KCoNNect 2017 Q&A
1. KM PRACTICE & EXAMPLES
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What are the successful initiatives or activities of KM at work?
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Does the Malaysian public sector has efficient knowledge creation initiatives?
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2. CHANGE & INNOVATION
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3. PEOPLE & LEADERSHIP
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4. TEAM COLLABORATION
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What are the approaches to overcome working in-silo and building teamwork culture?
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How does KM help to coordinate different departments into achieving organisational objectives?
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5. SOCIAL MEDIA & DIVERSITY
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1. KM PRACTICES & EXAMPLES
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What are the successful initiatives or activities of KM at work?
There are many different types of knowledge sharing activities, KM processes and tools that organisations can use to help address a KM challenge. CoP is one of them. You can also have other activities to bring people together virtually or face-to-face to share knowledge. Some other activities include:
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structuring knowledge via taxonomy;
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understanding network and connection between people through social network;
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mentorship;
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training programmes;
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lesson learned and best practices; or
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having employee’s yellow pages in the form of expert locator.
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KM activities can take a lot of different forms depending on what you are trying to achieve. There is no magic formula for KM. That is why we have been struggling for the past 20 years because every organisation has different needs and a different culture. We must use different methods to address different needs. For example, a CoP may work very well for one organisation but not in another. This may be due to cultural issues or the way the organisations are structured. You must see what is your culture and what is your objective, and based on that, identify KM tools and practices that you can tap into that somehow best meets your KM needs.
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In JKR, there are a few activities of KM at work:
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There is a knowledge repository in the form of Wiki. This knowledge can be accessible to everyone in the organisation.
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For transfer of tacit knowledge, there is JCoP which is a virtual CoP. JKR employees can post questions pertaining to technical matters and about their work. Moderators are appointed to answer these questions. This is particularly useful for the younger generation i.e. generation Y. Sometimes the younger generation are too shy to approach their seniors but when done virtually, they are able to converse with relative ease. There are a few CoP domains in JKR, including project management, stakeholder’s management, asset and facilities management. All these domains of knowledge are topics of discussion in the platform of JCoP.
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Project lessons learned are also being compiled. These knowledge or learnings from projects implemented are disseminated to others. By doing so, the other project team members get to know what are the problems faced, what are the things to avoid and how they can do better in their project
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What are the knowledge sharing and learning that have taken place in the BOS initiatives? Have these initiatives been captured, disseminated and utilised?
The National Blue Ocean Summit chaired by the Prime Minister of Malaysia or the Chief Secretary to the Government is conducted every month. Ministries and Agencies share their initiatives progress during the summit.
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The National Blue Ocean Strategy Unit in the Ministry of Finance is responsible for monitoring all progress and disseminating information throughout Malaysia. Recently, Malaysia shared the success on NBOS initiatives in the International Forum on Blue Ocean Strategy.
Apart from that, INTAN is offering courses on Blue Ocean Strategy (basic), and NBOS Masterclass where participants are exposed to all the initiatives. Techniques on using BOS are also being discussed.
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Does the Malaysian public sector has efficient knowledge creation initiatives?
Every year, the Kumpulan Inovatif dan Kreatif (KIK) from the Ministries and Agencies produce many new ideas and initiatives to enhance the service delivery of the government. Some of these initiatives have been commercialised. [BACK TO TOP]
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How does the government capture the public-sector knowledge as innovation like BOS are from external expertise and not from the public sector?
BOS is just a tool that was introduced by Prof Chan Kim. There are many other management tools such as design thinking, Ishikawa, McKinsey 7s, etc. that were frequently used in many brainstorming sessions. Even though the techniques were introduced by others, all ideas and initiatives in the public sector were initiated by our own resources. [BACK TO TOP]
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Are there any organisations/GLCs which have successfully improved their service delivery using internal resources/KM practitioners without the engagement of external parties?
Facts and figures are not available to this question. Anyhow, most organisations do not name their initiatives by the name of KM. [BACK TO TOP]
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Why does knowledge management fail?
Most of the time organisations engage in KM because they think it is good for the organisation, but there is no clear objective as to why they want to implement KM. We should not do KM because it is good. We should do KM to support some existing processes and measure the value KM brings to the organisation. A lot of organisations do not have a clear way to measure this value. After a while, they are not able to justify how KM can help to support the organisation.
A clear alignment between the KM strategy and the business strategy is imperative. If the linkage is clear and if you have the right measurement, for example, KM helps to reduce 30% of the engineers’ time spent in searching for information, then you have some value to show in KM. KM should not be seen as an additional task. Else, it will not last very long. You need to embed KM activities into the way you do your work.
One way to integrate this is by looking at what type of knowledge can support different type of activities, what do we know and what is our critical knowledge. You cannot manage all your knowledge to start with. First, identify what is critical by doing a knowledge audit. Critical knowledge is knowledge that has value and which is at risk. Focus first on this, reduce your risk, and then expand to other type of knowledge.
To reiterate, you cannot just do KM without a clear strategy and clear matrix. It should not fail if it is designed that way but unfortunately for many organisations, it is not. At times, KM is implemented because a leader may be excited about KM. But leaders change and the next leader may not believe in KM, and then KM disappears. This should not happen if KM is embedded into the core processes because whoever is the leader does not matter since KM is the way the organisation works.
In the Malaysia context, leadership is a critical element in KM. Unless the top management has the buyin, meaning they understand KM, they push and drive KM, else KM will not succeed. That is because you will always have that question from the leaders on what is KM and what has it done for the organisation. In short, you will need the right KM strategy, and the right strategy must include the right people. In Malaysia, you cannot do without the right people. [BACK TO TOP]
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2. CHANGE & INNOVATION
How do you overcome the attitude of people who are in their comfort zone and are reluctant to change?
With any change, whenever people are asked to do something differently, they need a good reason: what’s in it for me?. You will need to make your value proposition very clear. If people believe they will benefit from sharing knowledge, either directly or indirectly, they are more likely to share.
You may need to give them incentives and recognition to do so. For example, best knowledge sharer of the week, of the year or of the unit. Remember that different people are motivated by different things; some by money, others by status, some by knowledge, others by freedom etc. A good reward system will recognise this.
Additionally, you can also gamify processes. Gamification is a way to engage people by making some of the activities more fun. It is a way to get people to change slowly and get them out of their comfort zone. Gamified processes could include getting people to compete against each other or to reach different levels of excellence. Generally, people, particularly generation Y, are quite playful and they like these challenges of accumulating points or accumulating things. [BACK TO TOP]
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What are the best approaches to implement innovation at the workplace? In certain cases of adapting innovation to deliver best service, the top management (especially led by baby boomers) disagree with the transformation or innovation.
Innovation has become the way to compete and the only way for organisations to transform themselves to survive in this fast changing digital and global world. Steve Jobs said “Innovation differentiates the leaders from the followers”. At this stage, organisations do not have a choice. They need to adapt themselves through different types of innovation or they will become rapidly obsolete. Competition is no longer only domestic but it is becoming more international with the AEC (ASEAN). [BACK TO TOP]
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Organisations often prefer to continue using their “square wheel” rather than the “innovated round wheel” due to time and budget constraints. Please share with us more insights on how to “open up” these organisations into the journey of innovation.
Innovation is no longer the sole responsibility of R&D or Marketing, it is now the responsibility of everyone in the organisation. A clear innovation strategy, a governance model, well defined innovation processes, strong leadership buy-in, recognition systems, support from innovation champions, will help evolve the culture of an organisation towards an innovation culture. [BACK TO TOP]
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Statistics show that 81% of employees are not engaged in KM. Are there any actions taken or will be taken to reduce the low engagement? Many civil servants have attended courses, seminars etc. about KM and it is a waste since the government has spent millions of ringgit on training these civil servants.
The study by Gallup in 2013 is not about KM and government agencies alone. It is about the total workforce including the private sector. The State of Workplace Report concluded that only 13% of the employees were engaged in their work as compared to 63% not engaged and the other 24% actively disengaged. In Malaysia, only 11% were said to be engaged, 81% not engaged and 8% actively disengaged. The report states that only 5%-20% of what is learned is transferred and applied at the workplace in a way that improves performance (worldwide).
As a leader and KM practitioner in our organisation, we must take the results of the report seriously. We must plan on how to improve our daily work and make sure that our employees become more engaged. Initiatives such as knowledge sharing sessions, CoP, mentoring etc. can be initiated at the respective agencies/companies. [BACK TO TOP]
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3. PEOPLE & LEADERSHIP
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How do we deal with a leader who wants to please his/her political bosses’?
There is no way you can disregard politicians and political issues because they are our policy makers. Work politics, whether it is in the private or public sectors, are inevitable:
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Some people have more power than others, either through hierarchy or some other basis of influence.
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Decisions at work are impacted by both work-related goals and personal factors, so there is further scope for goal conflict.
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People and teams within organisations often have to compete for limited resources; this can lead to conflict where teams compete to satisfy their needs and objectives, even when this is against the greater good. [BACK TO TOP]
It is observed that every time there is cabinet reshuffle in Malaysia, there will definitely be a change in leadership for the country. Therefore, the agenda being set earlier will change too and indirectly will incur additional cost to invest in the new agenda set by the new leadership. Please comment.
From the KM perspective, despite a change in leadership, the working organisation and knowledge workers are still the same. The information and knowledge in the organisation is still the same. The vision and objectives of KM shall remain, only the approach may be different. [BACK TO TOP]
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4. TEAM COLLABORATION
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What are the approaches to overcome working in-silo and building teamwork culture?
Both leaders and individual should play their roles in building teamwork culture. Leaders in an organisation must come together to work with everyone to make sure that all work as a team. The most important part in working as a team is yourself. What should you do, and what should you do with others. If you openly want to share your knowledge, then you must definitely do it as a team.
In INTAN, there are a lot of programmes that require teamwork. For example, when a research needs to be conducted, a team of relevant members will be formed and knowledge will be shared among members.
Collaboration and team learning should constantly be promoted by organisations. Stimulate employees to think about, identify and solving common problems as a team. Design work that use groups to access different modes of thinking so that groups learn and work together. Develop CoPs so that people with similar interests and problems across units can learn from each other. Find and develop as many opportunities as possible for people from different units to meet, share, exchange and socialise so they better understand each other’s needs, limitations or goals. Based on this, new knowledge is continually generated and shared across the organisation. [BACK TO TOP]
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How does KM help to coordinate different departments into achieving organisational objectives?
To start with, the KM strategy should be defined to support and coordinate different departments, and to also support the overall business strategy of the company. Each department has a different focus and set of goals, but at the end of the day, everyone is on the same team. No department is truly independent; the company succeeds when each business unit works closely together.
The experiential knowledge captured and shared should benefit various departments. You can look at Porter’s Value Chain and see how KM can support and benefit each aspect of it. The bottom line is about how KM can help individuals do their job better, faster, cheaper and innovate. [BACK TO TOP]
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5. SOCIAL MEDIA & DIVERSITY
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Apakah akan berlaku? Adakah kredibiliti pentadbiran tertinggi atau pengurusan tertinggi ada masa depan yang cerah atau dapat distabilkan sepanjang masa sebab bila kita hadir sesuatu mesyuarat, dalam mesyuarat itu ada perkara-perkara yang sulit. Tetapi belum lagi habis mesyuarat, maklumat itu sudah bocor. Apakah kita perlu buat? Ini disebabkan oleh media sosial.
This is a dilemma of the public service. As an individual and as a government servant, we have taken our oath and it is our duty to follow it through. Unfortunately, many individuals want to be the champion by being the first to share information even though the information may not be very accurate.
One easy way to deal with this is not to allow people to bring in their smart phones during meetings. This has been done in various agencies particularly for internal meetings. However, it is not required for general meetings that is non-confidential. Again, it is the responsibility of individuals to ensure that confidential information is not released in a pre-matured manner. [BACK TO TOP]
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In an organisation, there are different generations, from the baby boomers to generation Y. It is a challenge because the younger generation are more innovative. From your experience, how can we bring both these generations to common ground so that the organisation can benefit and move forward?
Diversity is very important in an organisation because you can have diverse knowledge from both the experience and junior staff. The younger generation want things to happen fast. They like to search for information and have a limited attention span, while the older generation are more specific and detail. At times, the younger generation might have new ideas of which the more senior staff may not have. The younger generation wants to be heard by their superiors so they can feel that they are part of the organisation.
The combination of both these generations have a lot of value. You will need to be able to develop social ties between them so that they trust each other and understand each other’s differences. You may create activities and events that help them to work together and to leverage on these differences. CoP can be used as a platform for the young generation to learn from the senior staff. If you can create this kind of culture, it will break the barrier and help take this to the next level. [BACK TO TOP]