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KCS Training & Workshops

DB Kay & Associates is an authorized training partner of the Consortium for Service Innovation certified to teach Knowledge-Centered Support. DB Kay offers open pre-scheduled workshops (promoted in our Upcoming Events, listed below) and also provides private, on-site KCS workshops both focused to help you optimize knowledge management in your organization.

The private, on-site workshops are tailored to your company’s business goals, infrastructure, customers, and caseload. In addition to these private workshops, in many cases our customers are more successful when we budget additional consulting time to roll up our sleeves and work on actually getting the project work done, doing knowledge transfer with the team. We are glad to discuss what options would work best for your situation, so please don’t hesitate to contact us with your questions.

Upcoming Events

June 26-28, 2013 – KCS Foundations Workshop

KCS Foundations Workshop

The KCS Principles
KCS is the best practice for knowledge management because it integrates knowledge capture, improvement, and reuse directly into support operations – there’s no guesswork, and surprisingly little overhead. If you’re considering launching KCS, tuning up your KM processes, or bringing a colleague up to speed, this three–day intensive workshop will provide the needed insights and skills. This course is also a prerequisite for software vendors undertaking the KCS Verified designation.

Three Day Workshop
The KCS Foundations Workshop focuses the 8 Practices of KCS and what it takes to support a successful KCS Program implementation and adoption. Industry examples and class exercises are used to develop these practices to make them more practical. KCS Content, structured problem solving workflow, roles and responsibilities, performance assessment and measurements, and Leadership and Communication requirements are all included in the workshop agenda. In the end, you will be left with a clear understanding of what KCS is, how it works, knowing what the benefits are for your organization’s success and then – how to do it!

During this workshop, participants will learn:

An understanding of the key deliverables required to implement KCS
Best practices for measuring knowledge activity, performance, and value
Techniques for insuring knowledge base quality without review queues
Processes for creating in-workflow (A-loop) and value-added (B-loop) content
How to manage a KCS adoption, avoiding mistakes others have made

Another way to get started is a KCS Design Workshop, which is a Foundations Workshop, but tailored to your company’s business goals, infrastructure, customers, and caseload. Attendees of a KCS Design Workshop within your company would likely be your KCS Program team members, as the Workshop is used as a forum to bring them on board with KCS and get a jump start in designing your KCS Program.

At the end of the workshop, you’ll have:

A collective understanding of the KCS principles and how they would apply at your company specifically
Documented decisions that will drive the deliverables needed to launch KCS in your organization
An aligned, bought-in team

KCS Leadership Workshop

Two Day Workshop
KCS is as big a change for the 1st and 2nd line managers. The KCS Leadership Workshop is intended for first and second line managers in support organizations who are adopting the KCS practices or struggling with managing KCS in their organization. The workshop develops the perspective, concepts and skills needed to successfully lead, optimize and sustain a knowledge-centered organization.

The Leadership Workshop for Managers focuses on how to use KCS measures, and how lead the necessary change management process. Frankly, it is an opportunity to deal with all of the very understandable objections that front line managers tend to have: my people don’t have time, we didn’t hire them to be writers, we can’t deal with one more initiative, our technology doesn’t work so you’re setting us up for failure, how is this going to affect my operational metrics, etc. The two day version integrates more hands-on metrics work and some of the coaching topics described below. This intense two-day workshop will give managers a new perspective on their role and an opportunity to succeed in that role.

We will identify the need to change and introduce managers to the power of…

Alignment and influence versus command and control
Intrinsic motivators versus extrinsic
Value based measures instead of activity based measures
Replacing linear processes with double loop processes
Leading versus managing

KCS Coach Workshop

Two Day Workshop
While technology and process are key enablers of the KCS methodology, KCS is first and foremost about people and their behavior. KCS Coaches are the change agents within the support organization; they model and promote the behavior change required for a successful KCS adoption. The 2 Day Coach-Development Workshop is an intense, interactive 2-day workshop that develops a perspective on effective coaching and provides a model for sustained change and an opportunity to practices influence skills.

The Coach Workshop gives KCS coaches the influence skills they need to guide their peers through certification and beyond. A private Coach Workshop is used to set up the Wave I coaches in the implementation phase of your KCS roll out.

Topics for coach training include: