Practical Hint #17: Tools for Managing Relationship Capital

Here are some tools for managing relationship capital. Notice that because KM overlaps with IT, HRD, OD, CRM and QM, many tools are common across these fields.

• Social Network Analysis (SNA), sociogram or stakeholder analysis: Maps and analyzes frequencies of communication, teammate preferences, perceived closeness of interpersonal relationships, degree of agreement/disagreement, etc. between people in a group, organization or network

• Team building and team learning exercises
• Setting up a cross-functional KM Team
• Customer relations management, business development, account management, or business partnership management: Management of relationships with customers, suppliers, partners, etc.
• Customer clubs and e-communities: strengthens a company’s communication and relationship with customers, allows customers to participate in product improvement or R&D, makes some customers feel special by receiving advanced news or product prototypes, etc.
• “Customer ba”: Part of the task of some Japanese customer relations managers is to create an affirmative, trusting and creative “relationship space” between himself and the customer.
• MBTI, Belvin types and other psychological profiling tests: Assessing potential for complementarity and good mix of thinking and working styles among prospective team members
• Various tools in brand management and marketing which enhance reputation and credibility of the company
• Various HR/OD tools to enhance employee loyalty and morale: recognitions, honors and awards; policies that allow appropriate decision-making to employees; CEOs that listen e.g. allow direct emails from employees; facilities that show the company cares e.g. day-care facilities within company premises for young children of mother-employees, etc.
• Group exercise in mind mapping: Allows members to see and better understand the assumptions of other fellow members
• Professional and personal profiles of staff, Expertise Directory, company White Pages: Facilitates staff in getting to know each other and each other’s skills, expertise and talents
• Face-to-face meetings and SN functionalities among e-community or e-CoP members: Mutual trust in a virtual CoP or e-community is best nurtured through face-to-face meetings, and through appropriate social network functionalities in the website of the CoP
• Visioning exercise: Co-creating and contributing to an organization’s vision tend to enhance buy-in and engagement of members in programs, projects and activities aimed at the vision of the organization.
• Negotiation: collaborative/integrative negotiation training, skills development (thanks to Peter Spence), and related tools in conflict management
• Leadership (thanks to Peter Spence), such as “bridging leadership” and leadership that appreciates and applies many of the above.
• Technologies for building or enabling trust (e.g. TrustEnablement by Alex Todd)

Please add other tools that I missed (kindly use the Comment link).

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D6- IT Track versus People Track

KM practice, according to Sveiby, generally falls along two areas which he calls “IT track” and “people track”. I propose a third track, the process track, which looks at how people work together to create value for internal or external customers. The third track is what quality managers (QM) do (although they do not call what they do as “knowledge management”). Here are some examples of tools used by practitioners under each track:

The same knowledge can be inter-converted between embedded knowledge in information systems, embodied knowledge in people’s heads and enculturated knowledge in process teams. Therefore, it makes better sense to manage the total system rather than to look at its mental slices: an IT slice, a HRM slice and a QM slice:

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