 Once a month
I get together for breakfast with the Knowledge Directors from several
organizations in the Toronto area. We have wonderful, far-ranging
discussions about knowledge management, social networking and business
innovation. One of the topics that came up last month was the various risks of having knowledge (theft,
destruction, misuse, violation of customer confidentiality, violation
of intellectual property laws etc.). That got me thinking about the
opposite risk, the risk that "you don't know what you don't know": The
risk, and cost, of not knowing.
What are the consequences of operating a business with incomplete and
imperfect information?
- Making the wrong decision -- about launching a new product,
about buying something or not buying it, about who to hire or fire or
promote, about how to price or market your product.
- Incurring unnecessary litigation
- Losing a customer or a sales contract
- Entering into a bad deal, or missing out on a great one
If it were possible to quantify precisely this 'cost of not knowing'
(it isn't), there would be some break-even point (see chart above) at
which the cost of not knowing equals the cost (and risk) of having
knowledge, and that would determine exacly how much knowledge your
company should acquire, make available, and deploy. Although it's
impossible to be this precise, many organizations would benefit from
being a little more disciplined in assessing the costs, and risks, of
having vs. not having knowledge, so they at least get it approximately right.
Once the right quantum of knowledge has been decided on, and processes
are in place to acquire and deploy it, knowledge managers need to
monitor its quality, value, timeliness and use. This task of content
management goes on at two levels: at the organizational level, for
centrally managed content, and at the individual 'desktop' level, for
personally managed content. Content management entails the following measurements, assessments and
interventions:
Content
Problem
|
Content
Management Intervention
|
Content
is not useful
|
Enhance or scrap
|
Content
is underutilized
|
Promote, publicize,
push out, educate, and simplify access
|
Content
is too expensive to buy
|
Creative
re-negotiation of purchase price
|
Content
is too expensive to maintain
|
Streamline or
automate maintenance process
|
People
aren't sharing their content
|
Reward programs;
Executive reinforcement of the need to share; Automatic harvesting
|
Content
is inaccurate
|
Apply QA processes
|
Content
is stale or hard to find
|
Content
rationalization program (see below)
|
Content
is insecure
|
Technology security
review; Appropriate use and knowledge sharing agreements (see below)
|
Content
is being misused
|
Add caveats,
contacts, context, and editing
|
Content
is badly organized
|
Simplify,
streamline, flatten, personalize so users get what they want 'their way'
|
Under the guidance of Colin McFarlane, Ernst & Young recently
pioneered a Content Rationalization program to solve the problems of
stale, obsolete, and hard to find information. By looking at each
database and Intranet website, and talking to users, his team
categorized all content into four quadrants of this 2x2 chart:
Then, systematically, the low-use, low-value content was eliminated,
the low-use, high-value content was promoted and publicized, and the
high-use, low-value content was consolidated and reworked to increase
its value. At the end of this elegant exercise, most of the
(largely unused) centrally-managed content has been eliminated, and what remains is all
in the upper right quadrant.
E&Y has also developed two documents, which every employee must
sign, that help ensure the security, effective use and confidentiality
of the firm's content. The Appropriate Use Policy document outlines
what is considered proper use of the firm's knowledge and technology
tools, with a focus on security and integrity. The Knowledge Sharing
Agreement categorizes all firm knowledge into five types, ranging from
strictly confidential (no sharing allowed) to open-use (unlimited
sharing inside and outside the firm), with specific examples of each.
It also carefully explains the trade-off between protecting
client-confidential information and the obligation to share knowledge
as broadly as possible.
But back to the issue of not knowing.
In the breakfasts of our Toronto Knowledge Directors group, we've
concluded that the break-even point in the top chart above, the point
at which the cost and risk of not
knowing drops below the cost and risk of acquiring and managing a lot of content, falls at different
points in different organizations, and that this break-even point is a
function of both the organization's industry and its knowledge culture.
As an example, half of our members had decided not to deploy instant messaging
technologies in their organizations, because the perceived risk of
misuse, hacking or leaks of sensitive information was too high. But for
the other half of our members, the critical need for constant
consultation within the organization, the need to get objective second
opinions on critical judgements made in every assignment, resulted in
the decision to deploy IM, because the risks of misuse, hacking and
leaks were deemed lower than the risks of insufficient consultation. In
these companies, the risk of not
knowing was recognized as being high, moving the break-even
point to the right and justifying both the cost of deploying IM and the
cost of ensuring its security.
As with everything else in KM, there's no one right answer, no 'best
practice' that applies to everyone.
Our group would be interested in knowing how other organizations assess
the costs and risks of not knowing, how they rationalize content, and
how they assess and address the content problems in the table above. If
you're aware of how your organization handles these issues, we'd love
to have a conversation with you.
And I wonder whether governments have formal processes for assessing
the costs and risks of not knowing. I'm sure some weapons inspectors
would be curious about that, too.
|
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
