Growth and cost optimization have been long-lasting vital drivers for business and factors such as complexity of governance, changing technology, loss of knowledge, high switching costs, not using best practices, and inadequate skills proficiency add to the complexity of management. Responding to ever-shifting business demands while being focused on meeting customer needs and achieving market competitiveness keeps us alert and hungry for new operational paradigms such as TQM, Lean, Six Sigma, Design Thinking, etc.
In all this “busyness” it helps to keep some ground rules unchanged. Here I take a cue from 5th-century philosopher Parmenides (even though it contradicts the modern and Heraclitus’s belief that everything in this universe is in a state of flux) who concluded through deductive reasoning that “fundamental change is impossible”. Referring to what Edward Deming had said (In his book “The New Economics”, pg 10), “Absence of defects does not necessarily build a business, does not keep the plant open. Something more is required.” Having a strong foundation makes it easier to adopt “something more” (new initiatives). The foundational practices allow easy adoption of new initiatives and also facilitate understanding of the systemic cause-effect relationships as explained by Peter Senge (The Fifth Discipline, pg. 101) “…Unfortunately, the more vigorously you push the familiar levers, the more strongly the balancing process resists, and the more futile your efforts become.”
In this referred paper (Defining, Instituting and Sustaining Knowledge Management Program, pg. 407) published in 2007, the focus was on defining, institutionalizing, and sustaining a knowledge management program to manage domain knowledge and its integration with other organizational initiatives. The principles discussed here still form part of the organization’s foundation – I will be surprised to see these principles changing fundamentally shortly. They take on an even more significant position in light of the Digital Strategies and Transformations that organizations wish to create. The Knowledge Management framework illustrated in the paper addresses all the critical elements of KM – People, Process & Technology. This framework also attempts to balance focus on:
- Explicit and Tacit knowledge;
- Measuring and Managing existing knowledge;
- Creating, disseminating and building new progressive knowledge;
- Continuous organizational involvement; and
- Linking various frameworks seamlessly to deliver maximum value from multiple initiatives.
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