Knowledge management as applied in modern organizations is both a simple concept and a wide-ranging one. Definitionally, it can be boiled down to the effort to manage information and resources to improve the organization’s efficiency. But this effort can of course be applied to any number of specific issues or aspects of an organization.

In this piece, we’re going to explore the use of knowledge management for the navigation of an overabundance of information within a business.

Can There Be Too Much Data?

Any discussion on this topic needs to start with the logical question, which is whether or not there’s any such thing as an overabundance of information. Or, putting it another way, is there such a thing as having too much data for a modern company?

A lot of people might be inclined to impulsively answer in the negative. In our increasingly digital world, we’re perpetually inundated with discussions about the importance of data in business. We understand that robust data operations yield invaluable insights, and we hardly think to question whether there might be an upper limit on how much information is actually useful. The general perception is that the more data a company can produce, the deeper its insight will be — and the deeper the insight, the greater the opportunity to enhance efficiency and improve operations.

There’s a certain logical sense to this, but the truth is that there is such a thing as generating too much information, to the point that it becomes an inefficiency unto itself. As one discussion on data saturation put it, it’s actually a problem that is “everywhere” in modern business. This is because “the rapid rise in our ability to collect data hasn’t been matched by our ability to support, filter, and manage the data.” These comments were made with specific regard to marketing departments, but they do a nice job of summing up the problem more broadly. Companies that focus too much on gathering data in large quantities wind up with more than they know how to make sense of, and thus struggle to find meaningful insights.

How Knowledge Management Can Help

The most fundamental way to think about how knowledge management can be applied to this problem is to slightly tweak the definition provided above. As stated, KM is typically about the effort to manage information to improve efficiency. In this case, however, we might think of it more as the effort to make the management of information more efficient in the first place, so as to improve the quality of business insights. It’s a subtle distinction, but one that establishes a helpful way of thinking: a focus on turning the scattershot collection of information into a more targeted and productive effort.

This is something that’s easier to theorize about than to put into practice. It is actually easier, at this point, for organizations to simply cast a wide net and gather all possible information that might pertain to company performance — from internet activity, social media, internal performance, and so on. Where KM comes into play, however, is actually in narrowing that collection process to focus only on what is relevant, pertinent, and ultimately useful. It is essentially a filtration process that narrows the parameters of data collection in ways aimed at generating only the most helpful information, and avoiding excess clutter.

Naturally this is not an exact or flawless process. Some excess data without particular utility will trickle through. But by making the actual collection process more efficient, an organization can effectively apply KM as a solution to this problem.

How to Implement Knowledge Management

As mentioned, this sort of solution is easier to develop as a theory than to implement as practice. However, there are simple and strategic ways to go about the application of KM.

One is to turn to an employee or team specifically trained to handle data-related needs. For some companies, this might mean hiring data and/or analytics experts from the outside. Others, however, may find it more efficient to train internal administrators for the task at hand. Today, this sort of training is accessible via online business administration degree programs that make it easier for working professionals to study and learn new skills without having to quit their jobs. These programs prepare students for a number of different business tasks, but operations management, data research analysis, and marketing coordination are among them. Any of these specialties can help a company employee to gain expertise in data-related practices, and thus prepare said employee to direct a KM effort.

The other, similar but perhaps simpler option is to establish and train people in what are sometimes referred to as gatekeeper roles. Beyond the general definition that inspires the term, the gatekeeper concept is one more commonly associated with product development. Basically, the idea is that someone in a gatekeeper role controls the flow of information between stakeholders and project development teams, so that there isn’t excessive information or pressure moving one way or the other. And the same concept can be applied to data operations as a form of KM. Essentially, an organization can train gatekeepers to recognize what is pertinent and what is not in data collection, and thus — with relative ease — cut down on the clutter. This in turn makes an entire data operation more efficient.

In the end, the effort can be more complicated than how it is presented here. Particularly where larger organizations are concerned, data operations tend to be vast and multi-faceted. Applying KM across the board takes a thorough, effective strategy. The foundation for this strategy, however, is understanding the problem and the ways in which knowledge management can be implemented to solve it.

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Article specially written for kminstitute.org

One of the biggest challenges faced by most organizations is organizing, finding, and marking information in the knowledge repository in such a way that it is easily accessible as and when needed by the employees. The classical approach used widely is indexing documents to help users in deciding documents relevancy and retrieval. Classical methods comprise classification systems (taxonomies), thesaurus, and controlled keywords (nomenclatures) [Aitchison et al. 2004; Cleveland and Cleveland 2001; Lancaster 2003; Stock and Stock 2008].

Folksonomy is a most recent knowledge management (km) tool of web 2.0 for searching, accessing, and labelling information by the content creator and the user in a way that makes sense to them. Folksonomies include novel social dimensions of tagging [Mathes 2004; Smith 2004]. It is a new model for content indexing based on collaborative tagging with user generated keywords that broaden the spectrum of knowledge interpretation methods. Folksonomy is a valuable addition to the traditional KM methodologies since it facilitates tagging input from the end user, promote the use of active language, and most importantly allows community navigation of an organization’s knowledge base in new ways.

With the introduction of folksonomy end user is no more a passive user but an active contributor to the indexing and retrieval of content. These tags are written in common language rather than the pre-conceived formal list based on the user’s understanding of the content. The tags created by the end-users are searchable for everyone beside the interpreter-created controlled terms and the author-created text words and references (Stock, 2007). Keywords are no longer keywords now, but tags and the collection of tags used to classify content on any different platform forms a Folksonomy. This makes the content scalable and easy to find and use.

The purpose of knowledge management is to encourage collaboration for knowledge sharing and innovation by making internal knowledge available for one and all anytime and anywhere in a structured manner. There are definitely major issues in relying solely on folksonomy in the context of knowledge management. The lack of semantics connections, spelling variation, tags ambiguity, use of acronyms are some of the issues that create problems for documents only tagged with folksonomy. Using parallel indexing strategy on the other hand can create more confusion.

The key is to integrating folksonomy with traditional tagging methodology like taxonomy to knowledge discovery and sharing efficient and easier. It is the only way forward for KM 2.0 to be sustainable and successful in organization wide setting.

Coming up in next article difference between taxonomy and folksonomy... Stay tuned!

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Imagine that you are in a theater listening to an orchestra. Do you notice that all the musicians refer to the same set of music sheets to ensure that they play their instruments in sync? Just like an orchestra performance, organizations also require aligning various components so that there is a harmonious content management performance. This blog describes the elements that they both have in common.  

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If you have Netflix, you’ve probably seen Tidying Up pop up on your feed. It’s a new series based on Marie Kondo’s book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, which presents her methodology for clearing your clutter, getting organized, and creating space for only the things that still and will continue to serve you and “spark joy” in your home. The Konmari method for tidying up has transformed the lives of thousands of people around the world and when applied to your content strategy, can dramatically impact the quality and findability of your organization’s knowledge and information.

Here’s what you need to know about the Konmari method and how to apply it to your content strategy efforts:

1. It’s not magic.

In one of the episodes, Marie’s client expressed how excited she was to witness the magic of tidying up. Marie quickly clarified that there is no magic– although she would provide guidance in the right direction, there was a lot of work ahead. In fact, the more stuff her clients had in their home and the deeper their emotional ties to that stuff, the more work it would actually be. To make it even more complicated, the relationship between the people who lived in that home would make it increasingly challenging because they would have to work together to make decisions about the future state of their space.

Similarly, I’ve worked with clients to truly understand the challenges related to their content and we work together to develop strategies for improving their ability to create, manage, and share the resources necessary for their jobs. When it comes to content, it’s important to be intentional and make sure that what you have achieves the objectives and meets the quality standards you’ve set. Each content repository should have a purpose, e.g. the intranet stores information and resources for internal employees or the e-commerce platform contains copy that helps to sell products. Then, each content item that lives in the content repository should align with that objective.

Marie makes her clients hold each and every single item they own and ask themselves whether they want to keep the item, discard the item, or donate the item. When conducting a content clean-up effort, content owners will also have to evaluate each piece of content and determine whether they should keep it, update it, or archive/delete it. The more content you have, the longer this process will take, but the more you do it, the easier and faster it becomes to accomplish the content clean-up effort.

2. The amount of stuff you have will overwhelm you.

One of the very first exercises that Marie asks her clients to do is to pile up all their clothes in one area. All of it. After an initial look of disbelief, they begin to go through all of their closets, drawers, and other hidden places where they’ve stuffed clothing. The mountain of clothes that results from this exercise almost always shocks the owners — some of the items haven’t been worn in decades and others still have their tags. This is an important step in the Konmari method because coming face-to-face with all of the things you have and don’t use or want validates the need to undergo this effort.

Organizations are able to create content at a rapid pace and before they know it, they have terabytes of information that make it impossible to find what they need. In the same way that parents will begin to store their clothes in their children’s closets because they’ve run out of space in their own, people begin storing knowledge and information anywhere and everywhere they can without really thinking through the consequences. By conducting a content inventory, you are then able to see just how much content you have and where it all lives. It will overwhelm you, but when you prioritize your efforts and address each set of content one folder, space, or department at a time, it becomes more manageable and less daunting.

3. You should use little boxes to organize things and put like things together.

After a few days of clean up, Marie will come back to her client’s homes with a gift: a bunch of little boxes of different shapes. These boxes do wonders for the drawers and cabinets in their homes. Imagine the utensil and tool drawer in your kitchen. Is it a jumble of random items that you have to sift through to get to the wine opener? Marie suggests compartmentalizing your drawers with little boxes and putting similar things together by size or function. Through this exercise, you realize just how many batteries and light bulbs you have because your decentralized storage habits made it difficult to find them when you needed them, causing you to just buy more.

This process is similar to the Content Types I’ve designed for my clients. It’s often a hard concept to wrap your head around, but simply put, content types are “little boxes” for content items so that it’s easy to find the information you’re looking for because of the standard templates they now belong in. Imagine reading a procedure but you have to read the entire document to figure out whether this procedure is applicable to your circumstance. If all procedures across your organization followed a similar format (e.g. Purpose of the Procedure, Applicability, Steps, and Related Processes), you would save time because you would know immediately where to look and what to expect when you need information. Content Types also help you to group like-content together so in the future you can find it rather than having to recreate it.

4. The order in which you tackle your project matters.

Marie advises her clients to tidy up four categories of stuff: Clothes, Books, Documents (Paper), Komono (miscellaneous items), and Momentos (sentimental items). You wear clothes each day so they tend to be the easiest to sort through first. It gives you an opportunity to practice and strengthen your decision-making skills so that as you progress to other categories, it becomes easier to decide what to keep vs. get rid of. Sentimental items are much tougher to let go of, so those are saved for last because by the time you get to them, you have a stronger sense of what’s truly important to you.

As you implement your content strategy, start with quick wins so that you gain enough momentum to tackle some of the more complex aspects of your project. You can start with content repositories that have the least amount of content or day-to-day content that makes it easy to identify what’s outdated and no longer applicable, like a wiki. Then, you can take on the bulk of your content such as project files, process documentation, and reference materials. Lastly, you can review legal or auditable documentation which would have severe implications if you get rid of them prematurely. The order in which you tackle your project will vary depending on your organization.

After months of applying the Konmari method, with guidance and support along the way, Marie’s clients find themselves surrounded by only the things that are essential to their well-being. It brings them peace of mind and creates a sense of optimism for their future because they now live in a home that doesn’t frustrate them on a daily basis. At EK, our content strategists bring the same sense of order to our clients’ content repositories so that they can focus on the more important things in their businesses. Need help tidying up? Contact us at info@enterprise-knowledge.com.

I’ve been in the business of Knowledge Management Consulting for the vast majority of my career and, in my experience, one of the most challenging aspects to KM is its intangibility. I’ve helped an array of organizations to define their KM Success Metrics and KM Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in order to make KM measurable and tie it to business value and hard return on investment. In these cases, though, many of these KM KPIs are only measurable over years and often have a stronger demonstration of value to the organization rather than the individual. 

Since good KM is integrated into the business, enterprise KM programs are often largely invisible when they work, and only visible when they’re causing the end user “pain.” For example, a seamless tacit knowledge capture program feels like natural conversation, whereas a badly designed program will feel forced and overtly time-consuming. A natural content governance plan will be integrated into the enterprise and simply feel like how business is done, whereas a poorly designed governance plan will slow down work and create barriers to sharing and connecting.

As a result, KM runs the risk of not being “felt” by the average end user in a way that inspires engagement and support. Though a KM effort may be meeting long-term organizational goals, it nonetheless runs the risk of a decreased focus or dwindling support over time if the individual business stakeholder doesn’t feel the benefit of it.

One key area where the individual, as well as the business, can experience meaningful value from KM on a daily basis is through enterprise search. Though I’m not suggesting a technology is necessary for all aspects of KM, the reality is that for large organizations, a great deal of KM will be enabled through supporting technologies. A well-designed, implemented, and governed enterprise search is one of the key systems where KM becomes real for the average end user.

Several exciting things are happening within the enterprise search world at this point:

• Enterprise search tools are increasingly able to index both structured and unstructured information, creating greater linkages between different types of knowledge and information.
• It is becoming easier to design more creative user interfaces within search that better reflect the needs of the end user and the actions they want to take.
• Once advanced features, like type-aheads and faceting, are now readily available.

In order to really make enterprise search work, foundational KM activities are still critical. For instance:

• Content Audits and Cleanup – Content has to be cleaned up and enhanced with tags to ensure the right content appears in search and is weighted appropriately. Content cleanup alone is time-consuming and dry, but linking it to a search effort shines a critical light on why it is important. Without a content cleanup, search will end up being “garbage in, garbage out” no matter how slick it is.
• Taxonomy Design and Tagging – Taxonomies have to be designed and applied to key content repositories as well as integrated into the search design to ensure faceting works and different types of content from different sources can be seamlessly integrated. Taxonomy by itself can be esoteric and easily set aside, but when its value surfaces as faceted navigation, it becomes a critical tool for findability and discoverability.
• Content Types – Content Types continue to be one of the more misunderstood elements of a KM architecture, despite our efforts to make them more approachable. Content Types can serve as templates, guide workflows and security, and inform tagging. When designed correctly, they can also translate into search hit types. That said, they tend to be relatively confusing until seen in action.
• Tacit Knowledge Capture – Almost every organization with whom we’ve worked agrees Tacit Knowledge Capture is critical to ensuring expertise isn’t lost as employees leave and new employees are up-scaled faster and more effectively. Good Tacit Knowledge Capture can take a broad array of forms, from traditional mentor/mentee pairings, to email capture tools, to communities of practice (both live and virtual). Though there can be substantial visibility for a great deal of these mechanisms, their full value isn’t felt just in their existence. Tacit Knowledge Capture really only pays off when individuals can find and engage with the captured knowledge. Search can play a key role here, and can also allow for the integration of a range of result types in a manner that allows the end user to find the “official” published answer as well as related “social” answers from experts (as well as, potentially, the experts themselves).
• Knowledge Sharing Culture – Developing a strong culture of knowledge sharing is one of the foundational activities we seek to implement in the early stages of any KM engagement. Specific activities for this venture vary greatly amongst organizations and depend on from where they’re starting. Approaches may range from a simple commitment from leadership, to the establishment of a KM Leadership group, and to more advanced gamification and analytics efforts. At the end of the day, however, nothing shines a light on good knowledge sharing behavior like something that will surface that newly shared knowledge in a form that is easy to find and discover.
• Governance – Governance, specifically content governance, is another building block and truly foundational activity for enterprise knowledge management efforts. Like a culture of knowledge sharing, nothing helps to show the importance of governance as much as a search initiative that shows what happens in very real terms when people DON’T follow it. Content governance will get a huge boost in importance as soon as it’s easier to find and expose content.

Each of these pieces alone is an important part of a comprehensive KM strategy. Together, they make up many of the core KM foundations I seek to put on KM Roadmaps for my clients. Integrating a search pilot into that roadmap ensures the hard work that will go into the aforementioned efforts, as well as the overall KM transformation, will be seen, and made clickable, for your end users.