KBAM working weeks ~~ Learning never ends

There are many other academic theories and aspects I learned. I have used them to complete my KBAM PMA. But in this entry, I'd like to talk about some unacademic aspects.

To be honest, when I was doing some of my previous PMAs, I didn't use mindmap, and I didn't use all the information and materials we have on the MBE website. This time, I read the information and materials carefully. I also read the pma guidlines. I found that there are three main criteria for a PMA which are comprehension, effort and presentation. I found that in the effort part, the guidline mentioned answers should incorporate good, relevant use of actual company examples to illustrate any theoretical points. I applied actual examples in some of my PMAs, but in some of them, I didn't. If I did so, maybe I could get some more marks.

The pma guidline is the basic information we should read at the beginning of this year. But I didn't read it carefully, because I thought it is only the basic thing, and that wouldn't help me by doing PMAs, this experience taught me an important lesson. Some infomation seem to be very clear and pellucid, but if you do not envisage them and treat them carefully, you may make some simple mistakes. People usually forget about the most simple things, people usually ignore some resources they have already had because they think they have already understood and it is not necessary. I really understood the old Chinese experience: when you think you understand all, troubles would come to you soon.

The mindmap I have created is not very complex, it is not like the mindmap on the MBE homepage, but it shows the structure of my work and how I am going to complete it. By creating the mindmap, I found it helped me complete the PMA effeciently, and I know what I should do in each stage. Paul told us to create a mindmap for all the PMAs at the beginning of this year, but I only used it in some of the PMAs. This time, I found the advantages of creating a mindmap when doing the PMAs, I found this could also help me in my future career, my future life and the unacademic aspects in my life. Carrying out a mindmap could be the first thing I should do when I am planning to do something (not only an essay), it helps me to aware myself, this is really important for me because I'm the kind of people who don't know what they really want sometime. By creating the mindmap, I can find out the objectives for doing one particular thing. Furthermore, carrying out a mindmap helps me build the structure of that job, it helps me increase the efficiency. It also helps to remind the necessary components of the job.

Including both academic the unacademic aspects, I can't spend 10 thousands words to show all the things I have learnt in this year here. When I was reviewing the previous entires in my blog and my notebook, I found indeed that creating a blog and writing down what I have learnt is such an useful way for learning new things, especially the unacademic things, because most of the unacademic things are nonrepresentational, they are easy to forget and difficult to conclude. This could be the last entry for my Warwick blog, but in my future life, I will continue write down the things I have learnt everyday. That helps me a lot.

And the academic aspects I have learnt during the KBAM module could also help me to manage the things I have learnt efficiently and creatively.

After the KBMA module week, I took the Management of Change lecture, Dee asked us to create a 1000 words work and write down what we have learnt after the module week. The last sentence of my work is: People could learn things in any situation from any others. I think this point of view is always right.

: 30 May 2010 22:57 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

KBAM PMA

After some readings, I understood some basic ideas about knowledge management and some innovation ways. But there are many aspects and it has to be linked with asset management. The structure would be complex. Therefore, I created a mindmap for my PMA, I have attached it in the PMA document.

I also found an interesting point in Jashapara's book - Knowledge management: an integrated approach. The author mentioned 'Leveraging Knowledge', that chapter is about knowledge management and the learning organisation. I found some useful ideas about how to use and share knowledge in an innovative way, that helped me understand how to apply knowledge management but not only by learning things from previous experiences.

By creating the mindmap, I found I should introduce some aspects about the traditional asset management and the theories. That helps me introduce the knowledge based asset management methods, and shows the innovative aspects.

After I created the mindmap, I found that I should link some theories with practice. I found one journal in the book 'Knowledge management: classic and contemporary works' that edited from Morey,Maybury and Thuraisingham, Reinhardt - the author gave me some inspirations about linking knowledge management and practice.

This time, I found the advantages of creating a mindmap before doing the PMA. That not only helped me build the structure of the PMA, but also helped me find out what aspects I need to include and what aspects I did not think of.

: 30 May 2010 05:16 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

KBAM PMA weeks

After the KBAM module week, OPP module and my elective module week came, those were very busy weeks.

From my reading about knowledge management. I realised that knowledge management is the hottest subject of the day.

In our team project in the module week, we have done many works about facilities management. Therefore I chose facilities management as that 'one aspect' to discuss.

From the reading, I found facility management is an interdisciplinary field. The main objective for this PMA is to understand how to apply knowledge management to help to achieve excellent performance in the management of WaveRider's assets in support its policy and strategy.

My old understanding about knowledge management is learning lessons from previous experiences and knowledges. But when I read some books and articles, I found that there are many aspects about knowledege management such as define konwledge, represent knowledge, aquire knowledge and create the conditions for knowledge management. Furthermore, I found gathering information from previous knowledges is not enough, the most important thing is how to motivate the organisation to use and share the knowledge system. How to transform the knowledge is also extremely important because always looking at the past could not help organisation to improve and innovate. On the other hand, how to manage the knowledges in this way is becoming more important in current business circumstance. I read some books about knowledge management from Christensen, Morey and Parker. Especially, I found a book: "The new knowledge management: complexity, learning, and sustainable innovation" from McElroy, I found many new and useful ideas about knowledge management in the ways I mentioned before such as Double loop knowledge management, the author also mentioned the knowledge life cycle and the frame work of knowledge management, where the knowledge management should belong and the sustainble innovations.

: 30 May 2010 02:28 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Something want to say

MBE course is nearly finished, this may be the last time for me to write something here which my course mates and lecturers can all see.

After this year, I found blogging could really help us summarising what we have learnt, why those things are important and how they could help us in the future. In the LE course, when I was doing PMA, I went back to my blog and found some structures and knowledge I could use that I forgot before.

It is more like an online note book or reminder of knowledge, I personally think it is more like an onlie knowledge diary. But I also think, very detailed academic things should not be mentioned too much here, because we have opportunities to use them in team projects, PMAs and our projects. If students want to use the academic things they have learnt and mention some academic parts here, they maybe can outline some bullet points or summarise them.

I think the most important things that blog helped me were: it recorded my thinking during different periods of time; it recorded the changes of my minds; it recorded the important things I have learnt (not the academic knowledge, theories or definitions) that really could help me in the future and how I could apply them; and I would read them and remind myself to achieve continued improvement.

: 17 Apr 2010 17:22 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Travel never ends

After that long night, we have done our presentation, although it's a pity that I couldn't present the whole things I have prepared because we run out of time, I still think that is the most successful presentation I have done during the MBE course.

I always don't like to mention too many academic theoris and knowledge I have learnt here, because I have enough time to apply them when I am doing the team project and PMA.

After Kun and me found the improvements that our group members have made, we have discussed about that and finally we both noticed, maybe that is what this course really wants to achieve - students understand how to achieve continued improvement and become learning individuals.

Although, KBAM module has finished, and the whole MBE course is also nearly finished, I noticed this is just a beginning, our continued improvement travel would never, and it really should never end.

: 17 Apr 2010 16:44 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Travel continued 3

After we decided to focus on two aspects of asset management applying to WaveRider. I was in charge of the facilities management aspect. After Kun has found and read many articles about knowledge management, he gave me some very useful understandings about knowledge management, and those helped me apply facilities management theories to WaveRider's case.

That night was really a tough night.. Our Thursday meeting, lasted more than 12 hours! Most of our group members worked passionately, Kun, Tobi and me stayed at the Syndicate room until 3am in the Friday morning. I saw Nan's group also stayed there until nearly midnight.

During the working time, I have learnt many academic theories and knowledge (That has been applied to our team project and would be applied in my PMA, as well as my project.), and the amazing thing was, the knowledge and asset management theories I have just learnt helped me doing further works!!

That surprised me, knowledge management is about managing knowledge and the past experiences, when we applied it to WaveRider and tried to finish our team project, during that time, we found that we, ourselves could manage knowledge and the assets we have efficiently. And it helps us doing research and the works again, and after we learnt more things, it helped us back on managing knowledge and our assets! That was really an amazing journey! (although that was a long night..)

We focused on applying the knowledge we learnt to WaveRider case too detailed. That spent us lots of time. Therefore, we just realised we have to do portfolio at that midnight, we just simply outlined our meetings and put some of our researches and applications into the portfolio, I believed that was not well structured..

But I really agree that this experience is extremely meaningful for me, that helped me understanding the real amazing part of continued improvement. I totally believe that it would help me achieving self excellence in the future, not only in my career, it helps me doing even very small things in my life!

: 17 Apr 2010 16:30 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Travel continued 2

One of Tobi's friend is a PhD student in Warwick, he recommened us some really useful articles and they really opened our minds again.

In one of the articles, it gave a research about more than 1,000 workers of how their thought their companies handled knowledge sharing:

Some people in the company can help me to do my job better. (67%)

I don't know how to find these colleagues. (39%)

Work is often duplicated because people are unaware of each other's work. (60%)

Opportunities to innovate are missed because the right people do not work together. (54%)

Wrong decisions are regularly made because employee knowledge isn't effectively tapped. (51%)

That is an interesting group of numbers.

There are also an important fact that the article tells us about using knowledgemanagement: Focusing on past experience is like Using the rearview mirror to navigate the road ahead. That reminded us that even knowledge management is important, but organisations could not focus on the past experiences overly.

: 17 Apr 2010 16:11 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Travel continued

After our group meeting as I mentioned in previous entries, we found some difficulties when organisations are implementaing knowledge management strategies, an article gave the requirements for organisations. For using knowledgement efficiently and maximise the use of it, Enterprises need:

• to have an enterprise-wide vocabulary to ensure that the knowledge is correctly understood;
• to be able to identify, model and explicitly represent their knowledge;
• to share and re-use their knowledge among differing applications for various types of users; this implies being able to share existing knowledge sources and also future ones;
• to create a culture that encourages knowledge sharing.

Suddenly we opened our mind, and firstly noticed some linkage with asset management.

as I mentioned in last week blog entries, at the first time, we seperated different asset management areas to each team member, and I was in charge of Security aspect. It seems like a very detailed work, but when I was doing the researches in that 'detailed' area, my mind has really been opened for what asset management really is and how it can possibiliy managed base on knowledge management.

When we had a group meeting again, most of us have done their works and we start building our presentation structure. We decided we only presented two aspects of asset management which were facilities and recources utilisation management, and we would put other aspects in the portfolio.

: 17 Apr 2010 16:06 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Module week ends

Finally its the weekend. That was a quite busy week. Too busy for me to write some blog entries with quality. After the week days, I finally have some time to sit down and write something.

Let's start again with going back to when I firstly found some articles about knowledge management at the beginning of last week...

Knowledge management is a quite interesting area, it has some similar aspects with lesson learned. I have found a useful comment about what knowledge management is "Enterprises are realising how important it is to 'know what they know' and be able to make maximum use of the knowledge". I think it also covers what knowledge management really does.

According to this comment. I can see that there are two things organisations need to know when they are managing the knowledge: 1. what their knowledge assets are and 2. how to manage and make use of these assets to get maximum return. But I realised most traditional (especially some chinese stlye) company policies and controls focus on the tangible assets of the company and leave unmanaged their important knowledge assets. Suddenly I found the importance of understanding how to management knowledge.

But knowledge management is a very broad topic. There are lots of things can be covered in this area.

An article I found also mentioned:

The challenge of deploying the knowledge assets of an organisation to create competitive advantage becomes more crucial as:

• The marketplace is increasingly competitive and the rate of innovation is rising, so that knowledge must evolve and be assimilated at an ever faster rate.
• Corporations are organising their businesses to be focused on creating customer value. Staff functions are being reduced as are management structures. There is a need to replace the informal knowledge management of the staff function with formal methods in customer aligned business processes.
• Competitive pressures are reducing the size of the workforce which holds this knowledge.
• Knowledge takes time to experience and acquire. Employees have less and less time for this.
• There are trends for employees to retire earlier and for increasing mobility, leading to loss of knowledge.
• There is a need to manage increasing complexity as small operating companies a re trans-national sourcing operations.
  A change in strategic direction may result in the loss of knowledge in a specific area. A subsequent reversal in policy may then lead to a renewed requirement for this knowledge, but the employees with that knowledge may no longer be there.

After these researches, I understood the importance of manging knowledge and the difficulties.

Therefore, I become more interested in this topic, and I started our module week.

: 17 Apr 2010 15:51 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Group work

In our meetings, we gathered some basic information and created some common ideas.

Firstly, we decided to build up a KM model and choose the most important parts in AM and apply to WaveRiders.

In the first work, I focused on Security part.

After some researches, I found that there are two main parts of Security part which are Virtual and Physical. And I found that 'One area that often crosses between physical and virtual security pertains to information management.'

I have looked at the websites that Paul recommended and found some useful information that could be applied to WaveRiders.

I understood the concepts of ISO/IEC 17799:2005.

After that, I defined some aspects and approches in the Security area for WaveRiders to use in order to satisfy the EFQM standard. (In our presentation)

: 15 Apr 2010 02:28 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem