focused on serving the customer.
BH: Your question raises an important issue. There are different domains of knowledge sharing such as improving customer satisfaction, improving employee capability, innovation for new products, supporting supplier relationships, sharing best practices among operating units When we talk to our clients about knowledge management, we ask the question: Knowledge to do what? This gets people focused on what they are trying to accomplish. In the best case, knowledge sharing is only an enabler for achieving one of those goals.
RL: What has made knowledge management a success in the organizations with which you have worked? What are the critical success factors in knowledge management?
BH: There are several drivers of success in KM including leadership, process, technology and people. While technology is a hurdle at this point, it may actually be one of the easiest of the four factors to tackle. In addition to technology, you have to have a well-defined process for harvesting what people know and putting it where it can be shared across the organization. You have to have leaders who are passionate about knowledge management. People’s behaviors need to change to make knowledge sharing a highly regarded value in the organization that is rewarded and recognized as much as sales generation, for example. Also, knowledge sharing must be considered real work and time to share must be explicitly built into processes and methodologies.
RL: There has been a lot of discussion around the measurement of the success of knowledge management. Is ROI an appropriate measure?
BH: I don’t think that knowledge management should be measured with ROI. That is like using ROI to measure the value of telephones or fax machines or other elements of technology. These things are a requirement of doing business today. The measurement needs to be driven by the goal that knowledge management is enabling, not knowledge management itself. If you set out to improve customer satisfaction through knowledge sharing, you need to measure your performance in customer satisfaction.
RL: As industries evolve, standards tend to emerge. Are there such things as knowledge management standards, either on the technology side or the business processes side?
BH: In knowledge management the standards will primarily evolve around language: What do we call things? How do we organize knowledge? We have decided to use the language of business process as common tongue. We don’t really care what industry a best practice comes from, we want to capture it and describe that best practice in terms of business process. At a fundamental level all businesses in the world in all countries in all industries do the very same things. They have customers; they have employees; they have suppliers; they have plants and properties; and they execute processes involving those entities and the relationships among them. Mixing and matching industry practices is a great source of creativity in finding solutions to business problems. For example, we once had a manager call us from Australia asking for the best practices of chicken hatcheries. We replied that we didn’t organize our information that way, and then asked about the business process the manager was trying to improve. The manager said our client was having a problem with consistency of quality and delivery from growers on a chicken hatchery. That sounded like a supply chain process issue and we used best practices in supply chain from the high tech electronics industry to help the chicken hatchery client in Australia.
RL: Where do you see the KM discipline five years from now? Twenty-five years from now?
BH: In the next five years you will be able to separate the hype about knowledge management from the true performance. The best performing products, software and services, will win out. Fast forwarding twenty-five years, it is hard to imagine the powerful technologies and processes that companies will be using to better serve their customers. But, the quality of life will be higher than it is today as a result of the competition for the opportunities to make our lives better.