Become 'the most likely to succeed'

Were you voted "most likely to succeed" back in high school?

That moniker had mixed implications.  A recent survey reported in The Wall Street Journal showed that about one third of the respondents described the award as a "burden," creating pressure to live up to expectations.  I suppose that could create some uncomfortable moments at the high school reunion.

But about 40 percent who received that designation found themselves more motivated to live up to the title.  They are probably the folks you call "the boss."

And then there are the rest of us.  We didn't necessarily have more brains, more talent, more money or more opportunities.  But we knew what we wanted and we had the desire to get there.

Success comes in many forms and means different things to different people.  In the working world, it is often defined as landing the perfect job, achieving a targeted income level, occupying a corner office, or owning a business.

However you measure it, success is sweet.  And it doesn't happen overnight.

Bumps in the road -- and there will be plenty of bumps -- can derail a successful career and lead down a path of negativity.  Discouragement, disappointments, even occasional failures are not the end of the road.  Reroute your thinking.  Zero in on your achievements.  Take a success inventory.  Focus on these five categories:

1. Education.  List the classes you have completed, the degrees you have earned, professional certifications and specialized training.
2. Professional positions. Include every major job you've ever had, and identify the responsibilities and authority you held.  Don't forget those entry level positions that probably taught you lessons you will never forget.
3. Projects.  Start with the job-related projects that have been successful because of your contributions.  Then move on to volunteer projects that worked with your involvement.  You should also make note of community events, church activities and hobbies that you are proud of.
4. Accomplishments.  This category is for career achievements such as awards, promotions, significant praise from supervisors, letters of commendation, or recognition that represents your importance to your organization, community, family or self.
5. Potential.  What are you prepared to do with all that successful experience?  Is throwing in the towel an option anymore?

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Now make your list work for you.  You did it before and you can certainly do it again.  Instead of being overwhelmed by failure, be inspired by success.

Rethink your strategy if necessary.  Surround yourself with positive people who can provide the encouragement that will help you realize what is possible.

Re-evaluate your goals.  Are they realistic, achievable, specific and measurable?  All those components are necessary if you want to measure your success.  How else will you know if you have succeeded?

Focus on improvement, not perfection.  You can always do more, achieve more, get more.  Track your progress so you can see how much closer you have come to reaching your goals and ultimate success.

Be proactive.  Create your own opportunities by working on what you can control instead of what's beyond your reach.  Before you know it, more will be within your reach.

Don't be afraid to fail.  Put your ideas out there and give them a chance to succeed.  Learn from your mistakes.  The annals of business history are full of stories of how splendid successes resulted from colossal failures.  Make history repeat itself!

A man walking down a narrow, twisting road spotted a guru sitting on the grass in meditation.  He approached the guru and asked, "Excuse me, master, is this the road to success?"

The old man nodded silently and pointed in the direction the traveler was headed.  The traveler thanked the guru and went on his way.

An hour later, the traveler returned, bleeding, exhausted and angry.

"Why did you tell me that was the road to success?" he asked the guru.  "I walked that way, and right away I fell into a ditch so deep it took me almost an hour to climb out.  Why did you tell me to go that way?  Was that some kind of joke?"

The guru stared at him.  After a long pause, he started to speak.  "That is the road to success.  It lies just beyond the ditch." 

Mackay's Moral:  It's never too late to be "Most likely to succeed."

Harvey Mackay's Column This Week

By Harvey Mackay

Contributed by: HSGRAO @ GMAIL.COM

Knowledge Management

Knowledge Management

Simply, knowledge management (KM) is the process of maintaining and using company information[i] and integrating knowledge workers’ experience.  Knowledge Management is tied to Knowledge Work, the work that involves the development and transmission of knowledge and information and implies a greater amount of ambiguity, searching, researching, and learning in the job environment[ii].  Overall, KM strategies allow firms to handle more clients and projects by saving time and reducing both research and communication costs.

According to Kulkarni, Ravindran, and Freeze, “KM can be viewed as the process by which organizations leverage and extract value from their intellectual or knowledge assets. . . . Knowledge is embedded and flows through multiple entities within a firm, including individuals with domain expertise, specific best known methods, or lessons learned from similar experiences, documents, routines, systems, and methods.”[iii]

Integrate KM into Daily Life

One approach to KM claims that “the key to success is to bake specialized knowledge into the jobs of highly skilled workers – to make knowledge so readily accessible that it can’t be avoided.”[iv]  This is done by using the technology used by knowledge workers as part of their daily life.  The goal is to eliminate extra effort, motivation and time spent on KM activities.

Embedding KM activities into daily tasks is easiest for low skill workers and complexity increases as job complexity increases. There are several keys to success, beyond the right technology, for embedding knowledge into daily tasks.

1.    Support from the Best and Brightest

2.    An Expert and Up-to-Date Knowledge Base

3.    Prioritized Processes and Knowledge Domains

4.    Final Decisions by the Experts

5.    A Culture of Measurement

6.    The Right Information and IT People[v]

KM Strategy: Codification or Personalization

Another approach to KM starts first with determining which KM strategy best fits with the firm’s overall strategy.  There are two basic choices: codification (people-to-documents) and personalization (people-to-people).

Codification strategy “provides high-quality, reliable, and fast information-systems, implementation by reusing codified knowledge.”[vi]  Codification typically includes databases of information, previous reports and presentations, all of which have disguised customer information.  The knowledge workers’ experiences and knowledge are stored in documents, either in hard copy or electronic soft copy.  The knowledge is not connected to a specific person and reused for multiple projects.  This idea of reuse economies is critical to codification strategy and its role in creating large revenues.

Personalization strategy “provides creative, analytically rigorous advice on high-level strategic problems by channeling individual experience.”[vii]  Knowledge workers use each other as resources through brainstorming sessions, networking, one-on-one conversations and team projects, where the focus is on individual knowledge and experience.  This method is particularly useful when information cannot be codified and stored electronically.  Because of the customized solution generated by personalization strategy firms can charge higher prices and sustain higher profit margins.

The best results are achieved when a firm focuses on one strategy; however, a secondary strategy can be employed to support the primary, but with less emphasis.  There are a few simple issues to consider when determining which strategy to choose. 

1.    Do you offer standardized (codification) or customized products (personalization)?

2.    Do you have a mature (codification) or innovative product (personalization)?

3.    Do your people rely on explicit (codification) or tacit knowledge (personalization) to solve problems?

4.    Which primary strategy best fits the firm’s competitive business strategy? The answers to these questions must be clear or picking a KM strategy could cause more damage than good.

a.    What value do customers expect from the firm?

b.    How does company knowledge add value for the customer?

c.    Why do customers buy the firms products/services?

5.    What is the ratio of primary strategy to secondary strategy?  (80/20 rule)

6.    Remember to coordinate KM with HR and IT.[viii]

7.    Remember that it can be hard to calculate the return on KM investments.  Anecdotal evidence could be the best measure of KM success.[ix]

Applied KM Strategies Examples

Partners HealthCare uses the embedded-knowledge approach to KM.  They developed integrated information systems to help eliminate human error.  For example, the order-entry system is linked to the clinical database and the patient’s records so that if a doctor recommends a medication the system checks the databases to see if the patient has any history of allergic reaction and, if so, what reaction.

Consulting firms employ either codification or personalization strategies as the primary KM strategy.  Ernst & Young, like Anderson Consulting, is a consulting firm that uses a codification strategy.  An Ernst & Young partner in the Los Angeles office was bidding on a project for an industry he was unfamiliar with.  He used the firm’s electronic KM database to research how other teams had handled similar manufacturing projects.  By reusing other teams’ research, the partner was able to not only win the bid but also close the sale in half the normal time.

Personalization strategies are employed at McKinsey & Company and Bain & Company.  These companies hire a different type of employees.  They look for MBA graduates who can be innovative when using their analytic and critical thinking skills to solve distinct business problems for distinct clients.

Jessica Fields (MBA 634 - Winter 2007)