Breeding the racing camel - or handy hints on knowledge management projects

Abstract

Describes the knowledge management project undertaken by Egon Zehnder International (EZI), a large and highly respected executive search and management consultancy firm operating in 33 countries, to re-examine and enhance its knowledge coding structure to cope with its rapidly expanding core databases of candidate, client and individual assignment details. The many challenges faced by the Coding Project are reviewed, including: the need for the scheme to be as comprehensive as possible; the differing levels of resource resources available office-to-office to drive the project; the level of local autonomy; the varied work processes between offices; and the danger of the project appearing too London-centred. An indexing taxonomy was compiled that was unique to EZI, articulating the firm’s understanding of its business experience and this taxonomy formed the core of the coding structure to be used for structuring the databases.