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| 24/02/08 | | Knowledge management lessons |
As the co-ordinator of the SIKMLeaders community of practice, Stan Garfield asked the community members this question:
"If you were invited to give a keynote speech on knowledge management, what words of wisdom or lessons learned would you impart?"
Here's my answer.
All KM is change managementView every knowledge management initiative as a change initiative, which means helping the leadership group to imagine what it will be like when it's done and after imagining it, they want it. It also means getting the employees engaged in working out how it's going to work and then getting people to volunteer to work on it. It will also involve a recognition that most KM initiatives are affected by culture (actually, what isn't) and culture is never completed, done, ticked off the list of things to do. Consequently, a continuous improvement approach is needed.
Link to what matters
Make sure that the the most powerful people in the organisation understand and believe the answer to, "so what?" Always link the KM initiative to what people care about. Mostly that's the business strategy but there have been times when I've worked with organisations without a clear business strategy, so a linkage there wasn't going to help. Find out what matters and if the KM initiatives doesn't make a difference, dump it rather than try and make it fit. A poor fitting KM initiative will eventually unravel anyway so it's better to dump it early than to forced to dump it when heaps of resources have been spent and it's barely limping along.
Collect stories early and often
It's often hard to quantify the value of KM initiatives. So whenever you hear a real live experience, no matter how small, take a note of what happened and tell others. We're helping an engineering firm start a community of practice for its draftspeople. At the first teleconference a woman in Newcastle recounted how she was creating a library of screws for a particular type of aircraft. A fellow in Adelaide piped up saying they already have a library of screws and it also includes auto-placement. You could hear the excitement in the woman's voice on hearing this work had already been done, "and it even has auto-placement." The couple joined forces and updated the library and made it available to the whole community.
This is a small story but one senior leadership heard from the very beginning of the community's development and they could retell to other leaders in the company while finishing their anecdote with, "and this is just one thing the community is doing." While the business benefits must be articulated, the stories gave the community time to establish themselves.
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Comments
Here are the points I would make:
+Don't call it knowledge management--What you're really doing is enabling knowledge creation and sharing. You're creating an organization-wide context for learning that makes more effective strategic decision-making possible. When people think they are managing knowledge, they try to put into databases. When we support knowledge creation and sharing, we're working together to create a stronger culture.
+The endgame of enabling knowledge creation and sharing is innovation--The deeper value of knowledge is found not in managing the present, but in creating the future. Our current work is based on what we know, but it is when we are able to discover what we don't know and even "what we don't know we don't know," that we can begin to imagine larger possibilities.
+Stories are the most powerful way to convey knowledge--Without question, the stories we tell each other are filled with both explicit and implicit knowledge. The good news is that stories are our natural and preferred method of communication. The challenge for each of us is to build our capacity for both individual and social reflection so that we can extract more meaning and develop deeper insight.
Posted by: Jeff De Cagna at February 24, 2008 12:09 PM
I agree that all knowledge management is change management. It is too easy to assume that KM will be accepted simply because it is such a “sensible” idea. But anything new poses potential benefits and concerns for people in the organization. Ignoring that human reaction to change (in this case KM) is an invitation for resistance.
Rick Maurer
www.beyondresistance.com
Posted by: Rick Maurer at February 25, 2008 9:54 AM
Thanks for the additional suggestions. I agree that innovation is an important endgame. In addition I would say that better decision making is a desirable outcome. Each decision, big or small, creates the future of the organisation.
Posted by: Shawn Callahan at February 27, 2008 8:35 AM
Interesting post. I agree with and can relate to your list of lessons learned! I also commented on them and posted mine on my blog.
Posted by: Samuel Driessen at February 27, 2008 7:46 PM