Read more
Informationen zum Autor Carla O'Dell is president of the American Productivity & Quality Center and director of the Center's International Benchmarking Clearinghouse in Houston, Texas. Dr. O'Dell is co-author with C. Jackson Grayson, Jr., of American Business: A Two Minute Warning. Klappentext While companies search the world over to benchmark best practices, vast treasure troves of knowledge and know-how remain hidden right under their noses: in the minds of their own employees, in the often unique structure of their operations, and in the written history of their organizations. Now, acclaimed productivity and quality experts Carla O'Dell and Jack Grayson explain for the first time how applying the ideas of Knowledge Management can help employers identify their own internal best practices and share this intellectual capital throughout their organizations. Knowledge Management (KM) is a conscious strategy of getting the right information to the right people at the right time so they can take action and create value. Basing KM on three major studies of best practices at one hundred companies, the authors demonstrate how managers can utilize a visual process model to actually transfer best practices from one business unit of the organization to another. Rich with case studies, concrete examples, and revealing anecdotes from companies including Texas Instruments, Amoco, Buckman, Chevron, Sequent Computer, the World Bank, and USAA, this valuable guide reveals how knowledge treasure chests can be unlocked to reduce product development cycle time, implement more cost-efficient operations, or create a loyal customer base. Finally, O'Dell and Grayson present three "value propositions" built around customers, products, and operations that could result in staggering payoffs as they did at the companies cited above. No amount of knowledge or insight can keep a company ahead if it is not properly distributed where it's needed. Entirely accessible and immensely readable, If Only We Knew What We Know is a much-needed companion for business leaders everywhere. Chapter One: DEFINITIONS OF KNOWLEDGE AND KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT Knowledge management is really about recognizing that regardless of what business you are in, you are competing based on the knowledge of your employees. -- Cindy Johnson, Director of Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing at Texas Instruments WHAT DO WE MEAN BY "KNOWLEDGE"? The recorded study of learning and knowledge dates back at least to Plato and Aristotle; however, its modern-day exploration is credited to thinkers like Daniel Bell (1973), Peter Drucker (1993), Alvin Toffler (1970, 1980), and the philosopher Michael Polanyi (1958, 1967). Polanyi's work served as the basis for the much-acclaimed knowledge management theories and books by the Japanese organizational learning guru, Ikujiro Nonaka (1991, 1995) -- as of September 1997 appointed Xerox Chair of Knowledge at his alma mater, The Haas School of Business, the University of California at Berkeley. Polyani and Nonaka both point out that knowledge comes in two basic varieties: tacit and explicit, also known as informal/uncodified and formal/codified. Explicit knowledge comes in the form of books and documents, white papers, databases, and policy manuals. The tacit/uncodified variety, in contrast, can be found in the heads of employees, the experience of customers, the memories of past vendors. Tacit knowledge is hard to catalogue, highly experiential, difficult to document in any detail, ephemeral and transitory. Both types of knowledge are important. Some may argue that, in a commercial context, tacit knowledge does not qualify as "knowledge" at all. just as value is defined by the " transfer price" in the context of Seller/buyer interaction, thoughts in our heads are not "knowledge" until they enter the marketplace of ideas via discussion and interaction. "It is the i...
