PlantSuccess
Newsletter
Volume III, Issue 2
22 January 2003
Dear
Subscriber:
Advances in
technology continue at a dizzying speed. Unfortunately, this is not enough.
Understanding business drivers and the successful implementation of technology is
required to increase productivity and lead economic growth. We want change in
the economy (particularly in capital spending) and will accept status quo in
other areas, most notably Moore’s Law.
This is
amazing. In 1965 (37+ years ago!) Intel’s Gordon Moore created a “law”
that became shorthand for the rapid, unprecedented growth of technology. He
predicted that the number of transistors on a chip would grow exponentially
with each passing year. At the time, even Moore never imagined it might still
be true today. It is. Intel’s technologies currently support one billion
transistors on a chip versus 2300 when this race began.
Developments
in technology will continue; consolidations will accelerate; even VC money will
return to spur the growth of many of these technologies and their providers.
The heady days of the technology bubble are gone and will not return; managers
doing a better job managing technology and a major corporate asset – people,
will make better decisions.
Enlightened
managers will accelerate their efforts to manage one of a corporation’s
greatest assets – knowledge. For years we have talked about the loss of
important knowledge as our experienced plant workers and managers retire and
opt for early retirement packages. In the short-term, the income statement
looks better; if we could place a value on knowledge, the balance sheet would
show a significant, negative change.
PlantSuccess
is pleased to offer a review of the first in a series of books, “Circle of
Knowledge,” by John Voeller, chief knowledge officer and chief
technology officer for Black & Veatch Corporation. Additional information
and this series of books are available for sale at www.PlantSuccess.com.
We continue
to be very pleased with the number of visitors who value the content of our
website and review and download presentations from all PlantSuccess
conferences. We have had many requests and are pleased to offer a CD with
presentations from 2002, including the 4th annual PlantSuccess
conference and the four regional conferences of last spring. There are thirty
presentations by innovative managers from the industry’s leading companies. A
goal for the future is to capture and make available the presentation and
follow-on discussion as well.
Visit www.PlantSuccess,com to request a CD
and to learn more about PlantSuccess Gulf Coast 2003, 9-10 April at the
Hilton Houston NASA Clear Lake.
Carl Howk,
Chairman
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“Circle of Knowledge” by John Voeller, chief
knowledge officer and chief technology officer, Black & Veatch
Corporation.
The topic,
knowledge management, is not new to any of us. Articles abound and periodicals
are dedicated to the subject; we have used – or misused – the term for years
Finally,
John Voeller, known to many of us as a technologist, speaker, friend and mentor
has written a series of books that puts this topic into terms we can understand
and hopefully will provide a compelling argument and the tools we can use to
implement knowledge management.
“Circle of Knowledge, A Guide for Bringing
Knowledge Management to Your Business,” is a series of five volumes that should be read by everyone
with the responsibility or interest to improve a company’s operations –
position in a market, targeting customers, developing products, choosing
suppliers, managing support services, etc. Voeller’s goal for writing this
series was to: “enable everyone in an organization to achieve a common
understanding of the most critical resource they have, which is their knowledge
and the knowledge of their people, their suppliers and their customers.”
Voeller
cites the success of knowledge management in Europe and a primary reason:
“Knowledge is one of the most important things in our lives, but none of us has
ever placed our hands on it. In Europe, knowledge is considered a tangible
asset; something one can borrow money against.” This is not true in the US.
The first
in this series does a great job defining the terms and putting everything into
context. Voeller’s style of writing is straightforward; numerous figures make
complex concepts easy to understand. The first volume contains 15 chapters,
detailed appendices, and an extensive bibliography. Voeller defines knowledge
and intellectual property, discusses the various kinds of knowledge, and
introduces his Circle of Knowledge (CoK) as a framework within which the
many kinds of knowledge we require might be organized.
The CoK
consists of these main sectors and examples:
Ongoing – Current knowledge that peers need to coordinate with each
other.
Reuse – Historical knowledge that can be reused to make subsequent work
cheaper, faster and/or clearer.
Best Practice – A repository of corporate preferred methods of
accomplishing certain tasks or functions in a low-risk, high quality manner.
Lessons Learned – A repository of ideas and observations about the best
method for accomplishing key tasks or processes.
Expertise Management – An easy method for finding the right person with the
right knowledge quickly.
External Dependent – Knowledge from authoritative sources, such as codes,
standards and outside experts.
External Relational – Knowledge from customers and other stakeholders that is
current and will guide others on best approaches to build or sustain mutual
relations.
This
framework simplifies the understanding of knowledge management and the
contribution that can be made to all of our businesses; statements of experience
abound. My attention was captured when I saw the often-heard expression “reinventing
the wheel” which Voeller describes as “an innocent phrase that does not
begin to capture the waste inherent in failing to capture and reuse knowledge
already gathered and refined.” Clearly, it’s not so innocent.
Voeller
raises the fundamental question, “What do we know and where does what we know
reside?” and discusses knowledge mapping and the knowledge food chain with
detailed figures explaining the primary benefits of knowledge management.
Success
with knowledge management is difficult; there are few examples of commercial
success. Europe leads with KPMG – Netherlands, Skandia, KEMA, Royal Dutch Shell
and British Petroleum (BP); the US count includes Dow Chemical and Buckman
Laboratories.
Voeller
sees great potential for the Web in knowledge management and cites a lingering
misunderstanding that has been magnified by vendors’ attempts to convince people
that their products are knowledge management tools when this is seldom the
case. “The most glaring duplicity is the touting of document management as
knowledge management,” claims Voeller. “The lack of formal methods and
guidelines for identifying knowledge is the second most common contributor to
failure in knowledge efforts.”
Regarding
technology, Voeller’s warning is harsh, “Any enterprise considering knowledge
management must avoid one thing above all else regarding technology: it never
comes first. No technology should even be remotely considered until the
culture, its people and its processes are moving strongly up the learning
curve.”
On the
positive side, success in knowledge management is a matter of four simple
ingredients:
The loss of
knowledge will continue to be a major challenge for manufacturers in the
process industry. Effective knowledge management can be a solution. John
Voeller’s series of books on bringing knowledge management to your business
will help.
Visit www.PlantSuccess.com to learn more and
to purchase Volume 1 or the complete set.
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Although mainstream adoption of Web services is likely 2 to 3 years
away, a new report from the Yankee Group, based on interviews with corporate
customers, predicts Web Services have the potential to be second only to the
Internet in their importance and impact on corporations and consumers. READ
MORE.
According
to a recent NSF survey, half of US adults don’t know the answer. This survey
found that 42 percent of adults said they couldn't be bothered with science and
technology issues -- this at a time when literacy in both have enormous impact
on the nation's health and economy.
Merely the product of a bad education system, can we expect
the kids to think any differently? READ MORE.
The
PlantSuccess Newsletter generates a substantial number of visits to our
website, we welcome the interest and the access to previous issues of the
Newsletter which are available there. If you'd like to share this newsletter
with a colleague, just forward a copy. Subscribe or cancel by sending a request
to Carl.Howk@PlantSuccess.com
Full links to Volume III, Issue 2 Newsletter articles: