Consulting

Knowledge Management initiatives are complex interventions, covering social, technical, and organisational aspects. We need to have a thorough understanding of the people and their work, the organisational needs and its environment, the internal culture and politics, the technology infrastructure, organisational capabilities, and appetite for change. Most important, we need to know where the leverage points for productive change are, and where we should focus our efforts. Issues and priorities will vary widely between organisations. Simplistic, recipe-based approaches with generic methodologies may appear reassuring at first, but rarely deal adequately with the complexities of implementation in practice.

Our team is experienced in reading an organisation's context and needs, and we have a robust evidence-based approach to help an organisation identify its strategic knowledge priority areas. We have a wide range of tools and methods from which we will select based on the goals we need to achieve. These tools, models and methods are drawn from good practices and current research in the knowledge management and information management profession. We believe strongly in capability transfer to our clients, so we work through a combination of consulting, training, coaching, and reflective practice.

Our areas of expertise

Knowledge Audit
KM Strategy
KM Framework
Taxonomy Development
KM Capability Model

A Knowledge and/or Information Audit is a rigorous examination of an organisation’s knowledge and information use. It is intended to make visible the knowledge and information assets and resources that drive its core activities. Organisations conduct knowledge audits for a number of reasons, such as to:

identify what and where key knowledge resources can be found
identify knowledge dependencies and gaps (what they should know but don’t)
identify knowledge risks, and capability improvement opportunities
use maps and diagnostics as evidence to develop a corporate taxonomy and search and discovery services
identify high priority knowledge resources (in terms of demand and value) for organising into a knowledge hub or knowledge sharing platform
improve the findability and discoverability of knowledge resources, and identify the governance improvements needed to develop robust AI-enriched services

use them to set KM priorities and needs in a KM Strategy exercise.

Straits Knowledge’s Principal Consultant, Patrick Lambe, is the author of the book Principles of Knowledge Auditing: Foundations for Knowledge Management Implementation (MIT Press, 2023). The Straits Knowledge methodology is described in this infographic poster, and is supported by our innovative knowledge resources mapping tool, Aithin™.

Every consulting engagement is different, because in knowledge management, context is everything. However, Straits Knowledge’s KM Strategy consulting engagements will typically include the following high level key stages:

Learning – evidence gathering through a knowledge audit (which may include knowledge mapping, KM diagnostics, audits against KM standards, or risk-based audits) that will give a senior management team accurate insights into its knowledge culture, knowledge assets and resources, KM capabilities, and knowledge processes (this gives a baseline to plan from, plus insight into possible constraints and opportunities)
Alignment – business goals and imperatives are analysed through a “knowledge lens” (usually using a knowledge-focused strategy canvas) and a knowledge strategy is collaboratively developed to support the business strategy, together with performance metrics.
Self-assessment – existing capabilities in terms of knowledge assets and resources, knowledge exploitation, and knowledge infrastructure (soft as well as technical) are assessed against the business needs and KM goals, and major gaps identified.
Prioritisation and Focus – possible improvement initiatives are identified and prioritised in terms of business value delivered against the resource required; they are then expressed in the form of a KM Framework and a KM planning roadmap.

Activation – key implementation stakeholders are identified, and a communications plan developed to enrol their support.

Together with Nick Milton, our Principal Consultant Patrick Lambe is co-author of The Knowledge Manager’s Handbook 2nd edition (KoganPage, 2019). The Knowledge Manager’s Handbook was awarded CILIP UK's Knowledge and Information Management Information Resources Award for 2019.

A KM Framework identifies the critical interacting components that need to be in place for sustainable KM within any organisation. While we have a generic framework of elements that are usually present for sustainable KM, in any engagement we will help the organisation build their own framework tailored to their needs. The Framework is most useful as a mechanism for planning in terms of developing the organisational capabilities required to achieve knowledge management goals - as expressed, for example in a KM Strategy. When completed, each of the components in the Framework has a descriptor that provides measurable indicators that link to KM effectiveness relative to the organisation's KM goals. This is used to inform the KM evaluation and measurement framework as well as the KM roadmap and KM programme planning.
A KM Capability Model is often useful as a preliminary stage in assessing current KM capabilities, strengths, and weaknesses, and these insights can inform the detailed development of the KM Framework.

An enterprise taxonomy can perform a number of key functions in the service of digital knowledge management:

it organises content in ways that are useful for a specific organisation's work;
it supports precision of language in technical disciplines, and disambiguates concepts for users;
it improves findability and discoverability of digital content when it is used to enrich and guide search services;
it improves the performance of AI-services, because it provides a domain-specific language model for the AI tools to reference.

In our consulting engagements we can put the output of a knowledge mapping exercise (e.g. for a KM Strategy) to additional use as an evidence base for context-specific taxonomy development. Our taxonomy engagements typically include the following stages:

evidence gathering – often conducted together with a knowledge audit exercise
analysis and drafting of taxonomy
validation of draft taxonomy with users using scenario-based tests and card sorting exercises to detect undesirable ambiguities, any gaps, and to get assurance of predictability and usability
development of a metadata framework
working with search services, AI services, and information architects, to deploy the taxonomy in the service of KM goals

development of a taxonomy governance and maintenance guide
training, coaching, and capability transfer.

Straits Knowledge’s Principal Consultant, Patrick Lambe, uses his specialist background in Information Science to advise our clients in taxonomy development. He is the author of the best selling book, Organising Knowledge: Taxonomies, Knowledge and Organisation Effectiveness (Oxford: Chandos, 2007). Find out more about our methodology in this infographic poster. When building taxonomies for clients we use the best-in-class taxonomy management tool Synaptica.

A KM Capability Model helps an organisation assess its relative strengths in KM implementation at a more detailed level than a KM Framework does. The main difference between a KM Framework and a KM Capability Model is that the KM Framework sets out goals to aid planning across the dimensions of process, people, infrastructure and governance, in order for KM to be successful. Our KM Capability Model is a participative diagnostic tool that documents the organisation's strengths, weaknesses, and gaps relative to those goals, and it improves participants' awareness by bringing good practice KM activities and processes into consideration as well. While we do not encourage the use of general KM Maturity Models since they are usually very context insensitive, our KM Capability Model does have some similar features, helping our clients to identify areas of potential progress and improvement. Find out more about our approach and review our open source KM Capability model here.

More areas of expertise

Culture Analysis
Expertise Management
KM Governance
Open Space Technology
Project KM
Communities of Practice

How can we quickly grasp the key aspects of an organisation's unique culture, especially in relation to knowledge use? Anecdote circles are a little bit like focus groups, and typically involve 12-15 people. Unlike focus groups they are not guided by a structured series of pre-determined questions. In an anecdote circle the facilitator asks participants to share anecdotes of their experiences in the particular focus area of the project. After the stories have been volunteered, we normally work with the participants to process them and extract issues, themes, values or behaviours. This technique is invaluable for understanding an organisation's culture and context, and especially for discovering insights that would not have been predicted in survey instruments or predetermined interview questions.

Anecdotes, together with the material we extract from them, provide very rich material that communicates the natural working contexts of the environments from which they come. We regularly develop personas (or cultural archetypes) that can be used to express common behaviours, values, and attitudes unique to an organisation's culture. They are powerful complements to more analytical data collection methods and can be used in culture analysis, issue identification, change management, communication planning, and customer research.

The anecdote circle is one of a suite of tools for knowledge capture and sensemaking, and was pioneered by Dave Snowden of the Cynefin Company.

See our KM Approaches, Methods, and Tools Guidebook for a comprehensive and practical guide to a range of KM approaches, along with guidelines on which techniques are best for different situations (e.g. for expertise transfer, communities of practice, or project knowledge management).
See our Organisational Culture Cards for a set of frequently occurring KM-related personas. The pack comes with a set of suggested activities.

How is it that experts are able to make faster and better decisions than novices? What are the cues that they look out for? How can we identify what special knowledge experts and very experienced people have, so that we can transfer it to other staff? Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA) is a term that describes a suite of tools and methods for identifying, understanding and representing what experts know. Practical applications of these techniques were pioneered by the renowned Dr Gary Klein of Shadowbox Training, with whom we have worked on client projects.
Cognitive Task Analysis techniques can be used to:

map areas of expertise in depth
identify and package expertise topics for training, coaching or mentoring of less experienced staff
support a succession planning exercise for senior decision makers
support taxonomy building for specialist knowledge domains
understand experience and job history requirements for recruiting to specialist positions
understand how customers make buying decisions

develop training materials for rapid transfer of experience-based knowledge and expertise.

See our KM Approaches, Methods, and Tools Guidebook for a comprehensive and practical guide to a range of KM approaches, along with guidelines on which techniques are best for different situations (e.g. for expertise transfer, communities of practice, or project knowledge management).

Knowledge management needs to work in close coordination with other organisational functions such as human resource, learning and development, information technology, data management, information management, information security, and records management. A strong KM/IM/RM governance regime including policy, key roles and responsibilities, delegation of responsibilities, defined processes and guiding principles to guide decisions and plan, will ensure a common and consistent approach to how knowledge, information, and data resources are managed by staff. It communicates the principle that knowledge, information and records created in the course of work are key resources of the organisation and must be prepared and managed as such – they are not private property. A KM governance review may be conducted alongside an Information or Knowledge Audit exercise.
When we work with an organisation on their KM governance we operate at a number of levels:

assessing the balance of needs between knowledge management, information management, records management, and data management
consulting with key stakeholders and reviewing policy and governance instruments for consistency and alignment
assessing the consistency of management practices across the organisation relating to data, information, and knowledge resources
assessing existing policies for completeness, covering data, information, and knowledge resources throughout all the stages in their lifecycles
establishing a governance framework work, including new policy development where needed

establishing a policy hierarchy to ensure consistency between the overall policy aims, and sub-policies covering different areas (eg. between information security and knowledge sharing objectives)

Review our guide to developing combined KM and IM policies here.

Open Space Technology (OST) is an approach developed by Harrison Owen in the United States, and is a way of holding meetings on complex or intractable issues, or where the future is uncertain. It is designed with minimal structure, and has had notable success in gaining high levels of commitment, communication and clarity of direction from participants.

Straits Knowledge was one of a pioneering group who brought Open Space Technology to Singapore in August 2002 through a facilitator training workshop held by Chicago based Open Space practitioner Michael Hermann. Open Space has been used in strategic re-visioning, peace mediation in the Middle East, addressing community development challenges, opening up corporate communication and innovation channels, and more.
Possible uses for OST:

Creating mission, vision, values
Resolving change management problems
Strategic re-visioning in uncertain environments
Opening up company-wide channels of communication and commitment
Innovation development programmes
Harnessing collective energy in support of strategic goals
Corporate turnarounds and transformations
Repairing commitment and trust after retrenchment exercises

Setting a difficult course of action for the company

Project management is a discipline that utilises a specific set of tools and techniques and the application of knowledge and skills to meet agreed objectives to achieve specific outcomes. Most project management training and methodology does not explicitly recognise the management of knowledge as a vital resource for successful projects, particularly, the importance of a regular learning cycle, transfer of lessons, and proactively assessing the knowledge needs and outputs of project teams.

Knowledge needs to be recognised as a resource to be managed, like any other physical, financial or manpower resource within a project, and a KM plan for a project is just as important as a risk management plan.

Straits Knowledge, through its engagements on knowledge management initiatives, is able to provide an integrated project and knowledge management methodology and training for its clients. The methodology has two interwoven threads of project management and knowledge management methods, utilising good practices learnt from training, research and experience.
The benefits of project knowledge management are that it:

Improves the speed of project completion as it reduces the learning curve for the project team who benefit from the expertise and experience of others
Avoids information overload as it focuses the project team on their critical knowledge (and information) needs
Reduces the costs of doing, redoing and undoing through techniques for managing risks and other uncertainties
Makes visible the expertise and experience of project team members as a result of the project

Provides a register of the knowledge assets produced in and from the project

Whether you want to establish formal communities of practice with defined memberships and deliverables, or build knowledge sharing networks to improve access to knowledge and expertise, or simply improve the quality of collaboration and sharing in your organisation, it is important to understand the dynamics of how voluntary sharing works, how a sense of group identity, trust, and community is formed, and the dynamics of an individual's motivation to participate and share knowledge. We work with our clients to help set goals, identify the most appropriate frameworks and approaches to use, and to develop the facilitation skills required to support a collaborative knowledge sharing culture.

See our KM Approaches, Methods, and Tools Guidebook for a comprehensive and practical guide to a range of KM approaches, along with guidelines on which techniques are best for different situations (e.g. for expertise transfer, communities of practice, or project knowledge management).