Project Assignment
In this project, you will create a persuasive video presentation. You will make the presentation to the GDD board to obtain funding for the new KM initiatives for GDD. The purpose of this assignment is to demonstrate your understanding of how important KM is to organization effectiveness as well as critical thinking, research, communication and data evaluation skills.
Outcomes You Will Meet by Completing This Project:
• apply the basic steps involved in developing a KM Plan
• describe and explain the reasons for using KM in an organization
• develop your business vocabulary and knowledge of concepts, trends, and current issues used in KM
• demonstrate the use of software and Internet sources by researching and planning a persuasive video
• demonstrate communication skills both media and writing skills
• analyze and explain projected KM Performance
Harry Hartfield was looking over some recent travel brochures while consulting his recent Google search. Retirement is only 5 days away and he could not wait to see the Fiji Islands. He and his wife thought they would start with a restful break before they started their travels in earnest. Harry is the head aero engineer at GDD and has been in charge of purchasing the planes and maintenance for the last 15 years after being an employee with GDD 25 years before. Harry had worked up in the company to his current position and has seen a lot of initiatives come and go when it came to eco-friendly flying machines. In the last four weeks Harry has been breaking in his replacement, Imogine Farthing a 40ish woman who is coming from their London branch. Harry likes the young woman and thinks that she will do well. However, she is keen to purchase the new Boeing cargo plane. She thinks it will go a long way to improving their fuel consumption and air emissions on the long-run between Chicago and Singapore. The cost of the new plane is 3 times more than the Lockheed which Harry thinks will save fuel costs over the old cargo plane they are using now but will not have the same air pollutant emission reduction. While Harry thinks air pollution an important concern for GDD, he also knows that in the past these controls often make the cost of the plan high and the fuel consumption lower than the company predicts. Ms. Farthing does not agree. Harry knows it will be her call but wishes he could access all those old reports he made when he was making a similar decision earlier in his career. With that information as a base maybe with update figures he may be able to persuade Ms. Farthing to change her mind. During his retirement party Harry decides to tell Rockfish about this point in the hopes that he may know how to locate the reports. Harry thought it was worth the try. Rockfish said he would look into it but wasn't sure what he could do.
Oddly after his encounter with Harry at the party, Rockfish began a short conversation with one of his sales managers, Amid Jordan. Jordan had been with the company only three years and Rockfish was shocked to hear that he was leaving. Amid said that he sorry to have to go but he was offered a job in Orlando with UPS, one of GDD's biggest competitors. In fact UPS had been poaching many of his managers lately and he was concerned about proprietary information and good talent leaving the company. How could he stop people from leaving the company and taking their knowledge with them?
Harry's retirement party was beginning to be depressing Rockfish thought not festive. The feeling was brought home when Harry began a conversation with a visiting shipping department head from their Asian branch. It turned out that she was here to try to rectify a major glitch in the process used to get letter packages to Malaysia. It seems that despite communications between the branches the packages were consistently running a day late. They found out that the problem was in the driver pick up times here in the states. The Asian branch has been asking that the time difference be adjusted for by three hours rather than the 1 hour as it currently was set. The change somehow was not being communicated to the drivers. It needed to be fixed because he had a lot of unhappy customers with claims of late packages to deal with on his arrival home.
Rockfish began to think about the fact that all these stories were dealing with knowledge and its usefulness to the company. This point is one he has been hearing a lot about recently from you. Rockfish approaches you and says, "Okay I think you are right about your idea of setting knowledge management processes in place, but you will have to explain it to the Board of Directors. They need to see what it will do for the company."
Task
Using the following thesis create a video presentation explaining how KM will work for GDD. It must be at least five minutes in length and have an accompanying paper version of the presentation so that the Board can review it after the presentation is over.
Thesis: The importance of having KM practices in place is to turn intellectual assets into dollars by retaining and capturing tacit knowledge to stem loss of corporate memory.
Instructions:
The video should be no longer than 15 minutes in length.
The Video presentation/transcript should include the following:
• Identification and discussion of all the KM issues suggested in the fact pattern that encourage the argument for KM practices to be engaged. Hint be sure to look at organizational memory.
• Explain why these issues will cost GDD money now and in the future.
• Suggest at least four reasons that retaining and capturing tacit knowledge will benefit the company not just in with these issues but in other ways.
• Explain how technology can help collect and store information that would reduce memory loss.
• Make at least three recommendations as to how GDD might effectuate KM practices and why these recommendations would work best.
In your answer consider the company profile and case study facts to support the recommendations as well as the class material.
• Use persuasive language to make your points.
• Demonstrate creativity in the development of the video itself, including using techniques to capture the viewers interest and transitions to create a smooth transition of the material.
Format your assignment according to the following formatting requirements:
1. The answer should be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides.
2. The response also includes a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student's name, the course title, and the date. The cover page is not included in the required page length.
3. Also include a reference page. The Citations and references should follow APA format. The reference page is not included in the required page length.