Sidorin: KnowledgeConf - this is about how to keep knowledge with an average duration of work in one place in 2-3 years
In today's world, products are released faster, and people linger in the company on average just a couple of years. We talked with one of the key speakers of KnowledgeConf, Alexey Sidorin, the head of the Knowledge Management and Corporate Communications Department at CROC, about how these factors influence the participation of employees in the knowledge sharing process.
Aleksey is a very interesting person: the creator and curator of the Knowledge Office and the internal knowledge base of KROK. Business architect and methodologist for the implementation of business applications and integrated projects. As well as the CROC evangelist on big data, knowledge management and the digital economy. Lecturer and guest expert at Moscow State University, NII HSE, Moscow State Technical University. N.E. Bauman, REU them. G.V. Plekhanov and other universities. CROC MBA lecturer. Lead workshops on IT trends and innovations.
In his report, he will describe the chronology of the formation of the knowledge management system at CRIC and will provide examples from his own external practice. And now we asked him questions about the main problems in knowledge management, about how the main speaker and insider sees and assesses our April conference and what will happen at it.
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- What are the origins and what is the problem of knowledge management?
Alexey : To begin with, the very definition of knowledge management is very broad. Each company understands it in its own way. In general, this is an effective management of the points of birth and consumption of some information within the business processes of companies.
Previously, only a few people worked on a complex problem within the framework of a design bureau - a master and apprentices. They quite successfully exchanged knowledge for long periods of time. However, now this process is simply impossible to use - people work in companies for a maximum of three years and leave with their knowledge.
In other words, the problem was always, and the search for a solution was always necessary. But now there are many factors that influence these processes and complicate the exchange of knowledge. We need to look for new approaches and tools.
- Knowledge management in this format is relevant only for IT?
Alexey : I think this is relevant for all industries where there is an added intangible value. And this is almost any business, non-state and even government agencies. But each industry in this context has its own characteristics. For any nuclear power industry, the absence of knowledge transfer processes is a blocking moment (if you do not save knowledge, irreparable things can happen). That is why they have for many years managed knowledge - a mandatory element, prescribed in the IAEA directives (International Atomic Energy Agency - the organization that controls this industry). At the same time, there are many industries where it is not so in demand.
In IT, knowledge management is critical, because everything is changing very quickly, a large number of people are participating in the rotation in the market, new technologies are constantly emerging. This applies to any development, and not only technical (directly programming, where you need to understand why certain decisions were taken), but also maintaining communications and interaction with customers. But, of course, IT is not the only such industry.
- Does the command format (distributed, remote) affect the demand for knowledge management?
Alexey : Of course. Previously, in our presentations, we even focused on this attention (if you have a geographically distributed company, then knowledge management is very necessary). But now I stopped doing that. As the topic deepened, it became clear that there were a lot of specific factors complicating the exchange of knowledge. This may be a particular corporate culture, geographical distances, cultural barriers between people, and industry characteristics. In these conditions it is not very correct to focus only on distribution.
At the same time, the tasks of the companies are also different. In some cases, the right knowledge base is important, and in others informal or project communication.
- Who in general should be engaged in building work with knowledge in the organization?
Alexey: This is a good and non-trivial question.
Historically, in Western companies (with a bias in the business - to white collar workers), HR is involved in this. All knowledge management grows out of the HR service, because this topic is more associated with proper communication. In Russian companies, especially in manufacturing, knowledge management most often grows from the producers themselves, who set themselves the task: “How would I, through knowledge management, reduce the number of errors and increase efficiency?”. According to our observations in Russia, the owner of this process is most often an ideological person from business or sometimes from HR (development director or another C1 level manager) who is ready to take it upon himself.
- HR, probably, in any case, should be connected to this process, because knowledge management in a company often begins with their regulations and courses of the “young fighter”?
Alexey : Any general process related to knowledge management, in one way or another, rests against people, their culture and especially their interaction. Therefore, HR, who understands the corporate culture of the company and knows which topics will come in and which ones will not, must of course support the process.
But we must bear in mind that not all HR companies are human resource management services in a broad sense. In some companies, this is only HR service, which does not fully understand the value of knowledge management and does not have an answer to the question of why this process applies to them at all.
- Does the process of knowledge management relate to the retention of professionals who carry this knowledge?
Alexey : If you philosophically reason, then, probably, it does. But in the market these tasks are most often not associated. Everyone understands that it is important to retain employees, this is a key process in the company. But in our experience, he has nothing to do with a person who is engaged in knowledge management.
- KnowledgeConf 2019 is the first conference of this kind?
Alexey : No. Every year we participate in some conferences on the topic of knowledge management. But this year I noted a peak of these conferences.
The topic of knowledge management is actively gaining popularity of the year since 2012. Even master's and bachelor's programs in universities, departments that deal with this topic have appeared. But until recently, knowledge management was a somewhat marginal topic, since it was difficult to assess what is included and what is not. Accordingly, each event organizer interpreted it in his own way. Someone focused on coaching community management, someone in theory.
For the first time I see such serious preparation in this field. The organizers form the community, work with the participants of the topic. And the first time I see such a composition of people. Everyone with whom I have ever spoken on the topic of knowledge management, go to this event either as a speaker or as a listener.
- What do you think is the purpose of the event?
Alexey: Knowledge management has always lived in some kind of a separate party. There are people who seriously and consciously do this, use the terminology of "knowledge management". But besides them there are a huge number of people who solve the same tasks unconsciously. They simply create platforms for communications, make portals or structured libraries. In my opinion, the purpose of this event is to spread the experience of people who have studied the topic from the methodological side to “practitioners” who simply tried different approaches, learned something from their mistakes and could learn something else. In other words, bring together all the representatives of IT and business who are concerned about this problem.
- What will be the main reports?
Alexey : A lot of different topics are planned - from the philosophy of how to properly engage in knowledge in general, what kind of entity is in an organizational environment, to solving very specific practical problems. Basically, all reports are built on their own experience, i.e. these are not just some stories about the methodology, but practice with specific examples.
- Who would be interested to attend the conference? Should HR come to her?
Aleksey : I would highly recommend HR companies to IT companies. In addition, there will be many useful things for IT people who are faced with the task of building knowledge management in companies. They put it to business, but they do not know how to approach it - you need to implement some kind of tool or do something else. No less interesting will be the ideologists of knowledge management in companies that are responsible for development or simply want to increase the efficiency of this process, understanding that people and their intangible assets (what they have in their heads) are all that the company has.
- Are there any positions in the organizational structure in which this would be especially useful?
Alexey : I don’t think that there will be any special ideas at the conference that only the team leaders or project managers need in order to manage their team more effectively. It seems to me that this event is not about personal life hacking, but about how to organize the entire knowledge management process within the company.
But if this topic is interesting, the conference will be useful in any case. Because any initiative team leader who does not want to wait until the company comes to this can start this process himself.
In this case, KnowledgeConf will be the very inspirational event, from which it will be possible to take some concrete steps for implementation tomorrow. Actually, we invite everyone there. In the program committee of the conference, 24 reports were split into four streams, so that in general it would be more “wise”. And I think that many will find there relevant topics and cases.
Aleksey is a very interesting person: the creator and curator of the Knowledge Office and the internal knowledge base of KROK. Business architect and methodologist for the implementation of business applications and integrated projects. As well as the CROC evangelist on big data, knowledge management and the digital economy. Lecturer and guest expert at Moscow State University, NII HSE, Moscow State Technical University. N.E. Bauman, REU them. G.V. Plekhanov and other universities. CROC MBA lecturer. Lead workshops on IT trends and innovations.
In his report, he will describe the chronology of the formation of the knowledge management system at CRIC and will provide examples from his own external practice. And now we asked him questions about the main problems in knowledge management, about how the main speaker and insider sees and assesses our April conference and what will happen at it.
')
- What are the origins and what is the problem of knowledge management?
Alexey : To begin with, the very definition of knowledge management is very broad. Each company understands it in its own way. In general, this is an effective management of the points of birth and consumption of some information within the business processes of companies.
This process existed from time immemorial, always being a strategic advantage. But now they have started talking more actively about knowledge management, because the processes have become more complex, and mistakes are more critical.
Previously, only a few people worked on a complex problem within the framework of a design bureau - a master and apprentices. They quite successfully exchanged knowledge for long periods of time. However, now this process is simply impossible to use - people work in companies for a maximum of three years and leave with their knowledge.
In other words, the problem was always, and the search for a solution was always necessary. But now there are many factors that influence these processes and complicate the exchange of knowledge. We need to look for new approaches and tools.
- Knowledge management in this format is relevant only for IT?
Alexey : I think this is relevant for all industries where there is an added intangible value. And this is almost any business, non-state and even government agencies. But each industry in this context has its own characteristics. For any nuclear power industry, the absence of knowledge transfer processes is a blocking moment (if you do not save knowledge, irreparable things can happen). That is why they have for many years managed knowledge - a mandatory element, prescribed in the IAEA directives (International Atomic Energy Agency - the organization that controls this industry). At the same time, there are many industries where it is not so in demand.
In IT, knowledge management is critical, because everything is changing very quickly, a large number of people are participating in the rotation in the market, new technologies are constantly emerging. This applies to any development, and not only technical (directly programming, where you need to understand why certain decisions were taken), but also maintaining communications and interaction with customers. But, of course, IT is not the only such industry.
- Does the command format (distributed, remote) affect the demand for knowledge management?
Alexey : Of course. Previously, in our presentations, we even focused on this attention (if you have a geographically distributed company, then knowledge management is very necessary). But now I stopped doing that. As the topic deepened, it became clear that there were a lot of specific factors complicating the exchange of knowledge. This may be a particular corporate culture, geographical distances, cultural barriers between people, and industry characteristics. In these conditions it is not very correct to focus only on distribution.
At the same time, the tasks of the companies are also different. In some cases, the right knowledge base is important, and in others informal or project communication.
- Who in general should be engaged in building work with knowledge in the organization?
Alexey: This is a good and non-trivial question.
Historically, in Western companies (with a bias in the business - to white collar workers), HR is involved in this. All knowledge management grows out of the HR service, because this topic is more associated with proper communication. In Russian companies, especially in manufacturing, knowledge management most often grows from the producers themselves, who set themselves the task: “How would I, through knowledge management, reduce the number of errors and increase efficiency?”. According to our observations in Russia, the owner of this process is most often an ideological person from business or sometimes from HR (development director or another C1 level manager) who is ready to take it upon himself.
In IT, knowledge management is best lived when IT professionals themselves take it - decide to make a tool and provide it to employees. But if IT does not have methodological support from the business, the tool will be very weak and unpopular.
- HR, probably, in any case, should be connected to this process, because knowledge management in a company often begins with their regulations and courses of the “young fighter”?
Alexey : Any general process related to knowledge management, in one way or another, rests against people, their culture and especially their interaction. Therefore, HR, who understands the corporate culture of the company and knows which topics will come in and which ones will not, must of course support the process.
But we must bear in mind that not all HR companies are human resource management services in a broad sense. In some companies, this is only HR service, which does not fully understand the value of knowledge management and does not have an answer to the question of why this process applies to them at all.
- Does the process of knowledge management relate to the retention of professionals who carry this knowledge?
Alexey : If you philosophically reason, then, probably, it does. But in the market these tasks are most often not associated. Everyone understands that it is important to retain employees, this is a key process in the company. But in our experience, he has nothing to do with a person who is engaged in knowledge management.
- KnowledgeConf 2019 is the first conference of this kind?
Alexey : No. Every year we participate in some conferences on the topic of knowledge management. But this year I noted a peak of these conferences.
The topic of knowledge management is actively gaining popularity of the year since 2012. Even master's and bachelor's programs in universities, departments that deal with this topic have appeared. But until recently, knowledge management was a somewhat marginal topic, since it was difficult to assess what is included and what is not. Accordingly, each event organizer interpreted it in his own way. Someone focused on coaching community management, someone in theory.
Therefore, I cannot say that the KnowledgeConf is the first event on this topic. But it really attracted attention due to its wide coverage - for the first time people of different circles gather at the same site, who, it seems to me, did not intersect before.
For the first time I see such serious preparation in this field. The organizers form the community, work with the participants of the topic. And the first time I see such a composition of people. Everyone with whom I have ever spoken on the topic of knowledge management, go to this event either as a speaker or as a listener.
- What do you think is the purpose of the event?
Alexey: Knowledge management has always lived in some kind of a separate party. There are people who seriously and consciously do this, use the terminology of "knowledge management". But besides them there are a huge number of people who solve the same tasks unconsciously. They simply create platforms for communications, make portals or structured libraries. In my opinion, the purpose of this event is to spread the experience of people who have studied the topic from the methodological side to “practitioners” who simply tried different approaches, learned something from their mistakes and could learn something else. In other words, bring together all the representatives of IT and business who are concerned about this problem.
- What will be the main reports?
Alexey : A lot of different topics are planned - from the philosophy of how to properly engage in knowledge in general, what kind of entity is in an organizational environment, to solving very specific practical problems. Basically, all reports are built on their own experience, i.e. these are not just some stories about the methodology, but practice with specific examples.
- Who would be interested to attend the conference? Should HR come to her?
Aleksey : I would highly recommend HR companies to IT companies. In addition, there will be many useful things for IT people who are faced with the task of building knowledge management in companies. They put it to business, but they do not know how to approach it - you need to implement some kind of tool or do something else. No less interesting will be the ideologists of knowledge management in companies that are responsible for development or simply want to increase the efficiency of this process, understanding that people and their intangible assets (what they have in their heads) are all that the company has.
- Are there any positions in the organizational structure in which this would be especially useful?
Alexey : I don’t think that there will be any special ideas at the conference that only the team leaders or project managers need in order to manage their team more effectively. It seems to me that this event is not about personal life hacking, but about how to organize the entire knowledge management process within the company.
But if this topic is interesting, the conference will be useful in any case. Because any initiative team leader who does not want to wait until the company comes to this can start this process himself.
In our experience, successful knowledge management processes often start from the bottom up, not from the top down. When a team simply does this because it is profitable and convenient for them, then the proposed practices are extended to the entire company.
In this case, KnowledgeConf will be the very inspirational event, from which it will be possible to take some concrete steps for implementation tomorrow. Actually, we invite everyone there. In the program committee of the conference, 24 reports were split into four streams, so that in general it would be more “wise”. And I think that many will find there relevant topics and cases.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/448606/
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