Assignment: PMDO

Here’s an intermezzo—my so called paper for my Pengelolaan Manusia Dalam Organisasi (Human Resource Management) class. We were told to write about knowledge management on PLN or Perusahaan Listrik Negara, a state-owned electricity company and upload the finished work on our social media. 

So, here you go my lovely lecturers, my paper about knowledge management., special English edition! This one is the lighter version of my paper. Please forgive the non-formalities I use here.

nb. Note sure if my lecturer really gonna read this. Haha!

Dahlan Iskan Fights PLN’s Arch Enemies with Knowledge Management

[edited from source]

If you are an Indonesian like me, you’d probably know who Dahlan Iskan is. He is the owner of the well-known newspaper Jawa Pos—which recently awarded the best newspaper of 2011, formerly CEO of Indonesia’s National Electricity Company (PLN) and now the Minister of State Owned Enterprises (BUMN). We know Dahlan as a charismatic man who likes to dress casually—kinda like Indonesian version of Sir Richard Branson—with unique hobbies like walking from his house to the office.

Dahlan Iskan is a literally down to earth man. He went from one remote spot to the other so he really experiences the electricity problems in this country. He keeps the journal of his official travel in a page of PLN’s website called CEO Notes. In the CEO Notes, Dahlan Iskan shares his thoughts, ideas and PLN’s development plans. With journalism background in his hand, he analyzes the problems and tries to solve it.

This process of knowledge sharing Dahlan Iskan did through his writings is known as knowledge management.  Knowledge management, according to my Human Resource Management text book, is

‘any process or practice of creating, acquiring, capturing, sharing and using knowledge, wherever it resides, to enhance learning and performance in organizations’ (Scarborough et al, 1999).’

One point to be recognized is the ‘organizational part’ from the definition. Anything that knowledge management do is done for the sake of organizational goal. And Dahlan Iskan did it in the right way; through his system, he defeated PLN’s arch enemies. Dahlan Iskan referred chronic problems that happen in PLN as ‘arch enemies’. He has five categories for the arch enemies; electricity crisis, the long waiting list for electricity request, electricity transformator (the so called trafo in Bahasa) problems, feeders’ disturbance and fuel dissipation. He shares how he fix this issues through the knowledge management. By this, people, especially those who works in PLN knows ho to deal with the annoying electricity management problems.

Let’s get back to the CEO Notes. Dahlan Iskan also uses his page as a medium for human resource development. According to Dahlan Iskan, PLN have a great quality of human resource; smart people who are able to identify the longing problems and got ideas to solve it but have no way to realize the ideas. Through his system of knowledge management, Dahlan Iskan gave a place for them to apprehend the initiatives. Not only the internet (using PLN’s website for learning media), PLN also uses the intranet called kmdev to enhance the organizational learning.

What Dahlan Iskan did by documenting his thoughts trough writings is called the codification strategy. As I have written previously, the knowledge management is all about getting the organizational goal. So, by this strategy, Dahlan Iskan enables the organization member to access his knowledge easily. And oh, there are two types of knowledge; tacit and explicit knowledge. As long as the knowledge is in your mind, it’s a tacit knowledge. When you objectify your thoughts through any media (symbol, written, diagram etc.), it’s no longer tacit—it’s now an explicit knowledge.

Dahlan Iskan not only shares his knowledge by codification strategy but also through face-to-face interaction. He gives lectures and speak in seminars to improve PLN’s employee knowledge. This face-to-face method is called personalization strategy.

By knowledge management and sharing of knowledge through various media, Dahlan Iskan has done many positive changes; not only for the PLN, but also those who are inspired by his actions.

REFERENCE

Armstrong, M. (2010). Armstrong's Essential: Human Resource Management Practice. London: Kogan Page.