Appreciation of Knowledge Management in Burke Company

Knowledge management of Burke's company

Berkeley is a family business with a history of one hundred years in America. Since its establishment, it has participated in the construction of 20,000 construction projects in 65,438+040 countries and regions on seven continents. At present, there are 465,438+00,000 employees, and the operating income in 2000 reached 654.38+04.3 million US dollars. What is the secret of the company's continuous success?

This paper analyzes the practical cases of implementing knowledge management in this company, and points out that adopting different management methods for different types of knowledge and implementing strong professional leadership are the keys to maximize the benefits of knowledge management.

We can get enlightenment from this: this management model not only promotes the long-term development of large enterprises, but also helps small and medium-sized enterprises to lay a good foundation for knowledge management.

Berkerd regards knowledge and experience as important assets of enterprises and invests funds to strengthen management. However, the company's operating budget is very tight, and all knowledge management plans can only be aimed at those areas with the highest rate of return.

Soon, the managers of this engineering and construction company found that only by optimizing the management of the "compound knowledge" of the enterprise can they get the most full benefits. Those project teams with many years of engineering construction experience have naturally accumulated a lot of professional knowledge, but unfortunately, many of them are not known to others in the enterprise at all. This knowledge is always in a closed and isolated state, and it is difficult for others to access it, so its utilization rate is greatly reduced.

At present, Berkeley Company is trying to establish a set of infrastructure to promote the rapid popularization of composite knowledge, and fully mobilize the strength of each member of the project team in the process. This effort is very helpful for the company to provide better services to customers around the world. At the same time, the profitability of the company's major projects is also expected to be gratifying.

The experience of Berkeley Company shows that urging people in enterprises to make correct decisions is the key to success. On the surface, it is just a question of delegating decision-making power and establishing decision-making responsibility system. But more importantly, we must provide people with the knowledge they need to make correct decisions.

Although many enterprises have realized the importance of strengthening knowledge management, most enterprises have embarked on a wrong path from the beginning. It seems that their mistake lies in adopting a wrong enterprise knowledge learning model. This model simply pays attention to individual learning, which makes enterprises make mistakes in management focus.

The first problem with this wrong policy is that it misleads people to focus only on the content of knowledge. People will say, "We need to manage knowledge about the Japanese market."

In fact, there are many other knowledge classification methods, which hardly consider the specific content of knowledge. For example, in addition to content classification, it can also be classified according to the source of knowledge: can this knowledge be found only in one place or can it be obtained in different places? This way is to ignore the content and pay attention to the classification of sources. In addition, knowledge can be classified according to the following criteria:

Recipient: What kind of people may need this knowledge and experience?

Applicability: How wide is the application scope of this knowledge and experience? Is it only applicable locally or universally?

Transitivity: Is it easy to transfer this knowledge to others? How difficult is it to apply this knowledge correctly?

Content richness: to what extent do these knowledge and experiences need to be specifically analyzed for specific problems? How much will the practical value be lost after simplification?

Timeliness: How long has this knowledge been produced? To what extent is it affected by time?

Credibility: Is this knowledge easy to test? Is its source reliable?

Different types of knowledge and different management methods.

If you consider these aspects at the same time, you will certainly have a preliminary understanding of the classification of knowledge. You can use the following four types to classify knowledge and implement different management methods accordingly:

Easy-to-learn knowledge is simple and easy to learn, but its application scope is not wide. For example, the room reservation clerk at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel knows that Mr. Smith always reserves non-smoking rooms. This experience can be easily conveyed to other relevant staff, but its application scope is very limited. For example, you can't infer from this that no one in Mr. Smith's hometown smokes. For this kind of knowledge and experience that can be mastered quickly, the best management method is to summarize them in a place where everyone can find them, preferably an efficient and informative database.

Some knowledge and experience in popular science knowledge enterprises are easy to impart and have a wide range of applications. Personnel management regulations within the enterprise, such as the filling method of attendance sheet, etc. , is this kind of knowledge. For this "popular" knowledge, it is best to compile it together and distribute it to employees as the basic requirement for popularization within the enterprise.

If a kind of knowledge is widely used but difficult to master, it needs to be popularized through carefully organized training. For example, the essentials and skills of managing large-scale projects belong to this kind of knowledge. Learners can master this knowledge only through personal practice or serious study from experienced people.

One-time knowledge Finally, there is another kind of knowledge in enterprises that is neither easy to learn nor widely used. For example, a network administrator in an office department may be well versed in the operation of the Macintosh, but if most departments of an enterprise use the Windows office system, there is no need to popularize his knowledge and experience, and it is not easy to learn this knowledge. Because the rate of return of this knowledge management is very low, there is no need to care too much about this knowledge management. It is enough to encourage them to set up an informal interest group for those who may use this knowledge for irregular communication.

The best management method is to influence people's actions, implement efficient workflow and provide necessary technical support, and skillfully maintain the balance among the three. Business operation is like this, and the above four types of knowledge and experience are no exception. However, there are different collocations between different types of knowledge. For example, easy-to-learn knowledge is very easy to computerize, so the management in this area should be carried out around information technology to the maximum extent. However, compound knowledge requires maximum emphasis on personnel management. The management of four kinds of knowledge has clear requirements and standards for the investment of capital and manpower. The management of one-time knowledge is "thankless", while the management of compound knowledge is the only key to gain an advantage in the competition.

Change the knowledge transfer mode

An enterprise has learned more knowledge in one day than a person has learned in a lifetime. Therefore, when an individual needs to make a business decision, no matter how knowledgeable he or she is, it is better to learn from the whole enterprise. A decision-maker seeking advice from a consulting group is actually a "many-to-one" knowledge transfer process. When a project team consults on the online discussion database, the process of knowledge transfer becomes "many-to-many".

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Nbsp; This "many-to-many" knowledge transfer model cannot be widely accepted soon. Managers will keep the traditional way of consulting for quite some time, that is, only seek advice from individuals and reliable people. Once they start to try to expand the scope of consultation, they will immediately have a sense of crisis that is out of control: is it that too much knowledge and experience are leaked, or is it that the insiders are too extensive?

In knowledge management, Berkeley Company attaches great importance to the content and scope of knowledge transfer. The customer hired the company because of its rich professional knowledge and experience. But considering these construction projects,

The amount of investment is often huge, and customers often worry that their operating expenses are reasonable.

There are many ways to reduce expenses, but many of them are at the expense of quality or the investment of enterprises in the future. The company's approach seems a little hard to understand. It depends on increasing costs to achieve the purpose of reducing costs. Simply put, if more investment can be provided for accumulating knowledge and experience, enterprises can create more wealth and reduce costs.

This process is far from being as simple as Burke first estimated. The company thinks that as long as an experience exchange center is established and then made public with the help of information technology, everything will be fine. In fact, more energy is devoted to people and working procedures than to technology.

Project managers in Berkeley always think that the challenges they encounter are different from the customers they serve at any time. They don't realize that there is much in common between the knowledge they have gained and the experience their colleagues have gained. In fact, this knowledge has universal applicability, especially in those departments that adopt the same working procedures. Contrary to the views of those project managers, their knowledge and experience are not "one-off", but they are hard to realize this.

Establish a special role management knowledge base

This problem can be partially solved by setting up a person in charge of knowledge management in enterprises. Now, Berkeley has set up a "knowledge president", who is fully responsible for experience and knowledge management. The president of knowledge should actively pay attention to the knowledge input in business projects. Another key figure is the "knowledge manager". Each of them is responsible for a part of the company's knowledge base to ensure that this part of knowledge is collected and distributed in time. This measure has greatly reduced the burden of personnel training in the company. Without this arrangement, enterprises can only know which knowledge is widely used and which knowledge is easy to learn through general training for all employees.

The concept of "knowledge base" was originally a simple "experience repository", and now it includes "easy-to-learn knowledge" and information from different sources inside and outside the enterprise. People in Berkeley attach great importance to ensuring the progress of the project. For them, the biggest problem is that it takes a lot of time to summarize the required information collected from various channels. The company hopes to shorten the project cycle, improve the quality of customer service and obtain greater benefits by establishing a "knowledge super convenience store".

You know, knowledge management is a means rather than an end. Enterprises exist not to spread and popularize knowledge, but to sell their own products and services. However, because the competitive advantage of enterprises depends largely on the scientific nature of enterprise decision-making, the role of knowledge management is extremely important.

While attaching importance to knowledge management, we should also understand that there may be some radical reactions in this process. Just like process innovation, quality management and all areas that need to implement improvement plans, there will always be some minor problems in operation, so there is no need to make a fuss. In the end, the success of knowledge management will definitely dispel the concerns of managers.