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CAPTURING CRITICAL KNOWLEDGE IN ORGANISATIONSKM Survival Skills for Practitioners
CARLA SAPSFORD NEWMAN
FAILURE IS GOOD……to learn from
•Failure is just as important to discuss and share as success. Yet it is often the one area that companies wish to avoid.
•Culturally, failure is seen as negative. If your company really wishes to be a learning organisation, it needs to embrace failure as much as success.
•Failure doesn’t always have to be written down, but it does have to be acknowledged and communicated in a culturally relevant way.
•If focus on serious KM falls down or goes away, it is often AS IF IT NEVER EXISTED. Leave a legacy that lasts.
KM SURVIVAL SKILLS:The Basics
1. Assign value to KM
2. Find champions and create committed stakeholders
3. Undertake a knowledge audit – you MUST prioritise knowledge
4. Paint a negative future – the more dire the better
5. Develop and evangelise a long-term sustainable plan
SURVIVAL SKILL #1:Assigning Real Value to KM
• You have to learn how to speak the language of your management – numbers, value, profits, ROI
• What is the cost of knowledge loss – use a consistent and relevant set of metrics
• What is the price of hiring in new talent/knowledge• Calculating time to autonomy and assigning value• Calculating what doesn’t happen – accidents etc.
SURVIVAL SKILL #2:Creating Internal Stakeholders
• It’s like a survival movie: you can’t go it alone
• Capture the critical knowledge of key people who can be crusaders for the cause
• Enlist the help of HR and IT good eggs who can help you create the tools and incentives to institutionalise KM
• Spend one day a week generating ‘new business’ or demand for KM
• Spend at least 10% of your time generating your own lessons learnt
• Find people you respect to bounce ideas off of
• Train up your successor(s)/partners
• Use KM to help plan for major transitions (and in times of economic crisis, there will be many)
• Have a mission others can buy into, by describing KM in practical terms
KM SURVIVAL SKILL #3:Thou shalt set priorities
• Undertake a knowledge audit – you MUST prioritise knowledge
• Start small and select key KM targets• You must be clear on how KM fits into the overall mission
and vision – otherwise it’s all just window dressing• If YOU don’t believe in what you are doing and it’s value,
who will?
KM SURVIVAL SKILL #4:Paint a Negative Future
• Fear is a fantastic motivator – fear of losing money, fear of looking bad, fear of fatalities, fear of slipping in the rankings, fear of not having a hot project, etc.
• Never let a crisis go to waste• Find relevant examples of what happens when KM or
critical knowledge capture DOES NOT happen• Illustrate what the stakes are, graphically, anecdotally
and numerically• Know what your key stakeholders are most afraid of and
use this knowledge to make your case
KM SURVIVAL SKILL #5:Keep the Long-Term in Mind
• Develop a long-term and sustainable KM plan, but build in quick wins in the short and medium terms
• Benchmark your results against similar organisations doing top quartile work – a selling point and a reality check
• Figure out where the leadership sees the organisation in five to ten years and steer KM towards that goal
• You know the leadership will come and go…but they don’t!
• Stay the course and slowly build up your core group of KM evangelists
KM Survival Skill #6:Become Buddies with HR and IT
• Identify the knowledge that is the most valuable/critical to your organisation.
• Make it a contractual requirement or build into your HR practices a guided or structured knowledge transfer.
• If people aren’t required to do it, chances are they won’t bother.
• Must build in incentives for behaviour which benefits not only the organisation, but the employee.
• HR can help flag key people or moments in a the project cycle which will set off a KM intervention.
• Communities of Practice leadership often has to be initially delegated and put into the KPIs of subject matter experts, etc.
• IT can help you build or adapt tools – but they CANNOT solve your KM problem.
