“Creating Value from Knowledge ”

Bill Kaplan, Founder and Principal Consultant, Working KnowledgeCSP, has been a Knowledge Management (KM) practitioner for over 20 years. Working KnowledgeCSP has its roots in the intelligence and federal acquisition and program management communities. A retired USAF officer with 25 years of service and experience as a corporate Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO), Bill founded Working KnowledgeCSP in 2009. In 2020, Bill and Working KnowledgeCSP are in the forefront of knowledge management leadership and consulting supporting a US and global client base.

"Solving Business and Operational Performance Challenges Through Knowledge Management Improving the Use and Flow of Knowledge"

“Good” Knowledge Management (KM) delivers mission success when the organization embeds KM concepts, strategies, and practices into workflow to continuously improve performance at the individual, team, and corporate level. KM is about the effective and efficient “use and flow of knowledge”…its creation and movement across the boundaries of an organization and its network of clients and stakeholders. Working KnowledgeCSP “collaborates with clients to help them to more effectively leverage and create value from their knowledge so they can develop rapid, effective solutions to the ongoing challenges they face, make better decisions using that knowledge, and “operate faster than the speed of change.”

| Knowledge Management is a Process of Continuous Renewal” |

An early thought leader in the development and application of KM tools and techniques, Bill has been consulting on the leadership and practical application of KM as a business discipline to address operations and workforce performance challenges since the 1990s. Reflecting on 20 years of practical knowledge management experience, he notes that a consistent challenge facing all business sectors is mitigating the risk of knowledge loss from the many dimensions of workforce turnover. Right now, as we work through the unprecedented changes and disruption brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, we can literally watch the critical and relevant knowledge of many companies and organizations evaporate before their eyes as the people with this deep knowledge, their experience and expertise, walk out the door.

“We know that organizations with a leadership that invests the time and resources to develop a KM Strategy and then use this strategy to implement a KM program are better equipped to address and mitigate their risks of knowledge loss. Why is that? Because these organizations have embedded in their workflow a consistent and disciplined framework to capture, adapt, transfer, find, and reuse their critical and relevant knowledge – an important strategic asset.” Working KnowledgeCSP co-delivers with our clients comprehensive consulting solutions through detailed, evidence-based KM assessments and KM strategies, “fit for purpose “implementing KM frameworks, corresponding training, and ongoing support. With the global COVID-19 pandemic affecting many clients, Working KnowledgeCSP has designed, developed, and is delivering a 100% virtual and adaptive consulting solution tailored to each client’s requirements, operational tempo, and desired outcomes.”

“Every KM engagement co-delivers a solution with our clients.” Kaplan notes that “this has helped Working KnowledgeCSP gain greater success by ensuring that our clients have their key people on our consulting team delivering the KM solution, helping to ensure that client retains an organic capability to sustain their investment in the newly developed KM environment based on what they learned as part of the consulting delivery team.”

Additionally, Working KnowledgeCSP designed an agile approach to KM strategy development – KMAgile – for those clients ready to commit focused resources early in the engagement. This agile approach to a client KM solution helps co-develop and co-deliver sustainable client knowledge retention and sharing capability in approximately 14 weeks through the use of KM pilot projects built into the workflow. This informs the KM strategy real-time by involving the client teams in solving business or operational challenges using KM concepts and practices as part of their normal workflow. “It’s kind of like flying the airplane while you build it,” quips Kaplan. Results and lessons learned from this agile approach are used to later deploy KM more effectively and efficiently across the organization.

“Each client KM solution recognizes the multi-dimensional construct and demographics of their organization beginning with understanding the business and operational environment (mission) and then five main workstreams that make up the knowledge management environment of the organization: people/culture, processes, technology, content, and organizations KM structure and governance model. We deliver a KM strategy (what) and then a detailed and resource phased KM implementation plan (how) aligned to our client’s environments.”

Through carefully designed pilot projects, we work with our clients to demonstrate that investing time in KM concepts and practices, while changing the organization behavior to better support KM outcomes, helps create a measurable return in performance and value for the organization, its teams, and the individual worker. IE