Leveraging KM for strategic organizational intelligence at KMWorld Connect 2021

At KMWorld Connect 2021 Brian McBreen, director, knowledge analytics; & Co-Author, “Organizational Intelligence & Knowledge Analytics”; Dean Testa, leader, knowledge management office; Denise Bedford, faculty, communication, culture, and technology, Georgetown University & Author, “Organizational Intelligence & Knowledge Analytics”; and John Silson, foreign service officer, Author, “Organizational Intelligence & Knowledge Analytics”, discussed a new framework for strategic intelligence—Design-Analyze-Automate-Accelerate.

The panel of speakers stressed the role of knowledge capital in the new intelligence framework and looked at the opportunities and challenges associated with creating a broader community of intelligence professionals that bridges individual domains.

“How do we blend knowledge management and intelligence work,” said Bedford.

The panel was designed around a new series of books titled, Working Methods for Knowledge Management, she explained. The series is designed to gather the most comprehensive and relevant perspectives on topics that are core to knowledge sciences. The books blend the synthesis of practice, research, and scholarship.

According to Bedford, intelligence is a key component of knowledge sciences yet there is little if any treatment of this topic in the field or its research. The practice of intelligence work is tactical and fragmented across domains – little cross domain learning or sharing.

The framework: Design-Analyze-Automate-Accelerate, was created by the panel and is further discussed in this series of books.

McBreen shared his experience with internal information and how an organization can be more strategic with its intelligence. He discussed a hypothetical chemical company that was being acquired. How would that company continue to make sure safety protocols were continued? The collection of observations by employees or staff would help the organization. The data collected could be duplicated or lack adequate information. To solve those problems a knowledge and analytics team can be organized. The Design phase is exploratory, he said.

“By doing something like this and putting it in real-time, now they can focus on what they’re seeing,” McBreen said. “This enables the organization to be more strategic.”

Testa’s business story revolved around a traditional manufacturing company. It was reinventing itself and during this process they had to hire some new employees for new jobs.

“Intelligence can be used to envision a new future,” Testa said. “How and for what will you use this new intel?”

By asking that question the context of the answer is valuable to deliver results sooner, according to Testa.

“A culture in our organizations is really essential,” Silson said.

A team with products being shut down had to deal with allocating excessive resources, Silson explained of his experience.  

Taking the time to design a new way to think about that allocation and solving the question of where will these resources be needed in 5-10 years? By trying to predict this, new thoughts and ideas rose, he said.

“We ended up with a solution more based on data but was also repeatable,” Silson said.

KMWorld Connect 2021 is going on this week, November 15-18, with workshops on Friday, November 19. On-demand replays of sessions will be available for a limited time to registered attendees and many presenters are also making their slide decks available through the conference portal. For more information, go to www.kmworld.com/conference/2021.