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Why Knowledge Management?

It makes you more innovative, efficient and effective.

Knowledge Management (KM) will help your firm, be it a sole proprietorship, small firm or a large one, to identify and streamline knowledge that you require to achieve your business objectives. Simply put, KM generates more wealth – some form of economic, social, political, or environmental value.

In summary, KM leads to:

• Creation of a professional working environment with friendly, effective and efficient policies, procedures and processes, which will help you to attract, hire and retain the best personnel.

• Increased (and faster) responsiveness to your clients’ demands owing to well-trained personnel, well-set approach, well-coordinated tools, well-built infrastructure, well-identified technology and the “elevated platform of existing knowledge”. This helps you to retain your existing clients and attract new clients.

• Improved performance. 

KM does so in the following overlapping and interdependent ways:

• by helping you to avoid reinvention or duplication of work and wastage of resources. It will also help you to work faster. Click here for more.

• by assisting you to avoid repetition of mistakes and inconsistent outputs. Click here for more.

• by giving you the competitive edge and making you more profitable. Click here for more.

• by prompting you to constantly upgrade your knowledge and resources, be it manpower, tools, skills, policies, processes, procedures, infrastructure or technology. Click here for more.

• by minimizing the loss of knowledge by deploying methodologies such as knowledge transfer and knowledge conversion, and by retaining knowledge that would otherwise be lost. Click here for more.

• by making you reflect on your current policies, procedures and practices, and by persuading you to unlearn the outdated or unreliable ones. Click here for more.

• by bringing about cultural changes with appropriate technological support to alleviate the fear to share knowledge, avoid knowledge hoarding, and enhance knowledge sharing and collaboration. Click here for more.

• by helping you to find critical knowledge in time with minimum effort. Click here for more.

• by helping you to identify your technology requirements, and those products which qualitatively and quantitatively meet such requirements. Click here for more.

• by analysing the training needs of your people, and by raising the competency of new, entry level or junior personnel faster and by improving that of your existing personnel through well-planned orientation and training programmes. Click here for more.

• by prompting you to attend closely to the business of law, albeit indirectly. Click here for more.

• by minimising the time fee-earners spend on non-billable work and by letting them concentrate on billable and work. Click here for more.

• • •

• KM organizes and stores all relevant knowledge (e.g. precedent agreements, checklists, etc) of your organization in orderly fashion and easy-to-retrieve format in an user-friendly system, and puts in place a process that ensures that such knowledge is constantly reviewed and updated. This infrastructure provides an “elevated platform of existing knowledge” built on the expertise and experience of your organization. You may immediately utilize such knowledge or build further on that (without having to scramble with the basics every time) when encountered with issues. This helps you to avoid reinvention or duplication of work and wastage of resources. It will also help you work faster. Back to top.

• The “elevated platform of existing knowledge” is rich with lessons learnt from the past, and by virtue of that, it doubles up as your guide for the present and future work (at least in terms of, inter alia, your approach and focus). It assists you to avoid repetition of mistakes and inconsistent outputs. Back to top.

• KM will let you know what you know. Surprising it may be, but a number of studies have shown that you may not know all what you know principally owing to the nature of knowledge. One of the first steps in a KM initiative is to conduct an extensive knowledge audit, which is specifically aimed at addressing this problem. It helps a “knower” to share what they know they know; and to know, articulate and share what they do not know they know. It gives you the competitive edge and makes you more profitable. This is precisely the point that Lewis Platt, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, succinctly put: “If HP knew what HP knows, we would be three times more profitable”. Back to top.

• KM also lets you know what you do not know. This will naturally prompt you to constantly upgrade your knowledge and resources, be it manpower, tools, skills, policies, processes, procedures, infrastructure or technology. If you do not know what you already know, as noted above, you may end up duplicating work directly resulting in slow response to your clients’ requirements and wastage of your valuable manpower and other resources. You may also end up having inconsistent output, and repeated failures. You will also be slow with innovation, and that affects your competitive edge. Back to top.

• People resign or retire. Some of their knowledge inevitably walks out with them, given that most of the knowledge exists in tacit (non-articulate) mode. The knowledge so lost may have an impact on key clients, suppliers, and may directly affect the revenue and competence of your firm. A focused KM exercise could minimize the loss of knowledge in such circumstances by deploying methodologies such as knowledge transfer and knowledge conversion, and thus retain such knowledge that would otherwise be lost. Back to top.

• Do you justify your policies, procedures and practices because “that’s how we always did”? KM makes you reflect on your current policies, procedures and practices, and persuade you to unlearn the outdated or unreliable ones. KM truly understands that “the greatest difficulty lies not in persuading people to accept new ideas, but in persuading them to abandon old ones”. Back to top.

• For reasons attributable to perception (fear of redundancy and lack of trust rank on the top of the list) more than anything else, individuals closely guard their knowledge, and collaboration becomes namesake. Good ideas fail to get transferred between the departments or practice groups. KM can bring about cultural changes with appropriate technological support to alleviate the fear to share knowledge, avoid knowledge hoarding, and enhance knowledge sharing and collaboration. Back to top.

• KM helps you to design and roll out an efficient technology platform to aid in the organization, storage, updating, retrieval and dissemination of knowledge. It helps you find critical knowledge in time with minimum effort. Back to top.

• Do you buy expensive products (particularly information technology products) because they are good and have a number of features, or because they provide value for money? Or is it because they are fashionable and you do not want to be left behind? If any one of these is your sole justification, you may be buying stuff for the wrong reasons. You should buy products (and services) only if you need them, and only to an extent you need them. KM will help you to identify your requirements, and those products which qualitatively and quantitatively meet such requirements. Waste no more money and time on expensive “fully-loaded” products whose features you seldom use! Back to top.

• KM analyses the training needs of your people, and through well-planned orientation and training programmes, raises the competency of new, entry level or junior personnel faster, and improves that of your existing personnel. For example, consider the effectiveness of well-planned workshops on “how to do research with our print and electronic resources”, software applications, tips on advocacy skills from a practical angle, business etiquette, and office procedures, policy and behavior. Of course, you probably cannot teach them all the skills at one go – that may take years of mentoring; but this will be a good start. Back to top.

• You are a busy lawyer, and you seldom get a chance to think about your long-term strategies. You are of course not a management expert. Embracing a KM initiative will prompt you to attend closely to the business of law, albeit indirectly. It helps you to set the vision and objectives, develop an appropriate business strategy, and acquire requisite knowledge about the clients, market and industry. Back to top.
   

• Fee-earners ideally should concentrate on billable  work at all times. However, in reality, they very often have to do non-billable but critical work such as contributing to value-added services (e.g. writing for newsletters) and marketing (e.g. preparing and / or presenting pitches). KM will minimise the time the fee-earners have to spend on it by (a) helping them to prepare faster (by making available the raw materials and precedents) or (b) identifying the right persons to do such work. Back to top.

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