European Guide to Good Practice in Knowledge Management
08-Apr-04
European Guide to Good Practice in Knowledge Management
From Sept 2002 to Sept 2003 the CEN workshop on Knowledge Management launched by European Standardisation Committee took place. As a result of the hard work of the CEN workshop team in cooperation with the KB community members, we are now proudly presenting to you the European Guide to good Practice in Knowledge Management.
The guide comprises five main booklets, each of them can be read separately, although we would strongly recommend readers to consider these booklets as one integrated good practice guide including the following topics:
- KM Framework, which sets the overall context for KM at both the organizational and personal level. It is designed to promote a common European understanding of KM, to show the value of the emerging KM approachs and to help organizations towards its successful implementation. The Framework is based on empirical research and practical experience in this field from all over Europe and the rest of the world.
- Organizational Culture, which explains to readers how to create the right cultural environment for introducing KM. This booklet looks at what culture is, how it develops and how you can work with it to ensure your KM programme is successful. It looks at changes in culture that may be needed to enhance and gain greater value from knowledge, at developing a greater understanding of culture and how it is derived from the actions of individuals and groups.
- SME Implementation, which provides a project management methodology to help SMEs (and other organizations) get started in KM. It is a unifying guide with good practice examples for KM implementation in SMEs across Europe and thus assists in identifying and motivating key players, implementing KM successfully within and across their organizational boundaries and networks, and measuring the results of their efforts.
- Measuring KM, which helps organizations assess their progress in KM. One of the key challenges of developing metrics for KM concerns "cause and effect." We can measure many activities, but what does the measurement represent? Does the activity we measure have an indisputed connection to other established business metrics? And how credible and actionable will any resulting numbers be?
- KM Terminology, which summarizes the key KM terms and concepts that readers will find useful when navigating through the guide. It covers the core KM terminology that European private and public sector executives, particularly in SMEs will need to know in order to have a proper understanding of KM.
This guide is intended for employees, managers, directors or anyone else involved in a KM programme, within or between European organizations. The documents combine both research and practice offering a comparison of different models and case studies.
You can download all five booklets directly from the CEN web site: CEN KMWA 5 booklets. A German version of the European Guide to good practice in Knowledge Management is also available.
Details
- Author:
- Dr. Patricia Wolf
- Publisher:
- KnowledgeBoard
- Date:
- 08-Apr-04
- Categories:
- Standards, Standards
- Sections:
- News
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Member comments (9)
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why not to teach a little bit more ?
I am suggesting to have a sort of an attached informative to the guide in order to clarify the understanding of some necessary "knowledge " such as:
1) knowledge and its forms - a philosofical review
2) what is the relationship betwen message, information and knowledege.
3) concept of cause and effect
4) concept of systens and the sistemic
vision
5) concept of feed back
6) some examples of elemtary tools such as:
mind map construction, hits and hots, construction of clusters, SWOT.
Paradox of KM - part 2
You could change my mind on KM evolving as a standard from this beginning if there was evidence that syndicates of companies were assembling to benchmark KM (like they did in the 80 with Total Quality) and were using this source as a standard. However, if that was the intention then the form of this publication is a pre-standard. Baldrige physical quality agreed about 7 profiling dimensions, each of which could be used as a rating on an organisation's system so that a company could learn how developed it was, and what peers thought the next stage of maturity of practice was. This isnt a practical standard of that form, YET! And looking at discussions of KM in the 10 leading spaces beyond KB, if those who see KM as a profession which help all organsiations inspire humans more and more, want an agrred compass, I think there needs to be a meeting of hundreds of such people to thrash out a manifesto or charter of big connecting questions. Becasue at the moment everywhere I read there are more disputes about the diversity of KM's compass than commitments to "this is definitely how to spend our time" standardising the practice. At the end of the day KM of 2004 is more about learning, isnt it?
A modern day basis for a standard also need open sourcing. It is to be hoped that the BSi would say something like, buy it and get an early comers advantage during teh first 6 month if you are an organsiation srious in leading KM's conversation . From 20005 it will be a free pdf.
I dont know if thaty will happen. Meanwhile the cultrure report alone catalogues about 75 tools and aids. I started a conversstion thread on these a few months ago at http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=121482&d=1&h=417&f=418&dateformat=%o%20%B%20%Y
Choose one a week and I will try an put its opening text up depending on what is voted as most popular for conversing around.
Paradox of KM - part 1
For me KM is about waves of change, and a standard is quite a paradox for such a worldwide conversation with local contexts such as 25 countries hopes and fears in the EU, to take just one region of application of KM and organisational systems. In fact rather than a standards report as way of communicating I would have preferred would have been to charter some big questions for KM as a brand or to start a conversational manifesto like the internet forerunner of all manifestos http://www.cluetrain.com signed by over 1000 people on their hopes for ebusiness. There was nothing wrong with the gist of cluetrain but it was a pity that it didnt marry the worlds of virtual and real. However without cluetrain you might not have had blogs (many of the people who first assembled blogs were early adopters of cluetrain; and it is rumored that cluetrain inspired the idea that the EU needed this conversational space)
Any global brand be it a top 100 business, or a professional movement emerging to shape how a lot of thinking and doing of the 21st century connects/communicates/communes through as many as 1000 living ideas. Each one needs open updated questioning and answering so that people who work KM can link it to what they do. This is what brand charerers call the living script of the brand as a knowledge-creating system and communal exchnage of value. Hey! without Peter Drucker's writings that the future should see the day when everyone enjoys the liberty of a knowledge worker making the most of their god given talents and organisations (systeming value multiplication) would need to marry contextual purpose to be the gravity for such wonderful people combinations, we might not have had the term KM and we certainly wouldnt have what I have called Human KM since almost my first post at KB.
I dont think that Europe's biggest organisations agree this standard as set in stone. How many CEOs or people in these organisations know of its existence? Why is this work more or less influential than your or my 5 favourite books. The term standards has a text virus in it when referring to a huge change discipline; if as a mathematician the BSI tried to issue a standards of maths, I can tell you we Brits would march on chiswick and close the BSI down.
Simplification and risk
Chris, can you simplify your thought/suggestion?
My thought is:
The KM terminology (this Guide) will program managerial practice in Europe and other regions/organizations which will share this intellectual product.
As far as I understand the largest organizations agree with this Guide – see contributor’s list in the booklet.
A presence of textual viruses in KM terminology makes possible to influence people/organization from outside in unexpected way. The risk is destruction of people/organizations.
I know nothing about checking procedure of this product (from the story by Simona and Patricia I have learned about the pride of its authors - “…CEN workshop team in cooperation with the KB community members, we are now proudly presenting to you the European Guide to good Practice in Knowledge Management”). I have nothing against a pride/self-respecting but what to do if questions arise?
I asked my question when I have seen a symptom of textual virus. Can I get a response?
grading the definition by systemic seniority to value multiply
You know as you grew up at school: sciences had definitions for 11 year olds, 14, 17 where the first definition turned out to be an over-simplification compared with the most inspiring one.
It would probably be a good idea to have done something similar for KM but perhaps in this case where the barriers that were passed through went up with how high your power in a big organisation was. I am feeling a bit tired so help me with an attempt to word the highest definition (none in the standards report made any conversational attempt at what the most powerful people should know first about KM), and comment on any leadership issues that definition raises. Remember Drucker-style advice: we are talking about a definition which every knowledge worker needs to trust will help navigate organisational transformations from industrial age to knowledge age- a networking time involving a series of leadership changes of a systemic nature unseen since the industrial revolution. The defintion chosen will ultimately condition whether mankind passes the final examination for humanity of globalsiation's pervasive connectivity or falls into some dark age. It determines your kids future more than I can begin to imagine. Much of today's greatest innovation comes from seeing the ways value multiplies in knowledge markets' exchanges in "opposite ways round" (CoPs, teams, SNA maps, intranet blogs...) from the way value multiplies in a machine age where people were ordered not to learn different skills because Management of the line required repetitive uniformity.
eg top definition
KM revolves round openly conversing about any changes next needed to the organisation's subsystems so that people are more and more positively energised by what they do and learn from compounding the uniqueness and transparency of the organisation's vision and dna so as to cooperatively, successfully and sustainably multiply value exchanges.
Transparency communities (eg at http://www.valuetrue.com) have discover at least 10 win-win maturity profiles interacting with this definition's practice which can be tested to know how systemically a leadership team governs everyone's attention to knowledge-sharing and doing and energising co-workers positively throughout the system of human relationships that value exchanges compound and connect. If big organisations were to benchmark these they would find that their lack of maturity of KM governance is far weaker than when in the 1980s they recoginised that their physical quality systems were far less connected than they could be.
The question on which the EU's vision for working people of 2010 depends is will the largest organisations in Europe lead the way to coollaborate around learning adnd addressing this mother of all system challenges and transformations of what leaders openly spend their time doing.
A symptom of textual virus in European Guide to good Practice in KM
COMPARE DEFINITIONS
FROM:
European Guide to good Practice in Knowledge Management -
Part 1: Knowledge Management Framework (p. 6)
[In order to describe the core knowledge processes, we first give a working definition of knowledge and KM (see also the booklet on KM Terminology, in part 5 of the CWA 14924):
“Knowledge is the combination of data and information, to which is added expert opinion, skills and experience, to result in a valuable asset which can be used to aid decision making. Knowledge may be explicit and/or tacit, individual and/or collective.” (3)
(3) In a broader understanding knowledge could be described in terms of Information, Experience, Skills and Attitude (I.ESA)
“Knowledge Management is the management of activities and processes for leveraging knowledge to enhance competitiveness through better use and creation of individual and collective knowledge resources.”]
AND FROM:
European Guide to good Practice in Knowledge Management -
Part 5: KM Terminology
[13. Knowledge: A set of data and information (when seen from an Information Technology point of view), and a combination of, for example know-how, experience, emotion, believes, values, ideas, intuition, curiosity, motivation, learning styles, attitude, ability to trust, ability to deal with complexity, ability to synthesize, openness, networking skills, communication skills, attitude to risk and entrepreneurial spirit to result in a valuable asset which can be used to improve the capacity to act and support decision making. Knowledge may be explicit and/or tacit (see definitions 7 and 29 respectively), individual and/or collective. (p. 10)
16. Knowledge Management (KM): Planned and ongoing management of activities and processes for leveraging knowledge to enhance competitiveness through better use and creation of individual and collective knowledge resources. (p. 11)]
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Which set of the definitions of Knowledge and KM is true and which one is false (textual virus)?
good idea
I do hope you get a positive response especially on the culture report which seemed outstanding to me
I had quite a lot of difficulty with the definitions report because it took what I would say was far short of a connecting lens between all the human KM disciplines that matter to me including Organisational Learning (Systems Theories), Oganisational Transformation (Community & Network Practices), Intangibles Value Multiplication and Trust-Flow Conflict Resolution,Emotional Literacy, Transparency of Network models of Business, Policy Capital associated with the EU 2010 vision on Human and Social Capitals and so forth. I understand completely that there's a choice anyone makes between a narrow view of km and big KM connecting to any constructs that might make 21st Organisations more humanly worthwhile. However as per the leaders' quotes near the top of KMEI sig, EU funders have always talked a big picture reason to why som much taxpayers (peoples in 25 countries) money & hopes to connect with greater working and learning opportunities are linked with KM. (Of course this is why any politician who speaks up KM for the people but then funds machine makers needs a little bit of simultaneous dethroning as we authentic & 
networkers in Intangibles Collaboration City London will openly demonstrate as part of 2004 Year of Transparency.)
The km & KM choice seems to me to have been very differently made between the main writers of the culture report and the definitions report. One way round this on a web site would be to make the vocabulary an index of conversation threads
Permission for Russian translation
Dear Jeroen! Dear Marc!
First of all, I would like to express my perfectly sincere appreciation of your (and your colleagues') great job!
Because of this document is very important for common KM understanding, and because of I (my company) would like to develop KM in Russia -
I would like to ask you to grant me permission to translate this document into Russian and put it on my website. I think it would be rather useful for our partners and customers to know European Standarts and Good Practice in Knowledge Management. I would promote this document via Russian KM and IM communities - KM Club, Inforus and others.
Hope it's possible!
yes
Joao, we need what you say
the trouble is it takes cooperation, and not the usual funding syndromes to develop, and simplify so that it can be part of an educational curriculum (each age group needs to adapt to - the young because they can start with the fresh paradigm of intimately inteconnected human age; the old because they need to change some of their most fundamental assumptions as well as whole systems that condition the kinds of plummeting levels of trust that are now being recorded worldwide)
as a mathematician, I have in mind certain breakthrough constructs such as calculus; without calculus you can only teach parts of maths that you have to over-simplify, and this is good enough up to say 12 but not if you want to grow up as a mathematician
its my feeling that KM in its widest sense is about organisations people of this century want to have compounding around them , dancing with their lives; as well as the opposite kind they should want to close down
what all of these are I dont know (I would certainly make a plea for maps but not the depressing hierarchy of flow that mindmap software conditions) and I imagine would probably take many people meeting in an open space convention for a few days is a full enough list of all the breakthrough constructs needed to navigate what types of organsiations we breed over the next couple of decades; decades which if we are to make the most of connecting real and virtual lives at every locality are fuller of greater human change than any within the experience of most people alive today
I dont particularly like screens that are more border than content but if KB's red had been embossed with these words of Prodi from 2000, maybe we would have more communally attended to the urgency of changing however uncomfy such a term is:
Europe is a dream and a design. It is a dream of a world that is freer, fairer and more united. It is the design we want to carry through to practice day by day. Conscious of our history, we can look at the world in a sprit of openness, and aspire to tale a leading role. These are times in history when people are called upon to make decisive choices. We have to respond to the powerful shifts that changing the world and Eurpe.