By Victoria Ward

Effective knowledge is knowing how to go about assembling the relevant components to inform a particular decision or judgement. So "meta" knowledge about these stores of value is more important that knowing precisely what is in them.

Formalising the use of traditional, current and emerging map-making techniques in an enterprise can provide powerful levers for the creation of "meta" knowledge, and in achieving cultural stepchange (and so achieving strategic change) in any enterprise.

Systematic mapping of the location of the knowledge and information assets needs to take place in conjunction with the creation and formalisation of communities of navigators, or local guides who act as collaborators in the creation, distribution and development of the map, and in the location, guardianship and development of valuable knowledge assets. But you need to start with some assumptions about knowledge assets and a knowledge dynamic.

Story One: Fieldworkers in a utility company whose depots closed as part of a cost-cutting campaign take to meeting in a café. If one group of workers deals with a particular problem or notes something which they think the others should know, they log it in a diary which is kept for the by the café owner.

Story Two: Two local schools are prototyping the new business HNVQs, along with 200 other schools. The head of business studies in one has contacted her counterpart in the other so that they can share experiences as they go.

Story Three: A fund management company has created a roving hit squad to set up nine offices in Europe, reducing the set-up time from nine months to six weeks.

Story Four: Software companies are giving away their most valuable software programs.

Story Five: The McSpotlight Web site, created and run by a tiny group of supporters of the two McLibel defendants, attracted 14 million hits.

Story Six: A reinsurance company has identified "superexperts" as guardians of particular aspects of underwriting policy. Underwriters in the field can contact them directly for guidance, and sometimes instant policy updating.

Story Seven: An oil and gas company which has restructured and outsourced extensively over recent years keeps a register of departed experts, so that, if necessary, it can draw upon their expertise.

Story Eight: A reinsurance company runs masterclasses where departing elders are quizzed by a small group of "bright young things." These are also recorded and written up.

It is harder to define what knowledge is than to define where it is and what it is like. Knowledge is in, among other things:

• Presentations, reports, journals.
• Licences, franchise agreements, patents, intellectual property.
• Databanks, proprietary software, risk tools, audits, gap analysis.
• Libraries, catalogues, archives.
• Manuals, policy documents, memos.
• Individual ability, memory, know-how, experience.
• Teams, communities, groups, networks.
• Meetings, training materials.
• Financial and management information.

Knowledge is, among other things:

• Time critical, virtual, relevant now but simultaneously...
• Reflexive, complex, evolving, interactive and often unexpected in its relevance.
• Messy, filtered, created for a specific purpose, (for example to inform a decision) but drawing on experience from other times and places.
• Social, often self-organising, achieved through question, challenge and debate.
• Filtered, creative, selective.

1. In all kinds of products and services there is increasing knowledge intensity. (The workers in story one have their scheduling and feedback managed by a handheld computer and a regional call centre.
2. Senior managers and directors cannot see what knowledge sharing is going on, as much of it happens out of their line of vision. The normal tools of management are increasingly ineffective in creating such a system.
3. Services, software and intangible products are infinitely expandable at virtually zero cost, and can be made available through many channels at great speed.
4. Network economies create and entirely different economy of production, where modules of activity, knowledge and expertise might be dislocated in time and space (call centres in Ireland, production engineers in India, parts supply and service contracts in Walthamstow.)
5. Self-organising behaviour (such as that shown by the schoolteachers, schoolgirls and utilities workers, or by the creators of the McSpotlight Web site) can take place without, or in the face of, instructions or executive decisions. And a few individuals can have a disproportionately major influence.
6. "The new economy will also be positive for conditions of work, as it prizes networking and interdependence, sharing and collaboration" (Charles Leadbeater.)

Stories, characteristics, and challenges together lead to a starting point for some assumptions about knowledge discovery. An enterprise needs to understand where its assets might be located before it can create a plan to unlock value.

• Experts and networks.
• Individuals with expertise, information network, communities of practice, communities of purpose.
• Who around here knows about nursing home underwriting....?

• Experience and experiments.
• Practical experiences of "how to do it! (or "how not to do it") which the enterprise has gained through major strategic or change initiatives, including joint ventures, mergers and acquisitions, outsourcing, setting up new business ventures, implementing technologies - closely linked to "know who."
• How did we start that direct mail business? What did we learn?

• The archive of the enterprise.
• Indexing, archiving and cataloguing the explicit knowledge created (or sourced) by the enterprise and individuals in it to activate the library of resources and research.
• Where is our research on emerging markets in Eastern Europe?

• Storytelling, tradition and myth.
• Maps, resources, materials, events and spaces actively communicating the values and experiences of the enterprise, to be used as a means to inform future activity actions and strategy.
• What are the cultural values of this place? What is the baggage? What is the vision?

In each case effective knowledge is knowing how to go about assembling the relevant component to inform a particular decision or judgement. So "meta" knowledge (or knowledge about knowledge) about these stores of value is more important than knowing precisely what is in them. Think of it as a collection of facts, experiences, gaps, questions and expertise which the individual then edits to provide support for a particular decision or action. The collection needs to be effectively catalogued and signposted in order for the right choices to be identified. So each store of value can be considered as a territory for mapping and navigation.

One of the core values of charts and maps is that they are working instruments, designed with a particular user in mind.

The four-stage processes of geographic map making are a useful metaphor as a reference framework for analysing information.

A map should do three key things for an individual:

1. It should provide some sort of representation of reality (even a mythical reality) which the user can recognise.
2. It must give the individual user a clear understanding of where they are in relation to this reality and the key (through symbols and meta information) to find their way round and interpret this map.
3. It should give the user the tools to plan a route (or compare routes) from a starting point to a destination.

1. Defining the User: The requirements of the principal user must be determined, because they influence decisions on map scale and content.
2. Surveying: "Surveying, in which the facts are discovered and recorded must precede mapping, in which the facts are presented in graphic form." It includes creating a fixed number of points; establishing a framework; making a detailed survey.
3. Analysis and Selection: Selection has two main parts. First, the analysis and interpretation of data and information from a large range of sources. Second, the interpretation, selection and synthesis of this data into a single, consistent set of data.
4. Compilation: This is the process of designing the final map, so that it can be read by users who may vary greatly in map-reading skills. Design skills involve drawing symbols, lines etc, so that the clutter is minimal and simplifying often complex patterns into simple ones.

Its value is in making visible a universe, land or ocean beyond the immediate grasp of the user. Once made, a map also throws up a challenge - is it accurate? The challenge then attracts counter-information, or new information. So the actual process of making the map is dynamic and creates, unexpectedly, a common purpose. There is a value in bring back stories, evidence and information to be incorporated into new versions of the map which overcomes vested interests and serves a common purpose.

This is what happened as the charts and skills to navigate the oceans were developed in the Age of Discovery. At first, map making was sponsored by rich patrons (kings and queens) and maps were power in the hands of a few - they provided competitive advantage. Then, as time went on, a dynamic was created between the sailors who used the charts and the cartographers at court. In effect, informal collaboration and information networks grew up to feed the demand for growing accuracy (and probably for recognition too). As the interest in accurate detail grew, so publishing methods changed and maps and charts became widely available to be used by the masses, rather than the few.

Linking maps and navigation: the A to Z and the taxi driver:

Three things are needed to bring information networks into being:

1. Discovery: systematic discovery of networks, communities, resources, flows and behaviours.
2. Navigators: the deliberate (and imaginative) creation of an effective network of navigators as a foundation for cultural change.
3. A commitment to change and learning.

Assuming that there exists a plan to "discover" knowledge assets by mapping them and that the commitment is already there, who are the navigators and what is their role?

Navigators play a key role in bringing the flow of knowledge to life. They can form the core "community", which grounds knowledge, and allows for its discovery.

• Identify, define and locate knowledge assets.
• Know how, where and with whom they create value.
• Instil processes/tools to manage assets.
• See culture and behaviour patterns.
• Collect and feed back stories and evidence.
• Identify and embed information sharing objectives.
• Act as coach, trainer.
• Act as first point of contact.

• Analysis.
• Observation.
• Editorial, publishing.
• Problem solving.
• Design.
• Pattern recognition.
• Risk taking.
• Influencing.
• Negotiating.
• Networking.
• Entrepreneurial.
• Interpreting.
• Teaching.
• Communication.

The combined roles of these individual navigators in their communities (which may overlap) can create powerful "leverage." Each navigator can act as a "franchisee" for developing a knowledge management culture in a small community - say 10-50 people. This implies two things:

• A small team, located at the centre of a complex enterprise, can create reach quite quickly by identifying navigators and binding them together to create a common purpose.
• Some 2-10% of the enterprise (many of whom may already be unofficially engaged in navigation roles) needs to have some kind of formal knowledge role and responsibility for all individuals and communities to be actively touched by the necessary cultural change which achieves critical mass.

The beauty of developing this concept is that, by actively maintaining and strengthening the links between people and information (rather than separating them, which is what more commonly happens in building the archive of the enterprise), two major benefits result.

The first is accuracy. The information stays accurate. Or, more importantly, the message in the information stays accurate. Secondly, the value of what is know grows. Information, experience and knowledge are magnetised and so a dynamic is created.

• Maps are a cultural conjunction of space and time: a map can provide a powerful tool for understanding how an enterprise defines itself at particular points in time, providing a pattern of interpretation to inform future decision making.
• Maps as mythmakers: what kind of role could maps of the historical cultural values, expertise and experience of a firm play in defining ambitious boundaries for the future? Maps as political ambition, myth making, education, scientific investigation, history, memory, consciousness, identity values, reflection.
• Atlases: building an "atlas" of an enterprise can provide a connectedness which allows the same information to be put to many different uses.
• Text, data and design integration: developments in cartographic technique and production methods, drawing on new technologies, are making maps increasingly interactive and increasingly a guide to extensive bodies of information, databases etc.
• Developing the role of image in interactive communications: simultaneity is a powerful tool in the way maps can use images, text and symbols to present complex information in a visual form which is simply and easily comprehended.
• Maps as a stimulus to the imagination: imagination, and its expression as innovative products, services or solutions, is a key source of competitive edge.
• Maps as an effective means of reusing the experience of an enterprise: using a combination of the mnemonic opportunities which mapping presents to fix an experience in its context, and to associate the story it tells with the expert who can tell it, is a powerful device for reusing the experience of the corporation.
• The dynamic role of maps in planning, communicating and managing change: the very act of collaborating in making the map creates a very different platform from which the enterprise can operate.
• Navigators as digital switching stations: the power of creating navigation, supported by maps, lies in knowledge capture and growth, by locating the assets and retaining precision and granularity, and simultaneously extending reach.

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© Victoria Ward, Spark Knowledge / Through the Loop Consulting Ltd 1998-2000