Strategically Speaking

There are really only two strategies for KM: Codification and Personalization. Both are directed at the same end: improving organizational effectiveness and profitability by improving access to intellectual capital.

• A codification strategy seeks to standardize an organization’s knowledge and gain economies of scale through broad re-use. Codification is about writing things down, getting them loaded into repositories and finding ways to discourage reinvention. It requires a substantial investment in technology, and will be most effective when the knowledge domain and organizational culture lend themselves to a standardized approach.
   
• A personalization strategy seeks to maximize the interaction between individuals and generate innovative solutions to new problems. Personalization is about one-on-one conversations, brainstorming sessions and organizational learning. It requires a more moderate investment in technology, since it’s about connecting people rather than storing information. Personalization depends heavily on an organizational commitment to communications, mentoring and collaboration.

It’s probably obvious that these two strategies can co-exist in a single organization. A customer support department might use codified scripts based on past problem-solving, while an R&D team talks and thinks together as they cook up new products. There’s an element of personality and culture, too. Some organizations will fall naturally into the world of re-use, others will fight the replacement of human experts with electronic repositories.

There are customer issues, too: people who are paying for creative problem-solving may resist the idea of a recycled solution. On the other hand, customers will be unhappy if they’re overcharged for custom work, when a pre-fab approach would be just fine.

Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Morten T. Hansen, Nitin Nohira and Thomas Tierney suggest that the choice between codification and personalization is the central one facing virtually all companies in the area of Knowledge Management. They also stress that organizations which isolate KM in functional departments risk losing its potential benefits.

Like everything else in KM, balance is the key.

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