CONTENTS

Dear KMGN members,

The KMGN summer school of 2022 included an extensive program facilitated by Arthur Shelley and his team over 8 weeks to learn about ACE – the Accelerated Collaboration Experience. It turned to be crucial to review some known concepts, challenge “known knows” and identify new ways of thinking, learning and, of course, collaborating.

One of the KMGN-culture assumptions relates to “no negative feedback”, which should, of course, secure an open-minded dialogue, support weak and insecure participants to contribute their ideas, and avoid patterns of justification in the line of “that never worked before” (and therefore will not work now). This culture of collaboration shall be in the focus of the KMGN HacKMthon, a new format that connects KMers over 8 hours and several time zones from Australia to Austria – and beyond. Please register to contribute to one of 4 challenges already identified in the Pre-HacKMthon.

The successful application of KM, the collective review of knowledge development, exchange and refinement was the core element of a multi-year project in an international alliance of early pedagogic network covering four nations with four very different languages. The program focusses on how to establish language development at the early age of 2–6-year old’s and make them aware of their neighbor’s tongue. Reviewing, assessing, and improving the shared Intellectual Capital among more than 60 experts representing this network is a major KM activity and helps to continue their work.

A strong organization is usually considered a resilient one. Kristina Mirchuk presents insights on the connection between knowledge management and resilience in a turbulent context. She reflects the general idea then focuses on the value added that is provided if organizations consider developing resilience in time.

Interesting discussions emerged in the ICKM 2022. Pavel Kraus from Swiss Knowledge Management Forum shares his insights of the recent event in Potsdam, close to Berlin, where more than 120 people presented their academic and applied insights to KM.

Collaboration between strangers and regular participants not-so-strange-anymore constitute the essence of the GfWM organized BarCamp GfWM Knowledge Camp GKC. Andreas Matern drives this major event of the German speaking KMers as organizer for many years and shares his recipe to make it a continuing success story.

A culture of friendly conversations and collaboration among very different fields of research was a trademark for the historic Vienna Circle. Karl Popper influenced this circle and established a new view on science. His long-term impact on KM is elaborated in “who is who”.

This Newsletter was sponsored by the Germany Speaking Communities in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland – GfWM and SKMF with guest input from Spain.

Author: Dr. Manfred Bornemann - GfWM

How can we measure the impact of investments on the intangible assets of a region? How can we assess if the expected strategic outcomes are accomplished? And where would further investments yield the highest benefit? The Office of the Lower Austrian Government, Department of Kindergartens faced these questions in their long-term vision project to improve the language skills of very young children aged 3-6 in a cross-border network project with Hungary, Slovakia, and Czech Republic. The official name is “Educational Cooperation in the Border Region”, it was funded by INTERREG, details can be found here.

The first of a series of 15 projects started as early as 2011. Over a timeframe of 10 years, the network expanded, additional partners were involved. The original focus on strengthening language skills to literally establish “better cultural understanding” among children from very different backgrounds shifted eventually to STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics). But the “core” of the project remained remarkable stable: How can kindergarten teachers better share their experiences among each other – not only within a region, but among 14 different ones, with 4 official languages, different legal contexts, and different conceptional ideas on the purpose of a kindergarten? The “product” of their core processes is an intangible one: educating the next generation has a very long-term impact, not only on the individuals, but on the regional mobility, and, ultimately, economic performance measured financially as GDP.

Up to 64 representatives of 4 nations, 14 regions, from kindergartens, administrative experts, universities who educate kindergarten teachers to name only a few, met to identify the crucial capabilities necessary to accomplish their joint long-term task. They identified a set of 11 drivers and put them into categories of Human Capital, Structural Capital, and Relational Capital.

“Intercultural Competence” is one of them and defined as follows:

Under intercultural competence as a part of social and communication competence we summarize the skills to enter into dialogue with each other respectfully, to communicate, to discuss constructively, to promote trust and to enable a pleasant cooperation. This also includes consciously dealing with criticism and conflicts, as well as accepting and promoting ethnic, cultural plurality and respectful interaction with people regardless of their worldview, religion, and culture.

This definition is the first step to establish a shared understanding on an otherwise rather abstract idea. It therefore supports dialog among participants with different mother tongues and different interpretations of concepts.

The next step is the assessment of the status quo of this and other dimensions. Two questions help to differentiate potential interventions later:

-        Do we have enough teachers with intercultural competence to accomplish our strategic objectives?

-        Is the quality of “intercultural competence” good enough to accomplish our strategic objectives?

These questions help to assess the current situation. Scores between 0 and 100% help to quantify the status. More important are qualitative reasons that justify the assessment. If, for example, one participant argues the details why his or her peers in a certain setting are not yet “good enough”, specific measures to improve this competence could be implemented. It is controlled by a third question, which has a quantitative and a qualitative element:

-        Do we manage “intercultural competence” systematically enough to accomplish our strategic objectives?

The questions follow a strict structure, so the results can be compared, even though the drivers might differ substantially.

Results can be broken down for regions and countries and dates – the following chart shows the network status of 2020. The x-axis shows the average values of the three questions above (quantity, quality, and systematic management – QQS). The y-axis shows a similar assessment of relative importance to accomplish the strategic objectives. Fields of prioritized intervention are in the upper left sector with high importance, but not yet sufficient status (low average of QQS). Intercultural competence is coded as HK2 in this chart and represents a strength of the network.

The team collectively identified 65 measures, 29 of them focusing on systematic development of intellectual capital for the network. Some of them are already implemented, other in the process of implementation. One relates to “cross boarder training” of teachers. Here is, what the person in charge narrated:

“For me, it was always important to “think outside the box” throughout my service as a teacher/ director. So, it was a coincidence that I was allowed to participate in a cross-border seminar in Hungary as part of the Interreg project BIG AT-HU. Not only did I get to know the school system in the neighboring country, but I also learned about the possibilities of teaching Hungarian at my school. In the meantime, around 30 children learn Hungarian for three hours a week, and to establish contact with children in the neighboring country, a school partnership with a Sopron school has also been established. This development was a real enrichment for us, and the children always look forward to the cross-border meetings.”

A follow up of the assessment not only identifies new priorities, but reveals lessons learned and energizes the team to keep working on the intangible assets of the network.

Globalization, technological development, climate change and human actions have contributed to transform the context in which the organizations operate into turbulent environments. These environments are characterized by a series of attributes, known under the acronym VUCA. Each of the VUCA attributes has different consequences on the daily operations of organizations, provided in Table 1 [1].

While operating in turbulent environments, Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) are exposed to specific challenges not experienced by large enterprises [2]: 1) financial difficulties; 2) lack of time; 3) difficulties in the recruitment of specialist staff; 4) less experience & knowledge on change management; 5) lack of market knowledge; 6) bureaucratic hurdles; 7) intellectual property management; 8) smaller network of partners; 9) knowledge & technology transfer.

Resilience

Resilience has been repeatedly identified as the most valuable characteristic for organizations operating in turbulent environments. This characteristic, an emergent property, is the ability of an organization to anticipate, prepare for, and respond and adapt to everything from minor everyday events to acute shocks and chronic or incremental changes [1]. Resilience is a strategic objective intended to help an organization to survive and prosper. It is inherently relative, thus achieving absolute resilience is impossible. It involves dealing with disruption, uncertainty and change with clear intention, coherence, and resources.

Resilience consists of a combination of maintaining continuity through disruptive challenges on the one hand, and long-term viability against a backdrop of strategic change and the changing external environment on the other hand [1].

Every organization of any size, but specially SMEs, operates with a web of interactions with other organizations. Therefore, it is essential to build resilience not only within an organization, but across its networks and its interactions with others.

Organizational resilience should be seen as an endless process of adaption which can support organizations to being able to withstand a crisis and use the opportunity of turbulence to thrive in a new strategic context. This adaptation process, shown in Figure 1, consists of five stages, in which organizations focus on different aspects [ 4]:

Knowledge management and resilience

Knowledge is defined as a human or organization asset enabling effective decisions and action in context [5]. Knowledge is acquired though learning or experience and can be individual, collective, or organizational.

Knowledge management is a holistic activity, focused on managing and using knowledge in an active, conscious, and systematic way to obtain competitive advantages. Knowledge management is based on a culture of continuous learning in which knowledge is being acquired progressively based on needs and in which the experience gained, and the lessons learned are internalized to learn.

Knowledge management has a very strong contribution to resilience both at organizational level and at business ecosystem level, as shown in Table 3.

The contribution of knowledge management to organizational resilience takes place across the whole resilience cycle, as shown in Figure 2.

Summary

VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity) calls for high resilience in SMEs. Resilience is the ability of an organization to anticipate, prepare for, respond and adapt to such changes. KM contributes on two levels (organizational level and business ecosystem level) to achieve resilience by supporting recruiting specialist staff, better management of IP, business networks and technology transfer.

Bibliographic references

[1] Bennett, N. and Lemoine, G. J., "What a difference a word makes: Understanding threats to performance in a VUCA world," Elsevier Business Horizons, vol. 57, no. 3, pp. 311-317, Jun. 2014.

[2] Stephanus J., (2020) SME focus- Long-term strategy for the European industrial future, European Union, Luxembourg

[3] Guidance on organizational resilience, BS65000, British Standards Institutions, 2014

[4] Patzwald, M. et al: Resilienz im strategischen Management produzierender Unternehmen. Konzeptpapier. Fraunhofer. 2021. DOI: 10.24406/ipt-n-640932 Available at: https://www.ipt.fraunhofer.de/resilienz-im-strategischen-management

[5] Knowledge management systems — Requirements, ISO 30401, International standardization Organization, 2018.

What is the best “agile” format for a regular event to stimulate interaction of participants? Most organizers eventually face this difficult question. GfWM found an answer with GKC (GfWM KnowledgeCamp) that regularly attracts between 100-200 participants over two days, on site, online and, since 2022, as a hybrid format.

The defining element is the participants driven content. The second, almost equally important element is the location. It should be inspiring and supporting all forms of communication – sufficient bandwidth is taken for granted. Architecture that provides a central lobby to share coffee and more as well as several breakout rooms and some smaller, private places is more appropriate than an old-fashioned office layout. One of the best locations in the history of GKC was in the show room of a large office outfitter, who invited all participants to experience the “new work environment” firsthand.

One innovation of GKC relates to the traditional format of meetings that usually present plenty of formal inputs. Contrary to the self-organized BarCamp content, a series of key notes - by invitation only – cover to a topic in detail and allow for extensive Q&A.

The format allows to integrate different motivations for KMers to attend and collectively drive the agenda of KM:

-        It serves the social function to “meet and greet” and connect to people working in the same domain. With already more than 20 years of operations of GfWM, long established friendships are renewed regularly.

-        And it serves the needs of a “professional association” to advance KM with new practices, learnings, case studies or methods. Experienced professionals meet students or beginners, usually with very different expectations: recruiting high potentials and learning about new approaches on one side, finding opportunities to test ideas and advance a career on the other.

-        New friendships and networks are developed, new projects for collaboration over the next period are identified. And, of course, some business proposals emerge to not only have “a nice chat”, but a productive value adding event.

Serving these different needs sustainably secures the next GKC.

Source of Image

In recent years, SKMF had organized a series of online roundtables. The main topic was how KM contributes to value creation. The relationship between KM and practical results was discussed, for example, in relation to project management.

The basis for these discussions was the 3 Sphere Model, which depicts different techniques and methods in relation to knowledge and information. The basis for the model was the KM glossary, which was jointly developed by 6 KM communities in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and published in 2020.

The 3 Sphere Model proved to be very useful when the first ideas for a KM project are discussed. Usually at the beginning there are many wild ideas about what could or should be done and how. The model helps to align stakeholder expectations and ensures the KM project starts well.

During the ICKM in Potsdam, some key concepts of KM were challenged, such as the notion that knowledge can be transferred using databases or wikis. While the 3-Sphere Model shows that these methods only passively contribute to success, this heavy information-based approach persists.

Dave Snowden demonstrated in Potsdam how this bottleneck can be overcome. The basic idea is to start with informal networks of subject matter experts and evolve them into strategic communities of practice. They will eventually assume an official role in keeping business-critical knowledge alive and passing it on to the next generation of, for example, project managers.

SKMF will explore how this can be implemented in upcoming discussions.