If Only We Knew What We Know

While companies search the world over to benchmark best practices, vast treasure troves of knowledge and know-how remain hidden right under their noses: in the minds of their own employees, in the often unique structure of their operations, and in the written history of their organizations. Now acclaimed productivity and quality experts Carla O'Dell and Jack Grayson explain for the first time how applying ideas of Knowledge Management can help employers identify their own internal best practices and share this intellectual capital throughout their organizations.

Knowledge Management (KM) is a conscious strategy of getting the right information to the right people at the right time so they can take action and create value,. Basing KM in three major studies of best practices at one hundred companies, the authors demonstrate how managers can utilize a visual model to actually transfer best practices from one business unit of the organization to another. Rich with case studies, concrete examples, and revealing anecdotes from companies including Texas Instruments, Amoco, Buckman, Chevron, Sequent Computer, the World Bank, and USAA, this valuable guide revelas how knowledge treasure chests can be unlocked to reduce product development cycle time, implement more cost-efficient operations, or create a loyal customer base. Finally, O'Dell and Grayson present three "value propositions" built around customers, products, and operations that could result in staggering payoffs as they did at the companies cited above.

No amount of knowledge or insight can keep a company ahead if it is not properly distributed where it's needed. Entirely accessible and immensely readable, If Only We Knew What We Know is a much-needed companion for business leaders everywhere.

• Part One: A Framework for Internal Knowledge Transfer
1. Definitions of Knowledge and Knowledge Management
2. KM in Action — The Transfer of Best Practices
3. The Barriers to Internal Transfer
4. A Model for Best Practice Transfer
• Part Two: The Three Value Propositions
5. Find Your Value Proposition
6. Customer Intimacy
7. Product-to-Market Excellence
8. Achieving Operational Excellence
• Part Three: The Four Enablers of Transfer
9. Culture, the Unseen Hand
10. Using Information Technology to Support Knowledge Transfer
11. Creating the Knowledge Infrastructure
12. Measuring the Impact of Transfer
• Part Four: Report from the Front Lines: Pioneer Case Studies
13. The View from the Top
14. Buckman Laboratories: Empowered by K'Netix^©
15. TI's Best Practice Sharing Engine
16. Becoming a "Knowledge Bank"
17. Sequent Computer's Knowledge "Slingshot"
• Part Five: The Four-Phase Process: Or "What Do I Do On Monday Morning?"
18. Plan, Assess, and Prepare: Phase 1
19. Designing the Transfer Project: Phase 2
20. Implementation: Phase 3
21. Transition and Scale-Up: Phase 4
• Part Six: Conclusion
22. Enduring Prinicples
• Appendix: The Knowledge Management Assessment Tool (KMAT)^©

A very good first primer for the manager on the subject of Knowledge Management.

An excellent book about knowledge transfer and learning processes. Forget the title, good though it is.