Gap Analysis: Knowing What We Know and What We Need to Know

The Navy's model uses gap analysis not only to take stock of the existing and required knowl­edge resources but to discover whether they have what it takes to attain the "knowledge superiority strategic vision. Under this approach, gap analysis is applied 'to identify the forces and factors in place that support or work against the implementation of the knowledge management system."7 The CIO performed gap analysis both on the enterprise and individual levels, while leaving it to knowledge managers at the command levels to conduct their own gap analysis for their respective units. The CIO still guided gap analysis on the command level by defining its pur­pose as identifying "the gaps between the current knowledge management strategy, mission, and profile as compared to what will be necessary to realize the desired state with regards to knowledge management in your Command".

On the individual level, the Navy set out to determine the individual competencies required to survive in the information age, mainly, to create and share knowledge. The Navy decided that to be able to generate knowledge and make effective decisions, an employee needed to be "infor­mation literate," a concept developed by Alex Bennet. Bennet explained that information literacy is not only an important skill but one required for survival in the information age. Information lit­eracy is the ability to:

•   Determine the nature and extent of the information needed.

•   Access needed information effectively and efficiently.

•   Evaluate information and its sources critically.

•   Use information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose.

•   Understand the economic, legal, social, and ethical issues surrounding the use of infor­mation in a virtual world.9

The definition of information literacy further clarifies the relationship between information and knowledge and spells out the basic knowledge creation process. The explosion of information makes an individual's cognitive abilities alone insufficient to produce knowledge. To enable knowl­edge creation, the individual worker needs to develop a set of skills for finding and analyzing the right information. Thus, "information literacy" should be recognized and developed as a general competency of knowledge workers to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of their knowledge work. This point is crucial, yet seldom stressed. Defining the requisite individual competencies, however, is not enough for implementing a robust KM system; hence, gap analysis should be applied to the competencies of the whole workforce. This moves gap analysis to the enterprise level.

On the enterprise-wide level, the CIO assessed the gaps in the competencies needed to opera-tionalize the Navy's "knowledge superiority strategy. In general, to attain knowledge superiority, the Navy needed to cultivate KM as a core competency, thereby building individual competencies and tacit knowledge. Several gaps in both the explicit and tacit resources were dis­covered. One explicit knowledge gap is related to knowledge about KM as a practice in its own right. As a start, the Navy produced a number of CDs that contained extensive training and learn­ing materials about KM. This was the easy part, as the case always is with generation of explicit knowledge. The challenge was to fill gaps in the tacit knowledge resources.

To do so, the Navy organized a number of knowledge fairs, where experiments in KM at dif­ferent divisions and commands were shared and assessed. Participation in the knowledge fairs was high, reaching around 3,000 participants, including people from academia and industry. These knowledge fairs later became a venue for sharing knowledge and actively exchanging views on strategizing and operationalizing KM. Subsequently, the Knowledge Management Community of Practice (CoP) was formed, in which the knowledge about KM was further developed and tested (see also about secure investing).

Though this was a great achievement in filling the various knowledge gaps, the CIO realized that more was required to develop KM as a core competency. The integral milestones to reach that goal are building the knowledge base, capturing and transferring best practices for solving problems, and facilitating quick and easy access to knowledge to shorten learning curves and move the organization forward to becoming a learning organization. None of these milestones can be achieved without building KM-related competencies. The only way, the CIO found, is to create new job positions to cultivate the required new competencies. To that end, the CIO created the most comprehensive new career paths in KM, covering managerial and frontline positions.

Interestingly, the KM career paths and positions are distinct from those related to IT. In addi­tion to the CKO's position, the new positions included knowledge managers, knowledge systems engineers, knowledge process engineers, knowledge community leaders, performance measurement engineers, knowledge assurance managers, and knowledge assistants. This major change made it clear that those who work on KM are not simply "futurists" beating their heads against the walls, but are "champions," enabling the Navy to attain its "knowledge superiority vision.

The new positions fall under three main categories: "knowledge brokerage," "knowledge research," and "knowledge stewardship." They apply the concept of knowledge intermediation wherein certain individuals are entrusted with the responsibility of locating information and expertise efficiently and disseminating knowledge to those who need it, saving time and shorten­ing the learning curve. While knowledge brokers assist in locating tacit knowledge resources (i.e., experts), across the enterprise, knowledge researchers retrieve and transmit explicit knowl­edge resources to seekers. The responsibilities of knowledge brokers revolve around relation­ships and networks while those of knowledge researchers focus on data and information management. Both positions are in contrast to the positions of knowledge stewards, whose pri­mary responsibility is to act on senior management's mandates to capture and codify tacit knowl­edge in a certain area of knowledge.

Addressing knowledge gaps at the strategic level and devising ways to fill them equipped the Navy with the capability to move KM to the operational level. To take the "knowledge superior­ity" strategy to the operational level, Bennet explained that the Navy had to address the issue by looking at the infrastructure, the processes, the organization (structure), and the culture of the Navy. So far, the Navy has reached the "Community of Practice" stage of their Strategic Approach for Implementation, illustrated in Exhibit 6.1. The journey is long and is far from sim­ple, so a rough plan was needed, and that's what the CIO provided in the Toolkit.

Invokes the law of requisite variety'

EXHIBIT 6.1    Strategic Approach to Implementation