Topic: How does a company use KM to create strategic value? Harry Hartfield was

Topic: How does a company use KM to create strategic value?
Harry Hartfield was looking over some recent travel brochures while consulting his recent Google search. Retirement is only 5 days away and he could not wait to see the Fiji Islands. He and his wife thought they would start with a restful break before they started their travels in earnest. Harry is the head aero engineer at Global Delivery Direct and has been in charge of purchasing the planes and maintenance for the last 15 years after being an employee with GDD 25 years before. Harry had worked up in the company to his current position and has seen a lot of initiatives come and go when it came to eco-friendly flying machines. In the last four weeks, Harry has been breaking in his replacement, Imogine Farthing, who is coming from their London branch. Harry likes Imogine and thinks that she will do well. However, she is keen to purchase the new Boeing 777 cargo plane. She thinks it will go a long way to improving their fuel consumption and air emissions for the long-run between Chicago and Singapore. The cost of the new plane is 3 times more than the Lockheed which Harry thinks will save fuel costs over the old cargo plane they are using now but will not have the same air pollutant emission reduction. While Harry thinks air pollution an important concern for GDD, he also knows that in the past these controls often make the cost of the plan high and the fuel consumption lower than the company predicts. Imogine does not agree. Harry knows it will be her call but wishes he could access old reports he made when he was making a similar decision earlier in his career. With that information as a base with updated figures, he may be able to persuade Imogine to change her mind. During his retirement party, Harry decides to tell Rockfish about this point in the hopes that he may know how to locate the reports. Harry thought it was worth the try. Rockfish said he would look into it but wasn’t sure what he could do.
Oddly after his encounter with Harry at the party, Rockfish began a short conversation with one of his sales managers, Amid Jordan. Jordan had been with the company for only three years and Rockfish was shocked to hear that he was leaving. Amid said that he is sorry to have to go but he was offered a job in Orlando with UPS, one of GDD’s biggest competitors. In fact, UPS had been poaching many of his managers lately and he was concerned about proprietary information and good talent leaving the company. How could he stop people from leaving the company and taking their knowledge with them and he wondered about the reasons for their departures.
Harry’s retirement party was beginning to be depressing and Rockfish thought not festive. The feeling was brought home when Harry began a conversation with a visiting shipping department head from their Asian branch. It turned out that she was here to try to rectify a major glitch in the process used to get letter packages to Malaysia. It seems that there is a breakdown with knowledge exchanges/knowledge transfers between the branches and the packages were consistently running a day late. They found out that the problem was in the driver pick up times here in the states. The Asian branch has been asking that the time difference be adjusted for by three hours rather than the 1 hour as it currently was set. It needed to be fixed because he had a lot of unhappy customers with claims of late packages to deal with on his arrival home.
Rockfish began to think about the fact that all these stories were dealing with knowledge and its usefulness to the company. This point is one he has been hearing a lot about recently from Jane and now he is concerned about the issues brought to light from his discussions with Harry and Amid. Rockfish approaches Jane and says, “Okay I think you are right about your idea of setting knowledge management processes in place, but you will have to explain it to the Board of Directors. They need to see how it creates strategic value for the company before they will buy into the plan.”
In the next three weeks, Jane (you) and your team will prepare a PowerPoint presentation Jane will make to the Board. Each week you will address two KM issues illustrated in the scenario and how KM solutions will bring value to the company.
Directions:
BY SATURDAY, complete the following:Provide a draft response to Rockfish that covers the following points:Identify and discuss how the problems in the scenario would, if handled by a KM manager, create value for the company instead of a loss. Ensure you fully address each of the KM issues identified at the retirement party.
Explain why failure to capture tacit knowledge will cost GDD money now and in the future.
Explain how tacit knowledge affects culture and employee performance (refer to Helmut from week three in this instance)
Suggest at least four reasons that retaining and capturing tacit knowledge will benefit the company not just within these issues but in other ways.
Explain how technology can help collect tacit knowledge and store explicit knowledge.
Use persuasive language to make your points.
Demonstrate creativity in the development of the PPT itself to capture the viewers’ interest and to create a smooth transition of the material.
You must use course material to support your responses and include APA format in-text citations and reference list.
THROUGHOUT THE WEEK, complete the following:Respond to at least three of your classmates on three or more days throughout the week. Remember you are trying to develop the best answers to the questions as possible. Your classmates are doing the same so read the posts carefully looking for the best ideas being presented. The goal is that by the end of the week the class will come to some consensus as to the best answers giving you the chance to submit the best ideas in the final post.
You must use course materials to support your responses. Ensure you include in your comments where in our readings they can find the supporting materials so they can improve their final posting.
Participation must be reflected in the final post so grades will be affected by the content portion of the post if participation is not shown. Therefore, it is important to get in the class often and with the idea of improving your initial post with the discussion so that the final grade will be the best you can deliver.
BY TUESDAY, complete the following:Attach your final post in the classroom by 11:59 PM ET – please create a new discussion thread for your final post.
The final post must reflect the brainstorming activities and should be different from the Saturday initial post.
The final post must include a variety of sources from the class material, research, as well as the use of scenario or case study facts where appropriate.
How to Do Well in Discussions
Make your initial post responding to the above questions by Saturday, 11:59 p.m. ET.
Comment on at least three of your classmates’ posts by Monday, 11:59 p.m. ET.
Post your final posting by Tuesday, 11:59 p.m. ET.
Posting late may lose you points.
Respond to the specific questions posed in the discussion.
Be sure to base your initial post and responses on course materials, and use 7th ed. APA citations in every post.
Post your responses over three days and respond to three or more students to receive full credit for frequency of participation.
Write clearly and proofread; errors can lose you points.
Quality of posts, citations, frequency, and timeliness of posts all factor into your discussion grade.
Week 5: Strategic Value of KM
Theme 1: The Strategic Value of KM
This week we will look at the building blocks needed to apply and gain from KM applications. We will also look at the steps required to make a successful KM strategy.
Read:
Knowledge Management Book
Chapter 9: Knowledge Management Strategy
Theme 2: Do Your KM Objectives Work?
This week we will look at how effective our KM strategy was. Did we meet out objectives and how we can measure their success or failure.
Read:
Knowledge Management Book
Chapter 10: The Value of Knowledge Management
Also Read:
11 Successful KM Implementation Factors
Storyboard examples
Here are some examples of storyboards that were created from storyboardthat.com. These are to help serve as samples for you to look at and give you an idea of what is expected of you for the storyboard you are to create. You are not to use content or graphics from these storyboards for your own storyboard! You are to create you own original storyboard. These are specifically for inspiration and to help you understand what a storyboard is supposed to look like.