Knowledge management and ANCs: a cultural match: finding new ways to efficiently capture and transfer knowledge faster than competitors.

Knowledge Management has been an established discipline since 1995, but it roots can be traced farther back and some of the most common and tangible examples come from some unlikely business origins-the U.S. military. The U.S. Army's use of "After Action Reports" is the premise in which I come to view Knowledge Management. This might in large part be due to my adherence to project management principles and applying lessons learned to the conclusion of projects and/or activities.

If one were to attempt to define just what exactly is "Knowledge Management" you would find several different definitions as a result of whom the audience is in which you asked. For example, if you asked someone in the Information Technology field to define Knowledge Management, you might get a series of responses revolving the application of Web-based knowledge bases, portals, intranet, etc. If you were to pose the same question to someone in the Human Resource field, you would find approaches toward employee training, mentoring, and overall professional development approaches. I am certain there are many more definitions that can be sought, as they are heavily dependent upon one's point of view. But, it is important to realize that these two fields are the two most likely to gain an appreciation for Knowledge Management in your organization.

GAINING MOMENTUM

Recently, Knowledge Management has gained more traction in today's modern business world as more and more of our economy is becoming "Knowledge Based" and the competitive advantage has transitioned toward finding new ways to efficiently capture and transfer knowledge faster than competitors. More importantly, we have all heard that "knowledge is power," but knowledge is also leverage as people who have gained key knowledge, insight, and understanding of a field, process, or industry that they can effectively leverage those skills, etc. Basically, that is a long-winded way of providing a reason for the rise in number of consultants today!

ANCS' ROLE

But, this article is about Knowledge Management and ANCs. To begin with we have discussed the difficulty of finding all one encompassing definition of Knowledge Management due to the varying perspectives applying it. But, for simplicity purposes, let us use Wikipedia's definition: "Knowledge Management (KM) comprises of a range of practices used by organizations to identify, create, represent, and distribute knowledge for reuse, awareness and learning."

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Wikipedia's site does provide a very nice and broad perspective of why large companies and Fortune 500 companies have now come to embrace and employ this discipline to achieving their corporate objectives. But, like many other "new" approaches, KM has met some lackluster results mostly due to incompatibilities between employing KM best practices and corporate values and even lack of "buy-in" from employees.

This is where we transition to understanding how Knowledge Management and ANCs actually do make a nice match. I base this opinion on several factors and not necessarily because there is a widespread of examples in which I can cite, but because of the core cultural values of Alaska's Native people, which are interwoven into the corporate values and vision statements of most, if not all, ANCs. My first exposure to the term "Knowledge Management" was as part of the course curriculum in UAA's Global Supply Chain Management master's program. In learning and understanding how sometimes it is difficult to implement KM systems in companies, it became apparent that maybe the reason was related to the corporate culture of the organization and after all corporate culture is derived from the employees and shareholders-this is where corporate culture of ANCs based upon their corporate value system actually might be a good fit to implement Knowledge Management systems.

TACTIC VS. EXPLICIT KNOWLEDGE

To understand how the culture values systems, which serve as the root of most, if not all, ANCs corporate values systems-we need to first, make a key distinction between tacit and explicit knowledge. A quick definition for both is that tacit knowledge is known through hands-on experience and is not easily transferred, whereas explicit knowledge is what is captured, recorded or sometimes referred to as codified. Without getting too far off the topic here, we can all agree that Alaska Native culture is primarily transferred through song, dance, stories and practice. As most Alaska Native language is not in written form, it is therefore easy to categorize the knowledge of "how to do things" as tacit. Whereas most of what we learn in school, through experimentation of recorded data, numbers, etc. is explicit. What you might find quite interesting is that what most Fortune 500 and other large companies have difficulty in is capturing and transferring the "tacit" knowledge. These difficulties as mentioned earlier rest more often in corporate culture where sharing what you know and knowledge gained through years of experience is not always it the best interest of a seasoned employee. After all, isn't that experience valuable and doesn't it give you leverage to negotiate higher salaries and perks? But, Alaska's Native people have been transferring tacit information for millennia and as corporate values reflect those interests of the shareholders-therefore getting "buy-in" from shareholders to create a learning organizational cultural within ANCs should not be completely alien and may even be appreciated; as this reflects application of their cultural values.

THE ECONOMICS

AFN has also taken the initiative of bringing forth topic of "Knowledge based economies" to the forefront of Alaska's rural challenge of diversifying as well as promoting economic development. I confidently express that there is an implicit understanding that there is value in sharing and capturing and sharing the multi-generational knowledge of Alaska's Native people; whether through art, navigation and environmental conservation.

I would argue that not only would Knowledge Management practices work with ANCs due to corporate culture tangents, but because of the nature and intent of the Small Business Administration's 8(a) program-implementing an effective Knowledge Management program could increase capacity of ANCs by effectively capturing the knowledge of experienced "non-shareholder" executives, managers, and even frontline employees and developing a system of mentoring, conveying and storing that knowledge gained to serve as a future resource.

Again, Fortune 500 companies have made the connection that there is value in finding new and innovative ways to capture and convey knowledge of key employees and it is seen as a competitive advantage in doing so. The corporate culture of ANCs based upon the cultural values of their shareholders already provide a basis for potential success where so many larger companies find difficulty and ultimately fail in implementing effective Knowledge Management systems. ANCs also have another incentive to embrace Knowledge Management as more and more scrutiny of the 8(a) program continues in D.C. by program opponents who argue that the spirit of the program is circumvented as ANCs are simply pass-throughs for large corporations to take advantage of ANCs or that ANCs lack capacity to self-perform government contracts. By implementing an effective Knowledge Management program, ANCs can not only reinforce the cultural values of their shareholders (sharing knowledge) but also can increase capacity through knowledge sharing and ultimately have a system where shareholder employees can gain through the expertise and experience of their corporate predecessors.

Paul Johnson is the president/CEO of the Highliner Consulting Group, an Alaska-based economic and business development firm that has operated in Alaska since 1996. Johnson has a Master of Science degree in global supply chain management from the University of Alaska Anchorage, as well as a Master of Business Administration degree in technology management from the University of Phoenix. A recent white paper written by Johnson is "Knowledge Management in the Supply Chain," which has been selected by the UAA Logistics Department for submission for a national logistics publication.

In addition to his consulting work with Highliner Consulting, Johnson has worked in the public sector with the State of Alaska, University of Alaska, and with the city and borough of Yakutat. Private-sector work has included serving as a business-development consultant with Northern Management/CE2 Engineers and serving as a project manager in planning and rural development with NANA Pacific, and most recently as the interim-CEO for Deloycheet Development Corp.