All entries for Tuesday 20 April 2010

Leadership impact on KM

Below graph is what we summarised about our discussion today. It's quite intriguing that everything we have learned during the course is still closely connected with each other. All the knowledge is consistant and integratable, and this is the way knowledge should be -- absorbed and transformed into real case application. Just like Paul reminded us today that we should review ourselves if we're practicing what we've been talking about in the real life. Are we the real practitioner, or we're just another group of people whose words speak louder than actions?

In our group, we categorised Leadership into 3 different impacts/results under 3 different leadership styles: Deming, Jack Welch, and Hitler. On the one hand, Deming's obviously is the soft democratic way that inspires individual to share knowledge. It helps the organisation to improve its performance by leading effectively, such as coaching individuals or creating systematic thinking, breaking down the communication barriers within the company and also helping the company to transform into a learning organisation. On the other hand, Hitler's constraints people's thinking and free will. Therefore, it limits the company or individual to perform or improve. Yet, Jack's talks about something more realistic -- profit, promotion, and bonus, which is very debatable.

* who do you decide who to promote if people share ideas but not necessary be the ones who're practicing them?

* as a leader, how to you set the rules or measure of knowledge sharing?

* how do you avoid, as a leader, that people start to compete with each other over personal benefit?

Overall, I personally think promotion and bonuses might be useful sometimes, but I don't agree with them most of the time. It's because it manipulates people and brings out the evil and selfish side of a human being. The impact could become negative. Just like what I experienced before when I was working that being a sales, our base salary was low but bonus system is very active. People would kill each other, back-stabbing, setting-up, lie, sleep with clients to get what they want. Once they succeed, they become greedy, and started wanting everything and getting more serious after time, and finally was manipulated by money itself. After all, hoping people to share knowledge even under conflicting of interests is a very naive idea to me.

Personally I love sharing, and I want to work in an environment that people are all working like a big happy family. But it is difficult to recognise who to promote when people share great ideas. For example, Lisa shares an idea last week about a product design, it was good, but not good enough. Because of her idea, I brainstorm and come up with another design, which turns out to be better and accepted by the company to start producing it. If there wasn't Lisa, my idea might not come out for a while or never will. Thanks to her, that my idea was approved and recognised. In this case, should the leader promote me or promote Lisa? Lisa might be upset coz my idea was just an advanced version of hers. Also she might spend a lot more time constructing the original thought than I do. Am I just letting her hard work die in vain?

Therefore, as a leader, it is crucial how to manage the knowledge. Leaders have great impacts on knowledge management as well as employee behaviors. Leadership on the other hand could also have possitive or negative impact on people. Effectively leadership could ultimately enhance the capability on creating innovative ideas that can help improve business performance as well.

: 20 Apr 2010 01:20 |  Tags: Kbam |  Comments (9) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

benefits of KBAM

when it says knowledge based asset management, then you know the foundation of the management is to have knowledge, to share, to create, and to organise it. There's almost no doubt that knowledge management or asset management is useful for a company to innovate and improve their operations and performances.

Today at the seminar we discussed a lot about the benefits of Knowledge management. Below is a summary of our discussion earlier. But the most interesting part that I realised during our brainstorming and discussion was that " Knowledge is Power ", and " Sharing is Caring ". :-)

When people have knowledge, they possess the power to be able to change the world, for better or for worse. If we use the knowledge possitively, such as education, it can bring the world closer and more innovative, even creating a world that we've never dreamt of. That having the knowledge would make our lives full of possibilities and also that everything would be possible. The energy of the knowledge that brings to the world is enormous and the impact is unpredictable.

However, to think back in the real life when I used to work, though sharing knowledge is such a possitive thing to do for a company to improve not only the products innovation, services, customer/supplier relationships, employee engagement, productivity, costs, product lead-time etc, it is an unselfish thing and probably nobel thing to do. (personal perspective) Afterall, in the real/competitive world, if sharing knowledge doesn't bring you any benefit, or even cause you negative influence that contradict to your benefit, then most likely the knowledge will not be shared that easily. So how to manage the Knowledge and to encourage of sharing it is truly an art. It involves people, that you have to engage people and make them believe that the environment is safe for sharing and sharing will bring common/mutual benefits to all.

I used to be in Sales, and whoever works in Sales before may feel the same about what I'm talking about. Imagine you're sellign the products for the company, but you need attract your own customers. Also your salary and bonus depends on the sales you have made. One day, there's a contact that you sales have to win over, how are you or are you willing to share the information you have towards this case/customer? Especially if the other sales don't know much about the product or how the business process work, will you share your knowledge about the operation or business with him/her, or you rather keep it yourself so that you can make sure you will win the case and make the deal? In this case, knowledge sharing is limited.

Therefore, in order to achieve successful knowledge sharing, creating the safe environment is very important for a company as well as considering the influence that each individual can cause.

On the other hand, possitive thinking is mandatory for business as well as for life. If people are competing with each other in a negative way, this is not helping the company nor the world to improve itself. The whole idea of knowledge sharing should teach us that we're all living in the same world. We're doing business, we're competitors, but we should all focus on making possitive influence to the business and the world. If you have a competitor, why not share your knowledge with them and make them your aligns? Applying the same logic, when you feel like you have a reason to keep silent about the knowledge that you know against your colleagues in the companies, why not sharing with them generously and come up with a better idea and make the best use out of the ideas you have. One person may not be influencial, but when 2 or more people gather together, their knowledge and what they share could be something that can change a world. That's why it helps improving the decision making and team coordination as well as improving the business performance and relationships with every part of the people that involves in an organisation.

: 20 Apr 2010 00:29 |  Tags: Kbam |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem