Both knowledge management and e-learning can encourage information sharing. Technology tools let employees contribute new pieces of knowledge in the context of work-knowledge archived in a knowledge management repository--or in the context of learning--course chat discussions, for instance, which can generate new knowledge and then which is archived in the knowledge management repository. Once information is captured and locked down as useful knowledge, its source becomes irrelevant in terms of its value.
Gartner's contention that e-learning will subsume training via its fusion with knowledge management suggests other organizational changes. The position of "editor" or some informational traffic cop will be required to seek out and confirm what qualifies and can be housed as knowledge, whether it comes from executive speeches, phone calls, chat conversations, or trade magazine articles.
The consulting group also envisions that true e-learning will foster a knowledge management process in which a "mini-economy" is created within the organization; the e-learning platform serves as an intermediary bringing those who need content with those who can provide it.
For example, Jim has a good idea and "publishes'' it on the corporate intranet. Susan captures it and better meets a business goal. Jim is paid as a reward through some means of exchange-money, praise points toward a gift like an extra personal day.
"The biggest goal of KM is to create a commerce model around knowledge," says Aldrich. "This is one of the biggest cultural issues around KM. How do you get people to give up and package their information?"
For example, he says that the click2learn e-learning package from Asymetrix encourages this kind of mini-economy.
"If you have some knowledge you want to turn into a course you can download some tools from the click2learn site, you can write a course, say on how to negotiate better service-level agreements with IBM, upload it to your company site and others buy it. You get the money and click2learn gets the money."
In light of IT's provoking new ways of acquiring and managing knowledge, will employees take to the idea that the PC might become the primary delivery vehicle for learning and skills upgrades?
"We have slightly lower customer satisfaction but much higher ubiquity and that's, right now, the trade-off," says Aldrich. "For lots of kinds of courses, it's a worthwhile trade-off."
Buckman Laboratories in Memphis, Tenn., thought the trade-off was worth it. The company recognized that the traditional instructor-led approach hampered its ability to compete as a supplier of chemicals to the papermaking industry. "You have to eliminate the barriers between the person who knows it (knowledge) and the person who needs it," says Sheldon Ellis, vice president of the companies learning center.
In 1997, the company's creation of a learning center was a direct evolution of knowledge management initiatives already in place. Within a year, it created intranet portal sites within "communities of practice'' organized along functional units--manufacturing or marketing. The portals were owned by employees-the "editors"-who devote part of their jobs overseeing these fused KM/e-learning activities.
Job tasks include traffic control, identify and deliver the source of knowledge when a request is made and quality control. Knowledge repositories at Buckman include sales and technical training on how papermaking machinery works.
Many times this knowledge will be forwarded to Ellis for embedding into new training courseware, ensuring cross-pollination between knowledge management and ongoing e-learning. Buckman's "editors" are rotated roughly every 18 months.
In one instance, a sales rep calling on a paper company in Indonesia had little knowledge of the machines it used. A specific community of practice leader solicited the information from offices around the world when the rep put out a request and turned around an answer in 24 hours. The proposal led to a successful sale of a chemical management process and became part of the company's basic training curricula. Knowledge management processes helped an employee achieve business goals while feeding the e-learning knowledge base.
Ellis says that portals created in Lotus Domino and run by community leaders were meant for employees to self-publish with easy-to-use tools. The tools encourage this continuous contribution of useful, company-approved knowledge.
This is no mean feat, considering that one of the biggest impediments to successful knowledge management is changing traditional notions that knowledge is power and should be hoarded rather than shared freely. "If a group of people in marketing wanted to get something out we gave them a way to tap into the whole company with very easy authoring," says Ellis.
At Adobe Systems Inc., ad hoc training was brought under the systematic discipline of a Web-based continuous learning site. Before Adobe went live with the site last October, there were no regular training efforts for business unit employees, but rather ad hoc, inconsistent management decisions to send employees to classes. "An account manager in Chicago might have had very different training offered them than someone in Los Angeles," says Kara Underwood, manager, worldwide training and communications.
Within a year, the shift in attitude was stark. "Learning is an ongoing process and not just a training class," says Underwood, underscoring the importance of knowledge to improve time to market of software products.
Underwood oversees learning for Adobe's 750 sales and support employees, all of whom are assigned a learning plan with a mentor monitoring progress in acquiring skills in how to sell effectively. A communications employee is responsible for knowledge collection of anything from handwritten notes to slide presentations and quality control of these sources. Although the company encourages contributions to the e-learning repository, the self-publish tool is limited to e-mail.
The company's buy-in of this knowledge acquisition vision, however, is further limited by a fundamental disagreement over the pure fusion of KM and e-learning. Although both involve acquiring knowledge, Adobe believes the two activities are separate and distinct.
"There's a very distinct difference between knowledge management and training," says Underwood. "When you're offering information delivery in knowledge management you are not testing for skill. How are you going to test their skill? You're testing for behavior change."
This might be the single biggest obstacle to meaningful organizational change around the fusion of knowledge management and e-learning; Knowledge management does not demand testing, while the compulsion of many enterprises is to test constantly, a belief that this is the necessary condition of learning.
Gartner responds that this top-down approach to skills management as opposed to the grassroots approach embodied by e-learning can be counterproductive.
"The idea that it is very important to test rigorously to find out what employees really know is quite threatening to employees and can be very expensive," says Gartner's Aldrich. The mini-economy concept could replace testing as proof of e-learning's effectiveness; the rigors of an exam are replaced by the rigors of the market.
Regardless of the merits of testing, Gartner believes the fusion of KM and e-learning and the gradual phasing out of traditional corporate training is underway and inevitable.
"I don't know if e-learning is going to wind up being a subset of knowledge management or knowledge management is going to be a subset of e-learning in two years, but it will be one or the other" says Aldrich.
John Berry is an IT management consultant and writer based in Bend, Ore. He can be reached at jb@empnet.com.
