Essentials of Knowledge Management

3.9. Overhead

Complying with a KM initiative can represent significant overhead in the daily life of knowledge workers. For example, a knowledge worker who is recognized as an expert decision maker may spend a quarter of his time meeting with a knowledge engineer to capture his decision-making process. The knowledge engineer interviews the expert to convert the expert's decision-making process and heuristics into an expert system: rules that can be represented as a series of IF-THEN clauses. Alternatively, the process can be represented as a graphical decision-making diagram to be used with or without a computer (see Exhibit 3.6).

The IF-THEN representation can be used as the basis for a computer program that simulates the decision-making abilities of an expert—a so-called expert system. Eventually the expert system should be able to replicate the expert's decision-making abilities, allowing relatively new hires to use the expert system to make the same quality decisions as the expert. Thus, the ROI for the expert's time is less reliance on the expert and the ability to use relatively naive knowledge workers as expert decision makers. For experts, the reward is a less secure position with corporation, because their decision-making abilities in their area of expertise essentially have been extracted, distilled, and made one of the corporation's permanent assets.

EXHIBIT 3.5. EXHIBIT 3.6

IN THE REAL WORLD: Exit Strategy Knowledge Management initiatives are best started at a ...