KM movement in Thailand is unique. We implement KM in every sector of the society, including the civil society sector.

Five Year Experience of Promoting KM in Thailand*

 Vicharn Panich The Knowledge Management Institute, ThailandandThe Thailand Research Fund 

  IntroductionBackground of ThailandKMI, TRF and Thai Health Promotion FoundationPurpose and strategies of KMIActivities of KMIKM application in various sectors

·       Farmers

·       Rural Development  and poverty alleviation

·       Public Sector

·       Higher Education

·       Schools

·       Business Sector

·       ICT : Weblog – GotoKnow.org   Outcomes and challengesThe future   -------------------------------------------------------------------------------*Presented at the “Conference on Knowledge Management as an Enabler of Change and Innovation in Africa”, June 11 – 13, 2007, Conrad Hotel, Cairo, Egypt   

INTRODUCTION 

         It is my great pleasure and honor to be invited to participate in the Conference on Knowledge Management as an Enabler of Change and Innovation in Africa to share my 5 - year experience of working in promoting the development of appropriate knowledge management tools to suit local context and promoting the application of knowledge management in various sectors and settings in Thailand.    

         What I am going to share is a viewpoint of a student or learner of knowledge management, not an expert.   

BACKGROUND OF THAILAND 

         Thailand is a country in Southeast Asia with population of 64 million and HDI (Human Development Index) 2006 rank of 72nd (score 0.784) among 177 countries. For comparison Egypt is 111th (score 0.702), Brazil 69th (score 0.792) and India 126th (score 0.611).      

KMI, THAI HEALTH PROMOTION FOUNDATION, AND THE THAILAND RESEARCH FUND (TRF) 

         The Knowledge Management Institute (KMI) is a program in the TRF, a non-bureaucratic public organization supporting research for the development of the country. KMI is set up as a specialized program in TRF with financial support from the Thai Health Promotion Foundation. The Thai Health Promotion Foundation is a non-bureaucratic public organization receiving 2% of alcohol and tobacco tax to support health promotion of the country.  

         In order that the health promotion process in every sector of the society is knowledge-based, the Thai Health Promotion Foundation wants to create an organization responsible for promoting KM in the country. Thai Health Promotion Foundation 5 years ago asked the TRF to set up KMI.  

         KMI works in developing KM know-how appropriate for the country and promoting its application in all sectors with wide variety of context. KMI works in a networking style doing KM on top KM activities in the country. Successes in KM initiatives are promoted by recognition and communication in various channels. Various types of forum for sharing experiences and success stories of applying KM are organized or promoted by KMI and strategic partners. In this manner KMI serves as unofficial prime mover of KM movement of the country as well as networking the KM know-how of the country.   

PURPOSE AND STRATEGIES OF KMI 

         The main purpose of KMI is to drive Thailand to be a knowledge-based or learning society. We aim at promoting every sector and every part of the society to be part of the knowledge-creating society, creating and applying knowledge in every activity.   

         KMI is part of a network of institutions and movement working for this common purpose in Thailand. In order that we work in a networking style, we keep the number of KMI staff small, altogether 12 people.      

ACTIVITIES OF KMI 

         KMI provide the following services to the society :

         ·       “National KM Conference” organized annually every December 1-2. In 2007 it will be the 4th and being held on November 29-30, 2007 to have the meeting on weekdays. The 3rd Conference was attended by 1,700 participants. There were 18 rooms for concurrent KM experience sharing. Proceedings of the conference is available (in Thai) for those interested.

         ·       Website www.kmi.or.th, serves as a portal to websites and news on KM activitiew.·       Newsletter, “Linking Web of Knowledge”, bimonthly publishes best practices in KM of various organizations and settings for the purpose of sharing the knowledge of how to apply KM. It is also available on the KMI website, www.kmi.or.th.

         ·       Weblog, http://gotoknow.org provides electronic space for knowledge sharing among working people. It becomes a great success in sharing the knowledge on KM application as well as other working knowledge. It is the 60th most popular website in Thailand with 2.2 million page views in April 2007. Within 2 years of its existance there are 100,000 posts and more than 10,000 bloggers. Now we have weblog http://learners.in.th for sharing among students and teachers and http://researchers.in.th for researchers.

         ·       Media such as books and VCDs on principles and practices of KM. These books and VCDs serve as training material for KM all over the country.       

         ·       “Public Sector Innovation Forum” to be organized in collaborate with OPDC (Office of the Public Sector Development Commission) for the promotion of KM in public sector as well as applying KM for reforming public sector. Best practices in innovative work are being recognized and rewarded by inviting to share the working procedures. Six sessions of this forum will be organized in the year 2007.

         ·       Public sector KM facilitators network is being organized.. The network meets every 3 months with rotating venue. The main purpose is to share the experience of applying KM in public organizations. It serves as a non-formal community of KM Working Group members and KM facilitators, a CoP.

         ·       Network of community KM facilitators. The network meets every 2 months at KMI office sharing their experience and planning cooperating activities.

         ·       UKM (University KM) Network has been initiated and supported for about 2 ½ years. UKM Network limits membership to 7 member universities (Thailand has more than 148 universities). The network meets regularly every 3 months rotating venue and theme of the meeting. The meeting is a platform for sharing success stories in innovative work as well as in the application of KM.

         ·       Institute for the Promotion of Learning towards Happy Communities  (ILHC) KMI upports (financially and technically) a program called ILHC to promote KM among local authorities and local communities. The main aim is to convince the local authorities the benefit of investing in the learning activities of people through KM – interactive learning through action.    

         ·       KM Research Network has been started and maintained. Members are graduate students who do thesis on KM and their advisors.  

         ·       Regional or specialized KM Conference. KMI encourages, collaborates and supports other organizations to organize, such as Local Authorities KM Conference on April 21-23, 2007; Lower North Regional KM Conference in Phitsanuloke Province on September 28-29, 2007; KM Conference on Diabetes Mellitus on July 26-27, 2007; School KM Conference in September of this year.

         ·       KM Internship and Expernship Training Program. KMI provides the service of training KM facilitators by Internship (3 months full-time) and Externship (6 months part-time) Training Program.

         ·       IOCS (Intelligent Organization Coaching Service). KMI provides KM training workshops and coaching services.  KMI also encourages other organizations, public and private, to do the role.    

KM APPLICATION IN VARIOUS SECTORS   

FARMER SCHOOLS   

         Khao Kwan Foundation (KKF) in Suphan Buri Province applied KM in the learning of students in “Farmer School” with great success. Each “school” has about 40 “students” who are practicing farmers. Some of whom are older than 70. KKF provides a full-time learning facilitator for each school. The objective of the school is to learn how to do rice farming without using chemicals. The students want to reduce production cost as well as illness caused by toxic chemicals used in ordinary farming promoted by the Ministry of Agriculture and insecticide and fertilizer traders.

         The school provides learning in 3 levels of curriculum. In the Elementary Level the students learn how to do integrated pest management without using chemical insecticide. In the Secondary Level they learn soil improvement techniques without using chemical fertilizer. And in the Higher Level they learn how to do rice genetic improvement or developing new genetic stock.

         Each level takes 4 months, the time for one crop. For the first 4 months the students focus on learning (by doing) integrated pest management but also practice some methods of soil improvement and rice genetic improvement.              

         Students learn theoretical knowledge from resource persons and from visiting governmental agricultural centers or university laboratories. KKF’s facilitator also do tutorials for them. Then each student interprets the knowledge and applied it in his or her rice field and collect data. They come for knowledge sharing every week for half a day (at Buddhist Temple or student’s house) facilitated by KKF’s facilitator. The facilitaor also visits each student in the rice field to encourage each one’s design and apply of the experiment and discuss what each student (or group of students) oberves.

         The key is group (team) learning and encouragement from the facilitator and among fellow students to interpret and adjust the knowledge learned from outside to suit each student’s context. In the process of group learning and action learning the students create and share uncountable applicable knowledge on insects (good ones and bad ones), herbal insect repellents and insecticides, insect control techniques, bio-fertilizers, plant hormones, new breeds of rice, etc. 

         The students learn that their routine farming practice is their life-long learning opportunity. They regain self-confidence and respect for each other. The production cost was reduced by more than half. More than 90% of their illness disappear and they spend less time in the field. Now they can organize community cultural events together like in the old days. After a few crops productivity become better than when they did chemical farming. Higher yield and lower cost give them more income with less labor work. Medical cost also was much reduced.   

         There were 4 farmer schools at the beginning with the plan to last 1 ½ years. But after 2 years the students want to continue learning with some farmers act as learning facilitaor. They also do inter-school peer assist. New schools in Suphan Buri as well as in other communities are being organized.

         We are very proud that KM can be applied successfully to farmers who have very limited formal education. Nowadays KM is being applied to many development activities initiated by local people themselves.    

RURAL DEVELOPMENT AND POVERTY ALEVIATION PROGRAMS  

         There are many programs for rural development  and poverty alleviation initiated by government units, quasi-government organizations and NGOs. The management of the programs and the facilitators in the field work learn KM principles and practices and apply them in their work. Meetings for sharing success stories and how to achieve the success (best practices) by storytelling, dialogue, appreciative inquiry and positive atmosphere are widely applied. In this way tacit knowledge is being shared and recognized. Many of those are local wisdom.

         KM tools are used to collect tacit or practical knowledge and prepare reports of community development projects.    

PUBLIC SECTOR

         The OPDC (Office of Public Sector Development Commission) is responsible for reforming the public sector to be more effective, more efficient, and become a learning organization. Each public organization is required by an act of Thai legislature to do knowledge management.

         OPDC collaborated with the Thailand Productivity Institute (TPI) in supporting pilot organizations in applying KM to develop a learning organization.  

         Last year OPDC collaborated with KMI in organizing a conference introducing KM to government servants all over the country in 2006. About 900 participants attended.  OPDC also collaborated with TPI in organizing KM lectures for government servants in various parts of the country. Best practices sharing sessions are now being prepared by the OPDC and KMI and will be main feature for promoting KM in the government sector.

         Among 227 government units, at least 6 units are found to have great success in applying KM to improve their work; Department of Agricultural Extension, Department of Health, Department of Mental Health, Department of Corrections, Prince of Songkla University, Naresuan University, and Nakhon Si Thammarat Province. We expect to find more government units having KM best practices. 

HIGHER EDUCATION

         There are 148 public and private universities in Thailand. Many universities offer Doctorate and Masters Degree in KM. Those which apply KM in an organization – wide basis are the Prince of Songkla University and Naresuan University. Some other universities apply it in a lesser manner.   

         There is a UKM (University KM) Network going on for 2 ½ years as mentioned in the section on KMI activities.

         Many university professors serve as private consultant in KM application to companies and government units.  

SCHOOLS

         Most schools are governmental. So they are required by an act of Thai legislature to do KM. There is an on-going development and research project of  applying KM in 78 schools (out of 40,000 schools all over the country) and 17 Local Education Authorities (out of 178). This project is financially co-supported by the National Education Commission and TRF, with technical support from KMI.

         Most of school KM activities are aimed at improving student learning. So the key players are teachers. But in some pilot schools the knowledge sharing is being applied to students. Students who are good at some topics share how they learn to fellow students. Parent sharing sessions have also been initiated. Parents of adolescent students with good behavior come to share with fellow parents on how they deal with their teen-age children.

         The Office of Fundamental Education Council has atarted to expand KM activities to all schools. The issue is how to apply it and how to get the OFEC management understand that OFEC has to give freedom to schools to initiate educational innovation, not to manage in a top down culture.

         ONESQA (Office of National Education Standards and Quality Assessment), which is a part of education quality management system, applying KM in improving education quality by collaborating with some universities as partner in organizing best practices sharing forum among schools.

         Recently a best practices sharing session for best science teachers (who inspire students to love science) was organized by TAST (Thai Academy of Science and Technology), NSTDA (National Science and Technology Development Agency) and KMI. This event serves as a starting point for science teachers KM network.     

BUSINESS SECTOR

         Business sector introduced KM into Thailand probably more than 10 years ago. Many transnational companies apply KM without mentioning its name. TPI (Thailand Productivity Institute) initiated KM pilot project in 2 companies (True, PLC and Spansion Thailand) and 2 public organizations (TPI and Siriraj Hospital) in 2001 and lasted 18 months. Big companies can invest in hiring oversea experts as KM consultants for their competitiveness. Still very few SMEs practice KM in their work.

         Many management consultants give KM lectures without skills on how to start it. Many misunderstand IM (Information Management) for KM. 

WEBLOG http://gotoknow.org AS A NATIONAL KM TOOL

         Two years ago in May 2005 TRF and KMI jointly gave an R&D grant to a couple of university lecturers at Prince of Songkla University (PSU) to develop a website named gotoknow.org to promote blogging in Thai society. The objectives were to use weblog as a tool for promoting KM as well as to use it as KM tool. The two web developers continuously improve the website to serve demand of bloggers. KMI put in many management activities to promote sense of community and knowledge sharing spirit among bloggers. Gotoknow.org proved to be a great success and KMI organized a small celebration among bloggers-of-the-month on the first anniversary day. PSU is going to organize the second anniversary celebration on August 9th – 10th, 2007.   

OUTCOME AND CHALLENGES  

         For organizations skillfully applying KM, the immediate outcomes are human relationship improvement and positive atmosphere. Individual personnel show self confidence and mutual respect to fellow workers. Difference in ideas is being recognized and valued. The workplace becomes a happier workplace. Innovative methods of work are created and further improved. CQI (Continuous Quality Improvement) culture is automatic with KM practice. 

 SUSTAINABILITY CHALLENGES

         For sustainability of KM initiative, two essential factors are needed :

1.       A new mindset of management among the top and middle management. It is a mindset of empowerment management, replacing top-down mindset. New skills of inspiring, shared value / shared goals development, and building commitment and ownership to the common goals.

2.       Knowledge facilitators to serve as catalyst and facilitators for team learning and innovation in routine day-to-day work.  

MENTALITY OR PARADIGM CHALLENGES

         Challenges to KM application are :

1.       Top-down, command and control, silo style of management.

2.       Quick-fix mentality.

3.       PR-ism responded by big top-down public programs and NIH (Not Initiated Here) Syndrome.

4.       Lack of strong commitment, drive or shared purpose for change.

5.       Real understanding of the difference between the power-based management and the knowledge-based management.

6.       The understanding that KM is a non-formal set of activities, capitalizing creativity generated by the atmosphere of freedom and playfulness, running in parallel and loosely linked to the formal management of an organization. Apart from understanding, the organization needs strategy and skillful management of this knowledge-based management.                                              

TECHNICAL CHALLENGES

         The technical challenges of KM are :

1.       The ability to adapt KM tools to suit each organizational context.

2.       The ability to apply a multiple sets of tools (not limited only to KM) for team learning and organizational learning to create business outcomes, satisfaction of shareholders, customers and workers as well as growth and sustainability of the organization.  

IM CHALLENGES

         Many awards, management platforms, and old KM textbooks define KM as IM (Information Management) which is the first generation KM. This phenomenon creates misunderstanding and wrong and wasteful KM approach.  

REGULATORY CHALLENGES

         Due to OPDC-generated law, many public organizations do KM only to comply with the law. The real objective is to pass the evaluation, not to use KM as tool to achieve real organizational development.     

THE FUTURE 

          Thailand wants to become a learning society or knowledge-based society. There are many players in this movement. It is a big challenge to orchestrate these players. Bigger challenge is how to create synergy out of these very complex system of socio-economic development. And even bigger challenge is how to make this “meta-development system” a learning system.   

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