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NASA Knowledge Management Competencies

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“Defining knowledge management competencies at NASA promotes consistent understanding of the specialized skills the CKO community applies to foster knowledge sharing and support mission success.”

-Tiffany Smith, NASA Chief Knowledge Officer and APPEL KS Director

NASA’s Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) community shares responsibility for maintaining NASA’s critical knowledge in alignment with NASA’s Knowledge Policy for Programs and Projects (NPD 7120.6). The CKO community encompasses a diverse range of experience and expertise across an array of disciplines; however, members maintain common skills that can be leveraged to support knowledge sharing, knowledge continuity, and knowledge transfer for the benefit of their organizations and teams.

This list of knowledge management competencies provides a descriptive approach to help promote understanding and awareness of the services, value, and opportunities afforded by the CKO community, and to provide a common language among CKOs and stakeholders to support NASA’s mission.

NASA Knowledge Management Competencies

Knowledge Services

Knowledge of systems and processes to support knowledge flow, knowledge of strengths and weaknesses of different approaches, and ability to advise organizations in selecting appropriate solutions for knowledge challenges.

 

Knowledge Continuity

Identifying, capturing, evaluating, and transferring knowledge in an organized fashion to improve performance and reduce the risk associated with future programs, systems, and projects.

Illustrations:

  • Advise organizations on conducting knowledge capture and transfer activities
  • Facilitate knowledge continuity interviews and capture results
  • Provide templates and checklists for knowledge continuity activities

Resources:

 

Lessons Learned

Identifying, documenting, analyzing, storing, and retrieving lessons learned and utilizing effective tools and templates to capture and share lessons learned

Illustrations:

  • Facilitate lessons learned meetings or pause and learn activities
  • Review draft lessons learned documentation
  • Guide teams in gathering and applying lessons learned

Resources:

 

Relationship and Network Management

Connecting and brokering connections among experts and organization partners to advance knowledge sharing and support improved collaboration

Illustrations:

  • Identify experts and facilitate connections across disciplines and organizations
  • Advise organizations on potential analogous activities or partnerships

Resources:

 

Knowledge Dissemination

Developing a targeted communications strategy and leveraging the right messages and techniques for a target audience

Illustrations:

  • Articulates knowledge gaps and knowledge needs to guide communications planning
  • Develops approaches to deliver messages to appropriate audiences

Resources:

 

Technical Credibility

Leveraging technical knowledge to engage in discussions about a skill, practice, or expertise area, with or without personal experience in that area, as learned by ongoing interactions with the practitioners of the area or previous experience.

Illustrations:

  • Demonstrates understanding of engineering and project management challenges to support inquiry and surface knowledge among teams

Resources

 

Storytelling

Describing events and activities to relay critical knowledge using a structured, engaging narrative and advising others on using this method to enhance communication effectiveness

Illustrations:

  • Coaches teams and individuals in sharing insights through storytelling
  • Uses stories effectively to illustrate key learning points

Resources:

 

Content Management and Curation

Considering knowledge products as information content, including managing the lifecycle, assessing associated metadata, and ensuring content is available to those who need it

Illustrations:

  • Advise organizations on considerations for organizing and surfacing information
  • Partners with information technology and digital services providers to ensure appropriate storage and findability of resources

Resources:

 

Knowledge and Digital Infrastructure

Identifying a need for and knowing where or how to gather information and data; advising organizations on decision-making regarding information and data systems. Maintaining an understanding of whether/when to use digital systems to support organization needs/requirements.

Illustrations:

  • Determines appropriate uses of digital infrastructure
  • Partners with information technology and digital services providers to ensure platforms are usable and appropriate for knowledge-sharing requirements

Resources:

Organizational Culture

The ability to develop a comprehensive strategy to guide change, apply established change management techniques, and understand the prevailing organizational culture(s) and how to operate within them.

 

Organizational Awareness

Understanding work approach and style as it relates to NASA’s functional, social, cultural, and political structure and relationships to achieve Agency, Mission Directorate, Center, program, and project goals.

Illustrations:

  • Demonstrating understanding of agency history and its application to current activities
  • Advising leadership and team members on organizational practices and policy considerations

Resource:

 

Organizational Development

Understanding the principles of organizational development and change management theories and their applications to support organizational learning, including identifying and leveraging opportunities for continuous improvement and/or process improvement.

Illustrations:

  • Analyzing knowledge sharing practices to support organizational productivity and process improvements
  • Identifying knowledge siloes and practices that inhibit knowledge sharing and making recommendations to resolve them

Resources:

 

External Awareness

Maintaining awareness of local, national, and international policies and trends that affect the organization and shape stakeholders’ views; maintaining awareness of the organization’s impact on the external environment.

Illustrations:

  • Incorporating external factors in development of knowledge management strategy
  • Providing context for lessons learned and knowledge sharing challenges that affect teams and organizations

Resources:

 

Facilitation Skills

Supporting collaboration and communications among diverse groups to share critical knowledge; showing understanding, courtesy, tact, empathy, concern, and politeness to others; demonstrating sensitivity to diversity of culture, thought, race, gender, disability, and other individual differences.

Illustrations:

  • Leading and facilitating discussions at workshops and meetings
  • Advising meeting leaders on practices to elicit input from meeting participants

Resources:

 

Team-building

Working cooperatively with diverse team members; designing, facilitating, and managing team processes; developing and implementing strategies to promote team morale and productivity; motivating and rewarding team members’ performance; managing relationships among team members, customers, stakeholders, and partners.

Illustrations:

  • Facilitating brainstorming sessions, conflict resolution, negotiation and problem-solving, communication, collaboration, integration, and other team meetings.
  • Identifying and providing support for opportunities for teams to share knowledge and collaborate or improve collaboration practices

Resources

 

Strategic Insight

Identifying emerging needs and addressing big-picture, cross-disciplinary, and complex problems with logic, synthesis, and creativity.

Illustrations:

  • Analyzing organizational knowledge for alignment with mission or organizational goals
  • Developing knowledge maps to support gap analyses

Resources:

Leadership

Influences, motivates, and challenges others; adapts leadership styles to a variety of situations.

 

Organizational Acumen

Leveraging organizational awareness and organizational understanding to develop and adapt strategies to support the organizational mission.

Illustration:

  • Identifying agency guidance, policies, or other resources that should guide organizational decision-making

Resources:

 

Planning and Evaluation

Organizing work, setting priorities, and determining resource requirements; determining short- or long-term goals and strategies to achieve them; coordinating with other organizations or parts of the organization to accomplish goals; monitoring progress and evaluates outcomes.

Illustration:

  • Coordinating knowledge services projects in support of organizational goals

Resources:

 

Influence/Negotiation

Persuading others; building consensus through give and take; gaining cooperation from others to obtain information and accomplish goals.

Illustration:

  • Helping organizations and teams to understand and gather knowledge internally and externally

Resources:

 

Decision-making

Making sound, well-informed, and objective decisions; perceiving the impact and implications of decisions; committing to action, even in uncertain situations, to accomplish organizational goals.

Illustration:

  • Gathering information from diverse sources to inform organizational decision making

Resources:

 

Problem Solving

Identifying and analyzing problems; weighing relevance and accuracy of information; generating and evaluating alternative solutions and making recommendations for resolution

Illustrations:

  • Collaborating with teams to resolve challenges in knowledge sharing
  • Analyzing and assessing data with teams and gathering insight from team members to address problems

Resources

 

Consistency and Accountability

Contributing to maintaining the integrity of the organization; behaving in an honest, fair, and ethical manner. Demonstrating consistency in words and actions.

Illustration:

  • Demonstrating fairness and equity in working with diverse groups

Resource:

 

Developing Others

Mentoring, coaching, and supporting the ability of others to perform and contribute to the organization by providing ongoing feedback and by providing opportunities to learn through formal and informal methods.

Illustration:

  • Leading and coaching teams and individuals and supporting individual and group learning through these activities

Resources:

 

Stakeholder Engagement

  • Focusing on the needs and point of view of customer groups (i.e., employees or others who use KM tools and approaches) and developing effective partnership with these groups.

Illustrations:

  • Collecting knowledge from wide ranging stakeholder groups
  • Maintaining insight into stakeholder needs and priorities
  • Supporting knowledge sharing with stakeholders through effective communications

Resources:

 

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