Live KM blogging: Knowledge management and the Criteria for Performance Excellence

I've written before about the Coast Guard's Commandant's Performance Excellence Criteria (CPEC) before. The CPEC is actually the world renowned Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence. The Criteria is the Coast Guard's organizational leadership and organizational management framework, and it includes a knowledge management component.

The Criteria asks,

How do you manage your information, information technology, and organizational knowledge?

The Criteria demands organizations to

Describe how the organization builds and manages its knowledge assets.

Knowledge assets is defined by the Criteria (p. 57) as

The term “knowledge assets” refers to the accumulated intellectual resources of your organization. It is the knowledge possessed by your organization and its workforce in the form of information, ideas, learning, understanding, memory, insights, cognitive and technical skills, and capabilities. Your workforce, software, patents, databases, documents, guides, policies and procedures, and technical drawings are repositories of your organization’s knowledge assets. Knowledge assets are held not only by an organization but reside within its customers, suppliers, and partners, as well.

Knowledge assets are the “know-how” that your organization has available to use, to invest, and to grow. Building and managing its knowledge assets are key components for your organization to create value for your stakeholders and to help sustain a competitive advantage

.The Criteria requires the organization to

• Collect and transfer workforce knowledge;
• Transfer relevant knowledge form and to customers, suppliers, partners, and collaborators;
• Rapidly identify, share, and implement best practices; and
• Assemble and transfer relevant knowledge for use in the strategic planning process.

Back toward the back of the Criteria for Performance Excellence (p. 41), we learn,

The focus of an organization’s knowledge management is on the knowledge that people need to do their work; improve processes, products, and services; keep current with changing business needs and directions; and develop innovative solutions that add value for the customer and the organization.

Oh, the Criteria's not asking too much, is it?