Knowledge Management and Technology
Posted by Arjun ThomasWhen i started my blog the underlying reason was that i felt there was a huge disparity between what I had read about knowledge management and the way its actually implemented in most organizations.
If you ask any KM expert about whether there is a standard method of implementing KM chances are he/she would probably say there isn’t one. It entirely depends on what your goals are and how these processes are received by your audience. At the end of the day, that is what really matters. The greatest KM Framework would still flounder if there isn’t a buy-in from the grass roots level.
KM initiatives are built from the ground up in most organization to suit specific requirements and cultures. This has to be tailor made for it to work effectively. So keep this in mind when you decide to roll out KM tools within your organization or project.
There are a number of things you could do to make sure your launch is successful and the usage is sustained.
- Keep your end-users ( your team / employees ) involved throughout the entire development process
- Make sure there is a diversity in the team that represents all end user groups.
- Always make room for improvements during the usage life cycle
- Create an awareness campaign to promote usage
- Promote success stories
- ALWAYS keep user experience right at the top.
It has always been stated that Knowledge Management is not about technology. However from what I’ve seen in most companies (these are relatively large corporates which have their people spread all over the globe) technology seems to be the backbone of the KM initiative. Unless you have a platform that allows people to extract the information they want and allow them to contribute to the system, chances are your KM strategy will not work.
This is because the average employee in the organization is so focused on his job that anything above and beyond is considered an effort. Although, don’t expect people to come running just because you have built a system. There has to be a benefit to the employee, this can either be in the form of making his job easier to do, or providing an incentive for him to contribute to the system.
There are exceptions however, the whole open source community is built on a knowledge management model. The initiatives here aren’t driven by incentives – and while there were skeptics, at the end of the day these have showed us that knowledge management can sustain itself in the long run.
The bottom line is, regardless of what technology you use, at the end of the day you need to get your people the right information at the right time, with as little effort as possible.
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5 Comments to “Knowledge Management and Technology”
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Aleksandar Trazoff says:
Arjun, you wrote:
“Make sure there is a diversity in the team that represents all end user groups.”
In your experience, how does diversity improve knowledge management? How does it affect the KM ROI? How do other people, members of different communities respond to being included in such efforts?
Arjun Thomas says:
Alek,
Good question. When i said “make sure there is diversity in the team” i was speaking with the context of a KM system specifically.
From my experience when a KM system is designed it never caters to just one group of individuals. You have representation from various groups.
- The Delivery folks
- The Quality group
- The Business Analysts group
- The Marketing group
- The Sales group
- The project management office
and many more…
The reason is that while during the execution of a project only a certain section of these users are very active. In the long run other groups get involved to get to information that might help them in other projects.
Creating a KM system that addresses all their needs creates huge value to the organization as a whole.
While there isn’t definite way to see how this affects KM ROI ( in numbers ) it does allow for inferences to be made.
- Faster access to information
- Access to people
and so on…
With respect to how other people respond to being included in such efforts my experience has been very positive. People seem to appreciate the fact that they’ve been involved in the decision making process.
This is true for virtually every department I’ve worked with.
mtrots says:
Successful KM programs begin with a thorough understanding of how human and technological assets interact and support the transfer of knowledge throughout an organization.
Here is a good article discussing how this understanding of the interaction of human and technological assets can bring about successful knowledge management programs: http://www.executivebrief.com/article/benchmarking-km-success-does-your-km-measure-up/
Charlie Dibsdale says:
I think you are confused. In your last sentence you say the point is to get the right information to the right people at the right time – what has this got to do with knowledge? Information is not knowledge, and not all knowledge can be codified and written down. “we know more than we can say” – Polanyi.
I think you have also implied that technology is that which is used to extract and distribute information… in otherwords Information and Communications Technology. This is a very narrow definition of technology. A whiteboard used to brainstorm ideas amongst a group of people is also technology.
Technology in the wider sense of the word is a potent enabler for KM, but the technology should not be the tail that wags the dog. Its about people.
Arjun Thomas says:
Charlie,
It’s a given that at the end of the day technology is only an enabler and you cannot codify knowledge. The best you can do is create avenues for communication so that people can get to the “knowledge” i.e: other people when they have a need to do so.
This article was meant to address a certain line of thought with respect to KM and technology, and i do understand in a lot of scenario’s this speaks to managing information rather that knowledge.
Appreciate the comments, I was hoping someone would come back and start a discussion around this thought.