Knowledge Management and Technical Communication: A Convergence of Ideas and Skills

1. Knowledge Management and Technical Communication: A Convergence of Ideas and Skills “We are entering (or have entered) the knowledge society in which the basic economic resource . . . is knowledge . . . and where the knowledge worker will play a central role.” –Peter Drucker, 1993

2. What am I arguing? • We are witnessing an unusual convergence. Knowledge management 1993-2003 Technical communication 1993-2003 Convergence—coming together in a common interest or focus Confluence—a flowing or coming together Concurrence—the simultaneous occurrence of events Coincidence—the occurrence of events that happen by the same time by accident but seem to have some connection

3. What am I arguing? Knowledge management/ technical communication 1. While knowledge management has emerged as a new discipline over the past decade, we have redefined ourselves over the same decade (and are continuing to redefine ourselves).

4. What am I arguing? Workplace—research—teaching 2. Now more than ever before we can contribute meaningfully to knowledge management in the workplace as well as in our research and our teaching.

5. What am I arguing? Other opportunities 3 . We are well positioned now to take advantage of many other opportunities in addition to knowledge management.

6. Overview • What is knowledge management and why now? • What’s in it for us? • How do recent efforts to redefineourselves help us? • What are some key research opportunities in knowledge management for us? • What’s ahead for us?

7. What is knowledge management and why now?

8. What is knowledge management and why now? • Knowledge management is a new discipline Ikujiro Nonaka. “The Knowledge Creating Company.” Harvard Business Review. 1991 Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi. The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation. 1995

9. What is knowledge management and why now? • Knowledge management is also now an established discipline • Explosive growth of KM literature in academic books and journals • Growth of conferences, seminars devoted to KM • Abundance of KM articles and books in popular management outlets • KM as big business

10. What is knowledge managementand why now? • Roots in other disciplines: • Management • Information systems • Information technology • Business theory • Social psychology • Organizational behavior • Organizational learning • Communication

11. What is knowledge managementand why now? • Knowledge management is “the process of revealing and mapping the work activities, behaviors, and knowledge sources within an organization.” SusanConway and Char Sligar, Unlocking Knowledge Assets

12. What is knowledge managementand why now? “knowledge management is concerned with identifying, sharing and leveraging organizational knowledge for competitive advantage.” Steffen Raub and Charles-Clemens Ruling

13. What is knowledge managementand why now? “Knowledge management is the transfer of experience.” Managing Partner of KPMG--Canada

14. What is knowledge management and why now? • Explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge • Explicit knowledge—knowledge that we know we know. Can be articulated, codified, stored, transferred through documents • Tacit knowledge—knowledge that we do not know we know. Difficult to articulate and generally expressible only through action

15. What is knowledge management and why now? • Four modes of knowledge conversion Socialization—from tacit to tacit Externalization—from tacit to explicit Combination—from explicit to explicit Internalization—from explicit to tacit

16. What is knowledge management and why now? • “Why all this sudden interest in knowledge?”—Davenport and Prusak, Working Knowledge • New global competition • Trend toward leaner organizations • Realization that technology cannot replace human knowledge or provide its equivalent • Realization that knowledge is the chief asset of organizations

17. What is knowledge management and why now? • New global competition • Japanese companies have been successful because of their ability “to create new knowledge, disseminate it throughout the organization, and embody it in products, services, and systems.” Nonaka Takeuchi--The Knowledge-Creating Company

18. What is knowledge management and why now? • New global competition Learning how to identify, manage, and foster knowledge is vital for companies who hope to compete in today's fast-moving global economy. Davenport and Prusak Working Knowledge

19. What is knowledge management and why now? • Trend toward leaner organizations “The trend toward leaner organizations has also contributed to heightened interest in knowledge, on the principle that you really understand the value of something once its gone.” Davenport and Prusak, Working Knowledge • Aerospace engineers example • Original Ford Taurus design team example

20. What is knowledge management and why now? • Realization that technology cannot replace human knowledge “The assumption that technology can replace human knowledge or create its equivalent has proven false time and again. Developments in technology, on the other hand, are among the positive factors fueling interest in knowledge and its management.” Davenport and Prusak, Working Knowledge

21. What is knowledge management and why now? • Realization that technology cannot replace human knowledge: The information that comes from computer systems may be considerably less valuable to managers than information that flows in from a variety of other sources. Davenport and Prusak Information Ecology

22. What is knowledge management and why now? • Realization that technology cannot replace human knowledge “Technology is the enabler of all forms of knowledge management. . . . It allows the knowledge-based company to collect, codify, publish, share, and innovate through the reuse of knowledge. But technology alone cannot manage knowledge for a company.” Conway and Sligar, Unlocking Knowledge Assets

23. What is knowledge management and why now? • Realization that knowledge is the chief asset of organizations “The metaphysics of global power has changed. Markets are now more valuable than territory, information more powerful than military hardware.” Lance Morrow, Time, Jan 1,1990

24. What is knowledge management and why now? • Knowledge management in practice: 1996—teams of leading heart surgeons from five New England medical centers observed one another’s operating-room practices Result—a 24 percent drop in their overall mortality rate for coronary bypass surgery, or 74 fewer deaths than predicted

25. What is knowledge management and why now? • Knowledge management in practice • 2002—Bermuda-based law firm Appleby, Spurling & Kempe needed a better way to find, manage, and share information • Now has one-stop access to more than 1.5 million content elements including Microsoft Office documents and presentations, Portable Document Format files (PDFs), research articles, intranet and Internet links, records, and people in the firm’s specialized legal databases

26. What’s in it for us?

27. What’s in it for us? “On reflection, there is actually considerable logic behind the idea that technical writers would be able to understand certain forms of knowledge—particularly technical knowledge—and contribute to an electronic repository.” Davenport and Prusak Working Knowledge

28. What’s in it for us? • On the value of KM for technical communicators • Judy Glick-Smith (1998, 2001) • David Leonard (1999) • Cory Wick (2000) • J.D. Applen (2002) • Michael Hughes (2002)

29. What’s in it for us? • Glick-Smith: introduces KM concepts and how KM should be implemented • Leonard: “our discipline is inextricably intertwined with the knowledgemanagementrevolution.” • Wick: technical communicators are contenders for leadership roles in knowledge management

30. What’s in it for us? • Applen: “technical communicators . . . are at the center of an organization’s knowledge” • Hughes: technical communicators add value “by creating organization (internal) knowledge”

31. What’s in it for us? • Corey Wick’s article “Knowledge Management and Leadership Opportunities for Technical Communicators.”

32. What’s in it for us? • Wick argues that Technical Communicators have three core competencies: They have a thorough understanding of the complexities of knowledge, language, and communication. They are exceptionally talented in working across functions, departments, and all disciplines. Most, importantly, they are expert communicators.

33. What’s in it for us? • Some positives • Recognition—recognition for “the value of capturing, synthesizing, distributing, and reusing knowledge on a broad scale, a value on which the field of technical communication was built” (Wick 521). • Opportunities—more opportunities for technical communicators to employ their talents and competencies in new areas • Perceptions—KM now perceived as vital driver of business

34. What’s in it for us? • Some negatives • Technical communicators are among the last to be identified as potential contributors • Technical communicators are filling supporting roles, not leading ones • Technical communication is “in danger of perpetuating its history of under empowerment and obscurity”

35. What’s in it for us? • A call for a paradigm shift: “If knowledge management represents a paradigm shift in the way business is perceived and conducted, then technical communicators must also change paradigms to meet the needs of an evolving business climate. We must move beyond demanding adequate recognition and compensation for our contributions.” Corey Wick

36. How do recent efforts to redefine ourselves help us?

37. How do recent efforts to redefine ourselves help us? • The past—the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s • Technical writing is different • Technical communication has its roots in rhetoric • Technical writing has humanistic value • Technical communication has an image problem

38. How do recent efforts to redefine ourselves help us? • The past decade • Janice Redish and Judith Ramey (1995) • Ann Rockley (2001) • William Hart-Davidson (2001) • Saul Carliner (2001) • Muriel Zimmerman (2001) • Marjorie Davis (2001) • Michael Hughes (2002)

39. How do recent efforts to redefine ourselves help us? • Redish and Ramey—we add value in measurable ways • Redish—we need to be involved in the planning of single-sourcing systems • Rockley—we may want to become information technologists • Hart-Davidson—we have a central role to play in information technology systems

40. How do recent efforts to redefine ourselves help us? • Carliner—we are information designers • Zimmerman—we will play different roles in user support • Davis—we must move from craftsperson to professional • Hughes—we must see ourselves as knowledge creators

41. How do recent efforts to redefine ourselves help us? • Michael Hughes’ article “Moving From Information Transfer to Knowledge Creation: A New Value Proposition for Technical Communicators” Hughes is president and founder of Working Knowledge, Inc.

42. How do recent efforts to redefine ourselves help us? • Hughes argues that we must move beyond seeing ourselves as information packagers to seeing ourselves as knowledge creators. • We make three important contributions as knowledge creators.

43. How do recent efforts to redefine ourselves help us? 1. Technical communicators are knowledge specialists who help SMEs make explicit what has become tacit: Probing interviews Critical reverse engineering

44. How do recent efforts to redefine ourselves help us? 2. Technical communicators help design teams arrive at consensus (group knowledge) about what the product is or does: Usability tests Document review process

45. How do recent efforts to redefine ourselves help us? 3. Technical communicators create knowledge assets: Creators of knowledge think beyond the concept of documentation and think in terms of knowledge management systems. The more technical communicators do to create systems that make the knowledge within the documentation searchable or otherwise accessible, the more value they add.

46. What are some key research opportunities in KM for us?

47. What are some key research opportunities in KM for us? • Some potential research areas: • Metaphors and analogies • Vocabularies • Taxonomies • Narratives • Environments • Pedagogies

48. What are some key research opportunities in KM for us? • Metaphors and analogies • 1978 example of Honda City, a different kind of automobile. • “Let’s gamble” • “Automobile Evolution”—If the automobile were an organism, how should it evolve? • “man-maximum, machine-minimum” • Image of a sphere • “Tall Boy” Nonaka and Takeuchi, The Knowledge-Creating Company

49. What are some key research opportunities in KM for us? • Metaphors and analogies “Externalization is . . . often driven by metaphor and/or analogy. Using an attractive metaphor and/or analogy is highly effective in fostering direct commitment to the creative process.” –Nonaka and Takeuchi, The Knowledge-Creating Company

50. What are some key research opportunities in KM for us? • Metaphors and analogies • Sample research questions: • What are the best success stories of metaphors and analogies leading to corporate innovation? • Why are metaphors and analogies so effective for motivating groups to create and produce? • What kinds of metaphors and analogies work best and why?