Knowledge Management Toolkit

Much has already been written on Knowledge Management at a fairly theoretical level. This resource focuses, for the first time, on how to:

• communicate the ideas behind Knowledge Management;
• conduct a feasibility study within your organization;
• prepare a plan for implementing Knowledge Management;
• engage and involve everyone in the process;
• start work on the changes to your process, infrastructure and procedures that will help you build and use your corporate knowledge base.

If you've been given the responsibility for this process, you will need answers to the 'what, where, why and how' of Knowledge Management that you can use to support your strategy and to communicate both up and down the organization. These are provided in Part I of the Toolkit.

Building a successful Knowledge Management process involves changing the culture and systems within your organization, as well as people's behaviour. Part II takes you through the organizational and cultural issues you need to explore prior to developing a project plan. It also includes help on writing a business case and presents the different methods for auditing and locating knowledge within your organization.

Finally, Part III contains checklists, activities and sessions that will enable you to crack some of the key issues such as the knowledge audit, the project plan, communication and training.

The success of your Knowledge Management strategy at an individual, team and organizational level will depend on the ongoing involvement and commitment of everyone involved. This Toolkit doesn't offer any shortcuts in the process. However, it does offer a varied collection of facts, figures, techniques, checklists and management tools that will help you and your colleagues every step of the way.

• Part I: Introducing Knowledge Management
1. What is Knowledge Management?
• What is Knowledge?
• What is Knowledge Management?
  
2. Where do we find knowledge in organizations?
• Creating and accessing information
• The importance of documenting knowledge
• Intellectual property
  
3. Why manage knowledge?
• The changing face of organizations
• The potential benefits of managing knowledge
• Knowledge Management and organizational learning
  
4. How do we manage knowledge?
• Outline of the Knowledge Management process
• Ideas for sharing knowledge
• Potential pitfalls
• In summary
  
• Part II: The Knowledge Management process
5. Planning and preparation
• Organizational factors affecting Knowledge Management
• Developing the business case for Knowledge Management
  
• The knowledge audit
• Knowledge mapping
  
6. Implementation
• Capturing knowledge
• Classifying knowledge
• Technology for storing and disseminating knowledge
  
7. Next steps
• Pulling it all together
• Roles and skills for Knowledge Management
• Links to Knowledge Management resources
  
• Part III: Tools and techniques
8. Introduction to the Knowledge Management Toolkit
• Who the Toolkit is aimed at
• Stages covered by the Toolkit
  
9. Will our current practices support Knowledge Management?
• Investigation of current practices
• Human Resources checklist
• Internal communications checklist
• Current technology checklist
  
10. Gaining agreement to proceed
• Communicating with senior managers
• What Knowledge Management is (and is not)
• Current perceived issues relating to your business
• The business case for implementation
• What decisions need to be made?
• Next steps/action plan
  
11. Planning and conducting a knowledge audit
• The Knowledge Management audit
• Planning the audit
• The audit process
• Knowledge audit interviews/workshops
• Sessions with senior managers
• Workshops for gathering information and ideas
• Preparation for the workshop
• Running the workshop
• After the workshop
• Audit checklist for organizational issues
• Audit checklist for individuals
• End of audit
• Knowledge mapping
  
12. Planning the Knowledge Management project
• Planning the project
  
13. Implementing the Knowledge Management process
• Classifying your knowledge
• Selecting technology for Knowledge Management
  
14. Communication and training
• Session plan: an introduction to Knowledge Management
• Overhead projector masters
  
15. Reviewing, action planning and next steps
• Action planning
• Next steps
  

This book was very hyped, so I bought it (even though it was very expensive). Imagine my disappointment when it turns up as a binder and is a course in KM. A bad course as well.

You can miss this without any regrets. In fact, it could be used as landfill material in my new house, as that is probably the best value I can get out of it…