KMTALK ASIA

It was a nice winter afternoon at the Knowledge Center of Bangladesh Brand Forum, where I delivered my talk on Knowledge Management – Sustainable value creation through collaboration and knowledge sharing. A number of 25 people from various companies attended the talk with great enthusiasm and participation. I was amazed to see that majority of the audience came from HR background and not from IT and that to me is a good start to initiate KM in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh Brand Forum (BBF) is a 2 year old organization intends to guide and council companies to promote their brand. At times, they organize events, award giving ceremony and conferences. The talk was organized jointly by BBF and Future Leaders, a management consulting firm in Bangladesh. The main objective of the talk was to create awareness among corporate professionals in Bangladesh about the concepts and benefits of KM.

In my talk I explained the audience some very basic concepts of KM and exchanged ideas on how to introduce and implement KM in this country. Most of the participants mentioned that implementing KM would not be an easy task as Bangladeshi corporate management still do not give much emphasize on staff development and learning. Top management is still reluctant to develop their staff as it is considered as a threat to their own positions in the organizational hierarchy. If management does not care about staff development, KM would not see any lights in this country as one of the pertinent goals of KM is to accelerate learning, reducing mistakes, adding value thus improving productivity. Bangladesh is lack in modern management practices though some leading companies are catching up fast with global trends.

A brief panel discussion was held after the talk where the Head of HR development in Grameen Phone Mr. S Chowdhury mentioned about how GrameenPhone builds team work and allow learning among staff. He also mentioned that ‘attitude’ is crucial to have a successful knowledge sharing culture.

Ms. Naila Chowdhury, a senior HR consultant in her panel discussion raised the issue of having a national level knowledge bank of subject matter experts in Bangladesh. This knowledge bank would help the country including recruitment and export of local talent to foreign market. She also points out that KM should move outside of an organization and a wider collaboration can achieve greater value for a country.

At the end of the talk audiences expressed their interest to learn more about KM and start introducing some easy techniques in their workplace.

Appreciation should be given to both the organizers for their effort to bring in new management concepts in Bangladesh. I hope with a bunch of young, enthusiastic partners and volunteers they would be able to achieve their aspiration.