"Knowledge is the new basis of competitiveness in post-capitalist society." Peter Drucker.
Introduction
The eloquence of Professor Drucker's phrase should not be passed on to us in transparency, it would seem that we have not yet become aware in organizations that this sentence coined in the 90s really is now the present, "… the future came long ago…" In other words, we are already living in the "knowledge era" where the creation, codification, distribution and management of knowledge in companies is the main competitive advantage of the 21st century.
The command control, after having served as a pillar for companies for more than seventy years, no longer operates with the same effectiveness of yesteryear. The conjunction of technological advances and globalization produced a transformation in the character of work, going from the preponderance of the manual worker to the knowledge worker. Today, as Dr. Paul Romer of Stanford University teaches us, "knowledge is the only unlimited resource, the only asset that increases with use" where the intangible asset, symbolized by intellectual capital, is the main creator of value and has It has become the fundamental base of wealth generation for any business community.
This intellectual capital is defined as the sum of:
- human capital: it is the tacit, implicit and explicit knowledge that people possess. structural capital: it is the knowledge that has been captured and institutionalized within the structure, processes and culture of the organization, that is to say, all that tacit knowledge explicit. relational capital: it is the value of the set of knowledge that is incorporated into the organization and people as a consequence of the value derived from the relationships it maintains with external agents, it is the key to generating new knowledge, managing it effectively and efficiently to contribute to increasing competitiveness organizational.
We must emphasize that there is no structural capital and relational capital if there were no human capital since this is the key generator of the other two capitals, human capital is made up of people from a business community who possess tacit knowledge, that is, knowledge star that all companies want to capture, but it must be borne in mind that the tacit knowledge of the research and development manager of a multinational, the project manager of the refinery assembly project in the Salta jungle, the manager of lathe number 20 in a Japanese automaker, the greengrocer at the Olavarría city branch of a regional supermarket chain or the master lunch box of a refrigerator in the Cabildo neighborhood,It is not a knowledge that belongs to the company, but that knowledge belongs to the person who developed it from their experiences, with which we can say that their apprehension is a dialectical, social and ontological process.
Integrated management systems and knowledge management
Following the title of this article, we propose to describe how knowledge management projects can contribute to the continuous improvement of integrated management systems.
Today, there are numerous companies that have implemented a quality management system in accordance with the ISO 9001: 2008 standard that contributes to the creation of a culture of continuous improvement within a methodological and systematic framework. This is the first step to later incorporate an occupational health and safety management system framed in the OHSAS 18001 standard and the improvement of environmental management framed in ISO 14001. We could say that companies that have all three standards in an integrated manual With shared processes and common management teams, they have an integrated management system for quality, safety and environmental management.
We must also add, without intending to deepen the topic, that the next step is given by models of excellence such as the Japanese Deming, Malcom Baldrige USA, Ibero-American Award or any National Award for Quality in the Latin American countries that have implemented.
But returning to the topic at hand, which is Integrated Management Systems, we must point out that the key to maintaining, developing and optimizing them is to found a culture of lasting improvement that takes root in people so that they are motivated to move the wheel of continuous improvement. perfecting the processes. This said seems simple but it costs a lot to bring it to reality and requires a lot of commitment, leadership and investment.
All in all, we can safely declare that knowledge management projects are a link between integrated management systems and innovation management in organizations, focusing on the most valuable intangible asset: “knowledge of people who integrate it ”and incorporating the main fuel of intrinsic motivation for the“ knowledge worker of the 21st century ”, which is, the recognition of their knowledge, rewarding them not only for creating and having it, but also for sharing it.
We can define knowledge management as the creation of value from the intangible assets of an organization from a process of capturing the collective expertise of a company wherever it resides, in databases, paper, or the minds of companies. people and their distribution to any place where it helps to produce the best results.
What is sought is to identify / create knowledge and take it in the right way and at the right time to the right person so that they can understand and internalize it, to make the best decisions with the aim of solving problems and innovating.
Since information is converted into knowledge through a social process, the approach must consider not only the technological dimension but mainly the human one.
Key elements of a knowledge management project:
- MISSION: aligned to the key driver that drives the business and focused on knowledge management, which defines why it is important for the organization in its current and future competitive environment. This is very important since it complements the scope of the Integrated Management System from the perspective of adding value to the company's stakeholders. KNOWLEDGE COMMUNITIES / PRACTICE COMMUNITIES: they are cross-cutting teams of the organization, which carry a common problem and find in a physical or virtual space the possibility of sharing knowledge, projects, methods, recommendations, etc. In order to solve problems and innovate by building shared truths. KNOWLEDGE MANUAL:where knowledge is made explicit through suggested procedures or "best practices" which are those that produced optimal results in some situations, optimizing the cost / benefit ratio, and which are also recognized as potentially adaptable for use in other situations and recommended for use. This manual should be integrated into the manual of the integrated management system. KNOWLEDGE MAP: The basic idea behind the Knowledge Map is to ensure that the decision maker has access to the highest level of knowledge on the subject available in the organization. It is to detect and disclose "who knows what." LESSONS LEARNED: these are reflections that are drawn from an experience and applied in other similar situations.These lessons often express "what was done well" "what we would do differently" and "how we could improve our way of working to be more effective in the future". Collective learning is achieved through the exchange of experiences. MOTOR TEAM - QUALITY CIRCLES: every knowledge management project should be led by what we call “the motor team”, as its name indicates, this team will be in charge of motorizing, motivating, administer, plan and lead knowledge management projects. From our experience, the implementation of quality circles in the manner of Japanese Kaizen has very good results. There is no doubt that teamwork coupled with a systematic methodology is key for the socialization of knowledge and for achieving commitment to the project. BALANCED SCORECARD:Measurement of the project is essential, since Norton and Kaplan taught us a lot about the subject, so we recommend incorporating indicators from the four key aspects: the financial perspective - the client perspective - the internal process perspective and the training and growth perspective.
Key success factors of a knowledge management project:
- CULTURAL CHANGE: change the paradigm: "having knowledge is having power" to "sharing knowledge is having power". Cultural change, in the sense of cultivating, implies starting from a past, cohabiting in the present and planning a future from this compass, without which we would not know where to go or how to behave. Perceiving culture as a process that must be planned, gestated, put into practice and improved by its leaders from the design of myths, rituals, taboos, totems and necessary heroes, even destroying and creating from the cultural process what is deemed convenient for founding the pillars of a new culture as recycling of the old one. COOPERATIVE ATTITUDE: not only is aptitude important for the success of a project, the attitude of the people is fundamental to achieve adding 2 + 2 = 5, that is, looking for different people creativethat defies the limits that feels part of a common project giving preponderance to the collective over the individual. We say cooperative attitude not innocently, because we find it very interesting here to bring to the fore that wise principle of the cooperative movement that is based on self-effort, solidarity and mutual aid. This lays the foundations for the cultural cohesion necessary to manage knowledge. SPACES OF TRUST: trust is a conferred asset. People deliver it but we reserve the right to withdraw it whenever we want, with each withdrawal it becomes more difficult for us to return it. As we have seen in the last global subprime crisis, trust is the world's scarcest intangible asset.Creating spaces of trust is essential for knowledge to flow in its creation and its sharing, without these spaces it becomes very difficult to manage knowledge. RESISTANCES: resistance to change is natural in all human beings, to overcome it we will have to stop play the little game to think big. In companies we are tired of hearing "it is what there is" "it cannot be changed" "whatever we do nothing will change" phrases in which we notice resignation in the status quo crediting the emotionality of impotence that brings a lot of suffering in communities and loss of value for shareholders. It is also recommended to create a process to identify and overcome it. COMMUNICATION IS PARTICIPATION: According to the RAE, communicating is participating to someone,If we get people to participate with their opinions in the projects, we will make communication more effective, since if I participate with ideas, I take ownership of the project, I feel it is my own and I defend it as such. PILOT TEST: all knowledge management projects begin with a pilot test following the guideline of the business key driver. MOTIVATIONAL SYSTEM: without motivation, the teams do not reach a successful conclusion. We have observed in many companies that motivation goes through a system of compensation, benefits, bonuses, etc. We believe that the weakness of these systems is that they focus on extrinsic motivation and in the course of time for people it becomes part of their salary, which is more of the same and they do not achieve their mission.We fervently believe that these highly criticized systems in the last crisis of decaying capitalism must be complemented with systems of intrinsic motivation, as we say in the neighborhood "let's be professional, but don't lose the amateur heart." MANAGEMENT SUPPORT: management's commitment it is key in any management system and they even have a special chapter in the standards referenced above. This support simply translates into strong leadership, that is, leaders who transform leaders from example and humility, as my dear teacher and mentor Engineer Antonio Irace would say: “what you do speaks so loudly, that what you say is not known. listen. ”THERE IS NO STANDARD MODEL: there is no recipe for a knowledge management project applicable to any organization,Its design must be mainly in accordance with the analysis and management of its culture. It should be borne in mind that although there is a tendency to homogenize the strategic, implementation and support processes, what really differentiates companies is “their culture” and that knowledge management projects aim to develop new paradigms that make the flow of knowledge fertile in order to develop new knowledge. INFRASTRUCTURE AND APPROPRIATE TECHNOLOGY: we said that knowledge management is a social process that has to do with the human, but we must not forget the importance of infrastructure and of technology as a fundamental tool for the development of projects that can be mounted on soft, networks, intranet, Internet and also knowledge manuals. SENSE OF HUMANITY:To paraphrase the biologist and ontological philosopher Humberto Maturana, in his book El Sentido de lo Humano he says “..cultures are networks of conversations, ways of living in the intertwining of language and emotion, and that cultural being implies living in a network of conversations. Consequently, when I say that the human being is a cultural being, what I am saying is that the human arises from culturalization… ”, from which we should deduce that the human is cultural and that to speak and to move is to converse. Conversing as an essential dialectical process to give birth to the knowledge that is found within us, human beings, like a child in the womb of its mother, who needs the help of a midwife to facilitate childbirth.
As we said above, knowledge is the main factor of production and it is lodged in the human brain, that is, it has an anthropocentric, ethical content. It is a practical moral knowledge, that is, a knowledge that deals with human actions from knowledge for action and also knowledge that results in social learning to discover ways of doing useful things for the business community, and that those Shared knowledge is the raw material for innovation.
The key to the success of any knowledge management project has to do with transforming the collaborators of the companies into better men, that their lives are at the service of their being, that the man owns himself in the freedom of his choices ruled by his virtue, developing a deep feeling of harmony that leads to intrinsic motivation that leads him, as Socrates would say, to eudaimonia (happiness), that transforms him into a virtuous man who feels himself a member of a polis, a man who performs actions fair, pious and brave, prevailing in him, the essential emotion that is love as the domain of actions that constitute the other as a legitimate other in coexistence.
The Integrated Management Systems and the Knowledge Management Systems are condemned to run together in the organizations of the “ERA OF KNOWLEDGE”. Together they flow developing sustainable competitive advantages; being the key link for innovation, cultural change, intrinsic motivation, human capital development, communication and long-term profitability.
"Investing in knowledge pays the best interest" Benjamin Frankling.
