"Measuring Knowledge Value" 

ArkGroup Conference, London, February 2003 - Brief observations
There were some pleasing signs of moving away from the fuzzy thinking that characterised the conference last year, and the "work-about-work" mentality that has gripped the "Quality" and other movements (in part). It was in response to my criticism of this aspect that I was invited to participate this year.
 
Three areas of convergence stood out:
 
1 Strategy
  • Increasing emphasis on the importance of strategic deployment of information resources (both explicit and implicit information) to achieve competitive advantage [value may be relative to direct competition, substitution, or regulation processes, depending on circumstances];
  • Value of "Complex adaptive systems" thinking for understanding organisational  behaviour (in increasingly complex planning & operating environments) rather than continued exclusive reliance on the traditional static, deterministic models;
2 Staff involvement
  • Significance of direct staff & other people cooperative involvement (as well as senior management buy-in) in knowledge management strategy implementation,
  • Acceptance of the importance of psychological factors, although more difficult to quantify,
3 Technology
  • Endorsement of "low-tech" approaches and concern about "hi-tech" knowledge management solutions
  • Emerging low-cost IT processes (e.g. web services) to reduce (& ultimately eliminate) the separation between stakeholders and value-adding business processes, disintermediating the "middle-office" cost-adding processes, while retaining both agility and compliance.
 
Considerable discussion of accounting methods designed to enable managers to better reflect underlying value of businesses and investments. I am not convinced this has yet yielded immediately useable or generally accepted results.
 
The conference addressed in my presentation the attached table showing typical links observed between:

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Disintermediating the "middle-office" 

 

Observed links between culture-related barriers and organisation efficiencies

Efficiency class

How secured

Typical barriers

Dynamic

Generating valuable new “options” that the business can use to advantage immediately or when circumstances are propitious

  • Restrictions on the range of staff (or other stakeholders) engaged in innovative processes

  • Limits imposed on that engagement

  • The willingness and quality of engagement.

Allocative

Making sound management decisions when working within a fixed framework

  • Information not available to inform the decisions;

  • Lack of competence in using the information effectively; and

  • Dysfunction at the interfaces between people and units whose roles are closely related.

Productive

stretching resources used

  • Poor resource utilisation;

  • Poor motivation;

  • Poor quality of required work inputs;