The subtext of this article is that implementing knowledge management solutions is not likely to succedd following conventional wisdom approaches. Essentially, successful knowledge management in the view presented here depends on first developing an understanding of how knowledge contributes value to the business and then focusing on the high-value opportunities.

That isn't terribly surprising advice. What Shekawat manages to establish is that the way knowledge contributes to value is not the same as the way that other business processes or typical information processing does. You have to start by understanding the linkage between knowledge and value that holds in a particular business setting. And then you need to be prepared to invest the time for knowledge workers and the organization to develop and become comfortable with new approaches. In this model, a CKO needs to be willing to articulate a coherent vision of this knowledge/value linkage and not succumb to pressures for conventional approaches.

CKO mistakes. Udai Shekawat writes about Five Mistakes CKOs Must Avoid, which explores why many KM initiatives fail, from a Chief Knowledge... [Column Two]

One key observation:

There is a natural tendency in large organizations to assess what knowledge resources already exist in the company and then select a KM solution that can best enable the employees to utilize those resources. This is what I call the supply-side approach, as opposed to the demand-side approach, which is the selection of KM technologies based on a fundamental understanding what the information needs of employees are at a specific time, and the ability of the technology to deliver that knowledge exactly when the employees need it most.

Business Processing Re-engineering for Law Firms. Which KM system should I concentrate on? Which KM system should be prioritized? With the number of information systems (e.g., document management, intranet content management, case management, records management, time entry management, practice development management, and e-mail/groupware systems) currently used in law firms, it's hard to answer these questions.

Rather than concentrate on the implementation of information systems, John S. Edwards and Robert I. Akroyd, examine a radical "process-based" approach for change in English law firms. In Strategic Process Re-engineering in Legal Service Management, Edwards and Ackroyd discuss the actual work performed in law firms. Building on Hammer and Champy's ideas in Reengineering the Corporation: a Manifesto for Business Revolution, Edwards and Akroyd break down legal services into it's core parts:

(1) getting the knowledge
(2) getting the work
(3) doing the work
(4) getting paid for the work

In a typical English firm, "doing the work" [number (3) above] can be further broken down into eleven key steps:

(1) a client consults with the law firm
(2) the law firm diagnoses the problem
(3) the law firm drafts a "client care" letter (a proposal or retention letter in US parlance) setting out the work to be done
(4) the client decides whether to continue
(5) if the client decides to go forward, the law firm divides up the work amongst the practice group members
(6) the law firm does the legal research
(7) the law firm expresses it's opinion to the client
(8) the client decides whether to continue
(9) if the client decides to go forward, the law firm divides up the work amongst the practice group members
(10) the law firm implements the client's instructions

Like Edwards and Akroyd, Martin Apistola and Anja Oskamp define a similar "task-based" top-down KM methodology. But in Preparing Knowledge Management for Law Practice, (click on Downloads: By Author), the Apistola and Oskamp astutely recognize that some legal tasks don't need to be re-engineered "when there are no problems performing the task" (if it ain't broke, don't fix it).

For other "task-based" analyses of law firms, read Curt Canfield's (Practice Group Leader of Hildebrandt's TechGroup) article: Knowledge Management: Making it Work








[excited utterances]

Is E-mail the Killer App?. As knowledge managers, we're always looking for the killer app—the one that lawyers will use seamlessly as part of their day-to-day work process. There are those lawyers, particularly the older ones, who are still afraid to get near a computer. But most lawyers are comfortable with e-mail technology. So, e-mail just may be the killer app for lawyers.

How many times has a lawyer e-mailed someone within the firm to ask: "Have we done this kind of deal before?" "Do we have any experience with Chilean local counsel?" "Who can draft this prospectus in German?" Usually, the receivers of these "who knows who and who knows what" e-mails generously take a few moments to respond. This response, in turn, prompts the original sender of the e-mail to a reply with a "thank you."

In March, 1988, MITRE, a non-profit corporation and a leader in knowledge sharing practices, created a "thank you" database. It works like this:

Whenever someone replies with a "thank you," the entire e-mail thread can be cc'd to a "thank you" e-mail box. The "thank you" e-mail is copied to MITRE's database and the knowledge sharer (the recipient of the "thank you" e-mail) is recorded as an "expert."The "expert" is credited for sharing his knowledge. Each time someone retrieves the "thank you" e-mail, the expert is awarded a "hit" Each day, the number of "thank you" e-mails and "hits" are totaled and experts are recognized on the organization's intranet as knowledge sharing champions. A "Top Knowledge Sharer" is rewarded with a MITRE-funded training class (up to $3,000) of the recipient's choice.

In the event that lawyers forget to send their thank you's to the e-mail repository, the Information Systems department could scan firm-wide, internally distributed e-mails (identified by IP address) for the phrase "thank you" (and all it's variants and foreign language equivalents: "thanks" "thx" "danke" "gracias" "merci" "grazie" etc.) and send those e-mails to the "thank you" box. Shaw Pittman, a D.C. law firm, has implemented just such a system with a Lotus Notes e-mail database.

Now you've got loads of "thank you" e-mails (I'm assuming you work in a polite and friendly firm), but the hard part remains—how do you get lawyers to access the database? You can "push" the contents of the e-mails to lawyers by notifying them immediately of newly posted "thank you's." To avoid e-mail overload, you could filter the e-mail notifications to lawyers by subject matter, practice group, or client/matter numbers.

Undoubtedly, there will be some resistance to scanning, capturing, and cataloguing of e-mails in a firm-wide database. Privacy issues, particularly in the European Union, and ethical considerations may be significant. Humiliation and embarrassment may deter lawyers from asking questions in e-mails. For instance, a lawyer—perhaps even a partner—may be unwilling to publicly broadcast his lack of knowledge to his colleagues.

This "thank you" e-mail system follows Tom Davenport's idea of "baking" knowledge into work. Davenport, in a recent Harvard Business School Review article posits:

"The key to success . . . is to bake specialized knowledge into the jobs of highly skilled workers—to make knowledge so readily accessible that it can't be avoided. While there are several ways to bake knowledge into knowledge work, the most promising approach is to embed it into the technology that knowledge workers use to do their jobs. That approach ensures the knowledge management is no longer a separate activity requiring additional time and motivation."


[excited utterances]

Quote: "In this second of two feature-length reports from KM Asia 2002, Madan Rao discusses key learnings from KM practitioners in the context of his own "8 Cs" framework for successful practice: connectivity, content, community, culture, cooperation, capacity, commerce and capital." [Serious Instructional Technology]

Here's a mini-case from last April (Knowledge Management: Value Is Relative) on knowledge management thinking applied to an intranet portal.

"Most companies today cannot afford to invest in more technology, more people, more infrastructure," said Carl Frappaolo, an analyst with Delphi Group Ltd., in Boston. "They need to better leverage existing resources. That is where knowledge management comes in."

It's a nice little example of the notion of attacking friction in work processes as a source of value. Putting numbers around the payoffs is a bit of a stretch but the logical argument for value improvement is pretty straightforward.