KM Mission Insights into German Enterprises

The past three days of our KM study mission has been quite hectic with whistle stop visits to many German organizations who have won acclaims as KM Award winners; Airbus, Brugel, Bosch and GTZ apart from presentations from Atlas Electronic and Siemens. We also had the networking opportunity with German KM society.

A common thread amongst all these success stories of KM is the systematic manner in which Knowledge sharing is attempted and the collective team contribution to the process of transfer of knowledge from the giver to the receiver. Well there had been some individual specific stories behind these cases – for example the Brugel – an SME company started KM from its experience to find a “Black colour Basin” from a partner company through the extranet medium, a small story of which led to the formation of a separate joint sector company to market their products and install KM as an institutional mechanism and win KM award in turn. All other companies have also been able to successfully install KM in either a specific function like Design, Merger and Acquisition department, HR process to transfer knowledge from leaving employees or company wide implementation across departments and geographies.

The presentations in the networking session by different members of the KM society also gave a wide spectrum of the KM movement covering Modern webtools to the KM philososphy considerations. German KM stories are certainly good communication tools for enterprises in other nations in Asia and elsewhere.

KM learning at Germany

I am writing this as we commence our KM Study mission in Germany sponsored by APO. We would be visiting a host of German giant companies like Airbus, Siemens, GTZ etc and understand their KM prowess. I am much impressed with the German way and culture of managing things to perfection. Hope I get good learnings in this mission to carry forward and share with my colleagues and friends.

Gigantic Task to the Knowledge Economy

In the times of Knowledge Economy, where all types of connectivities and basic amenities are taken for granted, there are plenty of situations like this news remainding us of the tasks lying ahead for not only continued growth and emancipation, but also equality and basic humanity. The silver lining in the story is the commitment of the teaching community to impart basic knowledge to the younger generation who would be the first time learners of formal education.

Jai Ho!!

Precious Lesson

No doubt that it is not just enough to have the precious knowledge, but equally important is the way the story is communicated. On the occasion of the "Earth Day", the accompanying video by WWF is a precious reminder to the tasks ahead for the human beings.

Productivity Data - 2009 Some Insights

The Asian Productivity Organisation has published the “Productivity Data for 2009”, which is an annual feature for providing productivity data information, specifically about the Asian nations.

 Some of the findings of the report are reinforcing what is already believed as the Productivity enhancing  factors and some others are revealing new insights. Some interesting findings quoted in the report are:

 ·         Asian Tigers (namely Singapore, Hong Kong, the ROC and Korea), which, together with Japan, continue to show higher level indicators of productivity, such as per capita GDP and labor productivity.

 ·         As the Chinese economy is growing fast, its growing dominance in Asia is seen as a threat to other similar Asian economies related to their economic performance.

 ·         China, followed by India, contributed maximum to the region’s relative expansion. Japan was the only country in Asia that grew more slowly in the region. China and India have been driving the regional  economy over the past decade, with the former accounting for just under 50 per cent of the region’s growth and the latter for 17 per cent..

 ·         The more an economy relies on its agricultural sector, the poorer the country is.

 ·         The service sector accounts for the largest share of the economy in all country groups, independent of their economic development.

 ·         However, manufacturing in China accounted for 47–48 per cent of economic growth between 1995 and 2006. In Korea and Thailand, its contribution is also above 40 per cent. In contrast, the story behind India’s recent growth has been about services, accounting for 63 per cent of economic growth for the period 2000–2006, compared with 16 per cent from manufacturing.

 ·         The contribution from agriculture to the labour productivity growth was around 15 per cent  while manufacturing and services made very similar contributions of 39 per cent and 37 per cent respectively to labour productivity growth.

 ·         Preliminary evidence suggests that service sector labor productivity is largely driven by subsectors which are potentially IT-using in recent years (accounting for 60 per cent of service sector labour productivity growth in China and 86 per cent in India).

 As the Asian Nations are fast transforming themselves into Knowledge Economies in tandom with the advanced countries, I feel that it is imperative to look at the way Productivity Data is compiled and interpreted and there is this much felt need to symbolise the new thinking in terms of "Knowledge Productivity"

Learning Lessons for Corporates from Election Scene

Worried over the effects of recent downturn in the economy resulting in workforce displeasure ? 

Corporate Bosses and KMers have a lot to learn from the political masters wooeing the common electorate of this great nation.

For example, these are some clues derving from the promises being made by our political leaders:

Promise food, snacks and other eatables and drinkables at a throw away price to your workers ( Most of the parties have promised rice, wheat, edible oils etc at 2 Rs. a Kg to common man)

Promise to bring back to the corporate kitty, unjustified bonuses given to the top managers in the past. ( Some parties want the unaccounted money kept in Swiss banks to be returned to India)

Promise reservations for different classes of workers in promotion and other employee benefits and also assure that these can never be reversed in future by anybody. ( Almost all parties want reservations in jobs for different groups)

Promise to provide free facilities for performing religeous prayers for the workmen ( Some parties want to build a temple for Ram and protect Ram Sethu)

Promise to ban ununderstable grammar / abbreviations in IT oriented correspondence in the office ( Some parties want Engligh to be banned in Offices)

Promise to ban computers that create ergonomic problems for the school children. ( Similar to some parties wanting to ban computers in offices)

Promise special facilities for women workers ( As like all parties promising to provide reservation for women in all legislatures)

Finally also promise to democratise the company's management ( Most of the parties never fulfill their promise after being democratically elected)

Knowledge Spam

In one of my earlier posts, I passioned for the KM community to adopt "Green Knowledge" which would embrace environment friendliness in both Technology and culture. Here, there is the news informing that the unwanted spam mails cost to the environment millions of tonnes of CO2 emissions.

The useful essence of knowledge elements give rise to generation of "Wisdom" and Let us KMers similarly try to innovate and eliminate the spams to make the "Technolgy" networked knowledge into "Green Knowledge"

CKO Humour

First CKO: I suggested to my CEO that we should use 'Cloud Computing' to conserve on IT resources and for efficient Knowledge sharing.

Second CKO: He agreed ?

First CKO: He agreed but then asked what we would do for computing on a sunny day !

Courage for Positive Efforts

As we had a discussion meeting with the Pilot Team members of the KM demo project at Bharat Electronics Ltd, Ghaziabad, a KM team member Anita, recited a poem to motivate the group and the following is the inspiration derived from that excellent piece of work:

 Those with courage never fail at their feat

Be positive and observe the soaring spirit

Fear not the waves while rowing the boat

Mere an ant but never gives up the ascent

 

Ignite the spark and soar up the fire

Unite with the task to give up your best

Try try try hard, have nothing to lose

Imagination grows as Knowledge asset

Those with courage never fail at their feat

Be positive and observe the soaring spirit

 

Knowledge Cycle

Recently in a tv programme, a Yoga Guru explained that the three actions of human breathing signifies the life itself; the inhalation is the creation function of Brahma through which is prana sakthi is taken in, the retention of breath equivalent to the sustainance of life done by Vishnu and the exhalation compared to the destruction of unwanted wastes by the Shiva.

Similar anaology can be considered for "Knowledge" where Brahma sythesizes the base element of the knowledge creation, Vishnu signifies the development and sustainance through storing and sharing Knowledge and Shiva finally destroying obsolete knowledge with the nucleus for further new knolwedge synthesis.

Different Approach to Knowledge and Productivity

An year before, the nations of the world had faster economic growth, exponential wealth creation, expansion of trade and services and euphoria in general. That time the people of the world were told to become more and more competitive to take opportunity of the growing economies and the result for the individual was to carry enormous tension, stress, fear and worries in order to achieve competitiveness.

Now, the world is facing recession, depression, destruction of wealth and unemployment. Behold, now the people are told to find new and newer ways of innovative survival to tide over the crisis. The result is however the same, the individuals are even more becoming tension, stress prone and indulging in violent behaviour that creates fear and worries.

Don't we need to develop a totally different approach to deal with the individuals' need of safety, security and peace? - Is knowledge productivity leading to wisdom the answer ?

CKO Humour

First CKO: In our organisation I suggested to the MD that we should develop a culture of rewarding people for sharing knowledge.

Second CKO: Did he agree to that?

First CKO: He says that he already has the habit of rewarding his secret spying informers who share People's whereabouts and doabouts in the office with him.