Knowledge Management: From Brain to Business (PDF 5.5 - Asian ...

important but it is something that we tend to easily overlook. It is really about going back to
the basics before we can move on from communication to knowledge sharing.
Knowledge Sharing
What do we mean when we say effective knowledge sharing? It is:
• Willingness on the part of one individual to communicate information
• Willingness on the part of the receiver of the information to listen and learn
• Application of that learned information to create value for your organization,
ultimately for your customers
Knowledge for knowledge’s sake will not get us much anywhere other than, for example, the
pleasure we might take in having that intellectual stimulation. It does play an important role
in fostering learning in the individual, but ideally, once that individual is provided with the
information and knowledge, he or she must be able to take responsibility to make things
happen and then use it to create value somewhere in the value chain of the organization.
Closing the Gap
How do we close the gap with the customer or whoever your audience may be if you are a
non-profit organization (like the Asian Productivity Organization, for example?) How do you
close that gap so that you are able to enhance communication with those people? How do
you engage them in knowledge sharing for the common good? To do this you have to focus
on harnessing the power of your entire group of people. You have to focus on using that
power to create additional value and you do this by enhancing communication with your
audience, engaging in productive knowledge sharing with your audience and using that
knowledge to streamline and enhance your internal activities.
I am now going to move to some of the tools and business practices that we have developed
within Buckman, which have helped us take our organization to the next level of knowledge
sharing not just internally but with our customers.
The Requirement Alignment Tool is our primary communication tool that we use
internally in Buckman as well as with our customers. This important tool helps us to ensure
that what we do for our customers is always aligned with their requirements and that these
requirements are consistently being met. Let me explain how we employ the Requirement
Alignment Tool to ensure that our customers’ programs and processes are successful. First,
we ask for the customer’s requirements for every system and we document it on the
Requirement Alignment Tool. Then we ask the customer to define the measurements for
success. Third, we make sure that we have the resources and that we are capable of
meeting those requirements or accomplishing the task or tasks according to their
requirements.
It sounds simple but it takes a skilled listener to accomplish this process and make it work.
All our associates are well trained in the application of the Requirement Alignment Tool. It is
at the heart of our Customer Satisfaction Workshop, our Transition Workshop, and we use it
internally also to realign our processes and for our employee appraisal and management
performance as well. The Requirement Alignment Tool process helps us to respond to the
needs of our customers and the problems and issues they face everyday, while at the same
time, being able to react quickly to their changing needs and to the changing business
conditions that surround them.
The Customer Satisfaction Survey (CSS) is our tool for creating dialogue with our
customers, allowing for feedback from them and enhancing knowledge sharing with them.
We use it to communicate with our customers on how we are doing relative to the 8
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