220 Anand, Pauleen, and Dexter
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Strategy Development
Developing the Bank’s knowledge management strategy involved all areas of the
organisation, and contained four main phases as shown in Figure 2. As part of this work,
examination was made of the organisational culture, structure, and infrastructure to
determine what changes would be needed.
In the initial three-week phase, the Knowledge Services Group worked with the
external consultant to gather and review the knowledge management data and best
practice from around the world.
The second phase focussed on internal data gathering during which a number of
structured interviews and workshops were carried out throughout the organisation to
investigate the knowledge required by each function and to understand what individuals
saw as being the opportunities (see Appendix 3). Additional input was sought from the
members of the informal brown-bag network who had been meeting prior to the onset of
the strategy development. This group had valuable information regarding knowledge
management thinking at the grassroots level and had helped to identify some of the
existing barriers to knowledge sharing within the Bank.
One area of the strategy development that posed particular difficulty was the
identification of specific knowledge that would have to be managed in each function. In
order to overcome this difficulty, three separate categories were identified for classifi-
cation purposes:
- Structured data (S)
- Unstructured and semistructured information (U)
- Experience/knowledge (E)
The information gathered through the interviews and workshops was then struc-
tured into these three categories as denoted in Figure 3. For example, one workshop
focussed on experience and information into the development of monetary policy.
Feeding into the process was structured (data) and unstructured information (reports,
Figure 2. Knowledge management strategy development process (adapted from Anand,
2003)
W1 W2 W3 W4 W5 W6 W7 W8 W9 W10 W11 W12Data Gathering & Review
Interviews/Workshops
Gap Analysis
Formulate Strategy
Refresh IS Architectures
Identify Projects(^)
Flesh-out Projects
= review point