Can PDSA help Tacit to Explicit?

The act of doing a Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle - is in someways turning tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge I believe, and it's an even more simple and useful way to do so.

The act of planning is already exercising your tacit knowledge, making your skills that you are good at such as your technical skills into use. Now i'm uncertain if this is just tacit-tacit or tacit-explicit, because the tacit knowledge that you have is turning into something tha'ts more physical form, with planning possibly being something you write or document to prepare yourself.

For 'Do' you have to make sure that the actions you take are based on what you plan, and this can come in many form, but essentially this can have 2 effects accroding to Nonaka's model:

1. Tacit - Tacit: because others observe what you do and learn from that

2. Explicit - this might depend on what you choose to do - if it's creating conceptual ideas and spreading it out to use with others - such as if what you planned was think of metaphors, do would be deploying it

'Study' - is where you can take the results and analyse it, which can be something like turnig explicit into explicit or explicit into tacit.

Lastly, 'act' can be when you decide to fully initiate the planned and tested solution, and ensure that this restarts again - to continuously improve - just like what the purpose of the sprial of knowlege is for - to continuously improve at a deeper level.

This is quite interesting and it just came to my head, but doing a comparative study on this might be something useful and very applicable.

Shujaat Alikhan : 11 Jul 2014 21:50 |  Tags: Explicit Kbam Knowledge Mbe Tacit |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

LCC informally

It seems when we discuss topics on life cycle learning, it's always very formalised and structured. But why not consider it in everything we do anyways? If one of the fundamentals of for LCC is based on teh process of intake, maintanence, and output (roughly speaking), then that is true to everything, from what we eat to how we input words into our essay, edit it (maintainability), and output (performance).

I always find it intriguing to have thoughts like this because the people who wrote these ideas might not have the background or experience that we do, so it doesn't mean they know it all,while we can apply this type of frameowrk or methodology to anything we find applicable, and I think we should, just like PDSA or DMAIC can be applied to almost everything.

LCC is simply about taking in mind something from the moment it's made or with you until it's gone and everything else in between. Take your knowledge for instance, learning something new, as Nonaka said, will become tacit knowledge then it can be an explicit knowledge and stored, but of course, you need to nurture it or else it will slowly fade away, and when it does, the cost of it is having to do the same process over again, so to have the best efficieny for LCC is to take in what matters, nurture it and improve it, and ensure that it stay with you for good.

Shujaat Alikhan : 07 Jul 2014 17:24 |  Tags: Costing Cycle Kbam Lcc Life Mbe |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Boundaries in knowledge sharing

We're in the era where there's not too little data - but simply too much.

The internet played a big part - and everything that subsequently followed = migration from print to soft-media, social media, websites, mobility, search engines.

So it's not a challenge of where can I get the information as much as to how we can disseminate information appropriately. In organisations, that requires individuals to know more about something than others - but most importantly - to share that.

I've been in, seen, and heard of cases where although one knows enough about something, they don't want to share it because they are afraid of sharing too much that it affects their performance. How so? Because apparently knowing too much can be dangerous if you're trying to outperform another person.

I think what's missing here is the alignment of objectives, as we've learned in so many of our classes (latest is OPP i believe), that if there's an alignment in goals & objectives, sharing knowledge that will benefit your colleague, your team, and your company should not be faced with such barriers.

Shujaat Alikhan : 06 Jul 2014 18:51 |  Tags: Kbam Knowledge Management Mbe |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Life–Cycle – tangibility

Lice Cycle management as already talked about by many can be seen from a lot of perspectives.

But after spending time reading them, I realized that life cycle management is very similar to every other form of management that is done correctly - paying attention to the whole system or cycle.

Very commonly, we tend to pay attention to a particualr subject or matter when working - while not caring too much about its context, or how it started and what are the possible outcomes of it, because we simply want to work on whatever is then and there.

This is very similar to how we're supposed to do our disseration, the literature review is for us to understand the context of the subject we are covering, and know enough about how things work in that area to come to a substantiated conclusion.

When working, many often just face a problem, fix it and move on, but if they understood how work is normally conducted, from beginning to end, they will know how and why the issue became a problem because everything is tracable. This is the same concept as life cyle costing especially, where everything is recommended to be documented for tracability as well.

From this observation, I suggest everyone to try applying this same 'life-cycle' method of start to end - and even cyclical approach to everything.

Shujaat Alikhan : 05 Jul 2014 06:48 |  Tags: Asset Cost Cycle Kbam Life Management Mbe |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The art of knowledge

After having the opportunity to dive into the realm of what knowledge really is about, I'm surprised one aspect is left out. Sure it's true tacit and explicit knowledge have their own dynamics, but what about short term and long term knowledge affecting work as well?

Isn't it better to have knowledge that sticks to you rather than having to around about it finding the answer everytime?

I believe this has to do wtih what interests and does not interests us as well. Tacit knowledge will be easily adapted if we have an objective or goal infront of us and we try our best to reach it, and if that means we come by some relevant information, it can be related to as well.

Therefore, finding work in the field that interests you might be a good idea if you want to become rich in knowledge that you do not have to go search for it all the time, but it will pass by you and you will most likely remember them well, at least that's what I plan to do.

Because in the end, having to look up or read things that have no interest to me isn't what I want to do all my life.

Shujaat Alikhan : 04 Jul 2014 10:36 |  Tags: Kbam Km Knowledge Management Mbe |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Ensuring knowledge sharing

How can we be sure that the individual will share the knowledge?

Can't it be that the individual does not intend to share the knowledge and instead consdier that knoweldge as their asset and try to sell it elsewhere? If that's the case, some innovations cannot happen (potentially) in a company.

My guess would be that companies do have ways of coping with such issues, such as signing legal documents that bind the individuals to the company and that the creation the individual comes up with is considered the asset of the company. Yet, if the individual does not share it with the previous company, and instead brings it to another company (such as a competitor)?

A possible method that might be in use already is that the knowledge creation process is designed in a way that no one person will only be involved in the creation process, but it is actually part of a series of steps until the that creatoin/innovation can be reached. This might mean that the process is very fragmented that to reach a breakthrough or invention, the necessary steps have to be taken.

But also, if we look at this from another perspective, why should the company even have to worry about this, if they can make the employees loyal and attached to the company? Wouldn't that allow knowledge to be shared openly and accessibly? Surely if an employee feels like they're being trusted and empowered, there's a higher possiblity that they will reciprocrate with the same manner towards the company, right?

This is just based on simple logic, which i think is true of human nature.

Shujaat Alikhan : 15 Jun 2014 20:39 |  Tags: Kbam Knowledge Management Mbe Sharing |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Quality of Tacit Knowledge

Nonaka said that Tacit knowledge can be shared into another person's tacit knowledge through observation, socializing, praciticng, imitation, etc.

However, I do have doubts about this - althogh it can be developed into our know Explicit knowledge - is it at the sacrifice of the quality of that knowledge. This quality can be the effectiveness of what the original tacit knowledge was, for the initial purpose of the tacit knowledge. For instance, if I observe someone doing something which is very effective, then I use that same technqiue but for a different purpose but maybe it is not an important purpose or it is not done correctly - is this then useful knowledge?

I do understand that Nonaka might argue this as a method of knowledge creation - adapting it to one's own use - but what's the point of sharing knowledge if the initial purpose is not shared as well?

I feel that some knowledge is practiced based on a certain purpose, but how would someone else who tries to observe and learn the same tacit knowledge that was not articulated really understand what is going on?

So new knowledge is created - but what happens to the origin of that knowledge? does it end there? Yes the tacit knowledge can turn to explicit and can be more visible to everyone - but if you only rely on sharing tacit to tacit, loss of knowledge and originality or sense of purpose is also a real threat.

Shujaat Alikhan : 14 Jun 2014 21:17 |  Tags: Kbam Knowledge Mbe Tacit |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

KBAM isystems in SMEs

The initial thought we had on how to present KBAM was truly dreadful, and I think it is, because of the time we had and the large scope of the 2 similar (yet quite different) concepts: Knowledge and Asset management.

Observing from what every group presented, surely there were some similarities (in terms of what was covered) - but we had very different approaches for WaveRiders. So it hit me that, is there a generic model that most organizations follow, such as off-the-shelf models of KBAM? Surely it's not so hard to find off-the-shelf products for knowledge management or asset management individually, but to have a total package - it must be very expensive and considering it's for SMEs, it's worth looking in to.

Especially for those of you concentrating on SMEs for your dissertation and maybe working/owning and SME sometime in the future, it's interesting to see how these very large concepts can be adapted on a small scale, first in terms of learning them, then how to actually acquire and adopt them to the SME you are involved in. Is there a best-practice that companies use to apply the total package?

For instance, there are plenty of Safety Mangemnet Systems that are availabel today, adapting the govering bodies' requirements and tailoring the details to meet their market. But sometimes, these management systems can be adopted to an SME level, but it seems that there is always a compromise - limited capabiliteis becuase you're paying less (consideing what's worthwhile for the size of your company). This trade-off is something I totally disagree with, becuse trying to buy something that's not 100% doing what its supposed to is simply defeating the purpose of having it in the first place.

So I think it is best to hire someone from who is an expert in that field into the small-sized company - then creating a project team to implement it (many of you have done this in your presentations). I feel that this will allow a system to be built based on the organziation, while adapting the important requirements of the governing bodies that are mandated by law or to be part of a group that supports this type of certification. Surely, this will allow the company to optimize their asset and knowledge on a system built specifically for them and surely less expensvie than what's available in the market.

Shujaat Alikhan : 13 Jun 2014 23:59 |  Tags: Kbam Management Mbe System |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

KBAM's Strategy & other strategies

Preparing for our presentation, we realized that we were concentrating on the KBAM strategy, while in real life, companies have plenty of othe rstrategies to follow.

So there's a real challenge here to align the multiple strategies of a company to the overall strategy. It will be very interesting to see how each companies really combine their strategies, and how they prioritize one or the other.

In the end, how important will KBAM be for an organization to prioritize? Sure that the strategy is convincing and can be used, but how well will it be implemented, or how soon will it be used once the strategy is introduced will be interesnted. How often do they see the importance of the strategy?

I would be very interested to see in the end how the strategies are prioritized adn applied.

Shujaat Alikhan : 12 Jun 2014 20:55 |  Tags: Deployment Kbam Mbe Strategy |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Effective Knowledge repository

From the dicussions on how WaveRiders can effectively move forward over the next 5 years, it made me think that with all the asset improvements and knowledge improvements a company can have, it all is not possible if there is no systmem supporting it.

The same idea is applied to when there are a lot of good ideas that can improve an organization, but without a proper knowledge-pool that is interactable, knowledge is simply wasted. However, with a system that not only pushes but also pulls information and systemically stores it within an organization, the knowledge can be effectively reached and used.

So the idea that to manage all assets, a system is needed, and likewise to store knowledge effecitvely, a system is needed as well. So is it possible that one is independent from the other? Quite straightlyforwardly I feel this isn't possible, because in every instance of asset management, there is knowledge involved in its system to gather, analayze, and execute knowledge or data to attempt an action. That means no matter what, knowledge cannot be escaped, it's available to everyone but just in a free form.

Therefore, having a system to manage knowledge, which will therefore make the company become smarter at making decisions, as well as for asset management should be the best solution.

Shujaat Alikhan : 11 Jun 2014 23:58 |  Tags: Kbam Knowledge Management Mbe |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem