In any organizational setting, new knowledge is generated every single day. What was a fact a few years ago is now considered outdated or irrelevant. The decay of knowledge not only affects us as individuals but affects organizations as a whole. Technologies change constantly leading to the decay of knowledge. It is crucial for organizations to have processes in place to capture, harvest, repurpose, and achieve knowledge to keep them relevant to the market, constantly innovate, to stay relevant and competitive.

Organizations generally go through a rigorous process for hiring the right skills and experience. Also, the workforce is trained in specific skills and tools to align with their role and the organization’s goals. But the fact of the matter is that employees leave and take along with them crucial knowledge and experience.  Also, people retire, taking their wealth of experience and insights which is then lost to the organization where an employee gained it all. Organizations are left struggling to fill the skill gaps outgoing employees leave in their wake.

Failure to capture the experience of employees who leave, and past mistakes that proved disastrous and left behind a trail of lessons learned, prove disastrous for the growth of organizations.  These learnings are knowledge that needs to be captured, constantly revisited and revised, and disseminated seamlessly for the growth and progression of organizations in the highly competitive market space.

According to Arnold Kransdorff, when this knowledge is left undocumented, it leaves organizations “plagued with an inability to learn from past experience, which leads to reinvented wheels, unlearned lessons, a pattern of repeated mistakes, productivity shortfalls, and a lack of continuous performance improvement.”

Knowledge decay hampers innovation. Innovation directly implies the services and service delivery which directly impacts the organization’s profitability.

Moreover, when institutional knowledge is lost because of the exit of an employee, and if the organizations fail to capture knowledge and disseminate it, it definitely puts the business in a perilous position. The missing download of insights and knowledge from the outgoing member, makes the joining of the new employee inefficient, affecting his productivity, efficiency, and morale which directly impacts the organization’s business goals.  

To remain informed and relevant in the market, organizations must adopt knowledge management systems for capturing knowledge, preventing the loss of expertise as well as constantly reviewing and updating the knowledge base. Also, KM will only work if it works for the people and they find it closely aligned with their work and goals. Take the monotony out and bring in creative ways of knowledge sharing. Introduce virtual cafes, and icebreaker sessions, bring in the flavor of design thinking, story-telling, and mentoring sessions and you will see employees adapting to the culture of knowledge sharing with ease.

Make collaboration, knowledge sharing, and rewarding the knowledge-sharing efforts, a part of your organizational culture, you can definitely prevent the decay of institutional knowledge, keep your employees armed with the best tool and practices to foster innovation, and stay a mile ahead of your competitors.

Whether implementing a new Knowledge Management initiative or maintaining Knowledge Management in BAU, customer service organisations need to consider the following roles for a Knowledge Team. 

All organisations are different, so the size and scale of the team may vary, and you may have individuals performing multiple roles simultaneously. 

KM Exec Sponsor – This person represents the highest position in the organisation for Knowledge Management. This person supports the ongoing strategy of Knowledge Management and represents Knowledge Management at the highest level.

Knowledge Manager – The Knowledge Manager is the most critical role for KM success. They are accountable for Knowledge Management within an organisation. They work with the KM Exec sponsor to set a KM vision and strategy and provide leadership to the rest of the team to manage knowledge effectively. A Knowledge Manager needs to ensure they deliver continuous value to customers and frontline staff and share the value across all relevant stakeholder groups.

Knowledge Workers (Knowledge Analysts / Knowledge Engineers / Knowledge Editors / Content Editors) – These will likely be the most numerous role in the KM Team. They manage new and updated knowledge for customers and the frontline across the content lifecycle. In addition, they drive ongoing end-user adoption and engagement. They continuously improve customer and end users' knowledge experience using metrics and insights. 

Knowledge Architect – This role will depend on the organisation and the systems in place. However, they are responsible for the underlying taxonomy of a Knowledge base. They usually represent the technical requirements of the wider Knowledge Management team and work closely with the Knowledge Systems manager.

KM Champions – These frontline users work together to promote Knowledge Management best practices amongst the frontline and represent the end user's voice to the broader knowledge management team.

Knowledge Systems Manager – If you use an out-of-the-box vendor solution, you won't necessarily need this role. It depends on the system you are using, but this could be an IT, Developer or UX person responsible for the ongoing upkeep and maintenance of the Knowledge Management platform.

Agile – If your organisation follows Agile, you may need a KM Product owner and Scrum Master to help facilitate Agile methodology.

Resilience isn't something we normally talk about with knowledge management. We talk about document repositories, collaboration, artificial intelligence (AI), help desks and knowledge centered support, communities of practice, lessons learned and continuous learning, all kinds of things, really. But we don't often talk about resilience when it comes to knowledge management.

And yet, resilience is very important to knowledge workers and thus knowledge management. It helps us get up when we fall. It helps us to keep going, keep asking questions, iterating, and coming up with new solutions, problem solving. It drives us forward and if knowledge management is about (continuous) learning and about helping people to have the knowledge they need to do their jobs, then resilience is probably something we should be talking about.

Knowledge workers are human, after-all. We are not robots; we need to find ways to bounce back when things don’t go as expected. If we as knowledge managers are trying to make the lives of our colleagues, fellow knowledge workers better, then resilience should figure into that.

So as Knowledge Managers where does resilience come in?

Resilience comes in, in trying to help people to have the courage to ask the questions, to find different ways of looking at things, especially when they have failed, or things have not gone the way that they expected them to.

Historically, a lot of knowledge management and knowledge work has focused on the analytical processes of writing things down, of capturing knowledge and putting it in a technology platform to find and reuse later. However, as we enter the mid 2020’s, the question of what knowledge management practitioners need to do to enable knowledge workers in the age of AI, constantly changing technology, relentlessly evolving knowledge, rears its head and is increasingly up for debate.

Do we give them another technology to help them find and summarize documented knowledge? Do we help them communicate and share information, opening-up spaces for conversations? Do we help them tap into their inner artists and learn resilience, curiosity, the courage to iterate, share, and to trust?

Yes.

Knowledge is human, trust is human. My vote is on the human side, tapping into our inner artists and reactivating the creativity that has been educated out of us.

Conversation is certainly part of that. The art of conversation, the art of dialogue, the art of sharing information and knowledge so that people can understand it, that's human. The art of critical thinking so that people know what's real and what's not. What's to be trusted and what's not. That’s what Knowledge Managers need to support in their programs. The tools and the processes are only part of the answer. Helping the humans be better humans, to be resilient, that's the real solution to knowledge management.

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In every Communication there is a Storyline and often as Knowledge Managers we are at the center of it giving updates to leadership, interacting with project delivery teams and mostly Employee Engagement. Did you know that employee engagement directly correlates with a company’s financial health? Studies show that a majority of employees don’t feel engaged at work and one way is through effective Internal Communication. Employees have key questions and it is through answering these questions that you can increase employee morale and make sure you’re a Top Employer.

Now imagine the CEO of the company wants to come up with a newsletter where he speaks to the audience and makes a Connection. Often as Knowledge Managers when we are given this opportunity it’s a once in a lifetime chance and we want to make a good first impression, the Elevator Pitch.

Let’s begin with discussing the Biggest Elevator Pitch Myths and make it relatable to Knowledge Management Practices.

Prospects want consistency not creativity

MYTH:  If you give the same 30-Second Elevator Pitch to the same audience more than once, people will be bored.

TRUTH

• Repetition reinforces your message.
• The more times prospects hear the same message, the more likely they are to respond.
• Consistency implies integrity and trustworthiness.
• If you keep changing your Elevator Pitch your prospects don’t have time to respond

As Knowledge Managers, we conduct many train-the-trainer sessions for our KM Champions. Some of our Champions even record these sessions and look at it each time they engage with their internal stakeholders. Each time they are asked a question like the Benefit Realization of KM Contribution, they would look at your pitch and this repetitive sense making increases their understanding and consistency. In-time many of them don’t even have to come to you for a new joiner induction on introducing the portal, as they have now internalized the pitch and are confident. So, as Knowledge Managers we should work on perfecting our pitch the very first time and believe in our messaging, to ensure we are engaging a wider range of stakeholders through the community we engage on a daily basis.

Catch people at the right time

MYTH:  Once you’ve heard my Elevator Pitch, you don’t need to hear it again.

TRUTH

• There are always different people in the room.
• The people who already know you are in a different frame of mind today than they were last time.
• Your message strikes a different chord today than it did before.

Consulting Leaders often present Webinars and the KM team enables these sessions and anchors them. I remember during the last 10 minutes giving a short brief on the benefit realization to the audience a mix of Consulting, Sales and Delivery teams. My safe assumption was on an average there would be X leads generated as I was confident that there would be an average number of sales people who are responding to the proposal or delivering a client project and the solution presented helps their client. All of these sessions would be recorded and uploaded on the KM portal and after many weeks I would still get enquiries from a sales leader who attended the session then and now wants to engage with the presenter because as on today the solution meets his client demand. So as Knowledge Managers it’s important we focus on user personas and present out KM solutions Elevator Pitch as the messaging will eventually land and connect with our community at a later time if not today.

Focus increases opportunities

MYTH: Casting a wide net creates more opportunities

TRUTH

• Prospects are distracted.
• Prospects are busy.
• Prospects are being bombarded with messages.
• Narrow focus makes you stand out.

Many KM Professionals start with the Overview slide and then onwards dwell into the KM Offerings and benefits and go so wide that the audience has lost the plot. According to this blog post by Dan Steer we need to answer 3 questions.  

• What’s your point? Knowledge Management is often a relatable subject and hence it’s important we break the ice through Conversation ensuring we introduce ourselves and talk about What We do for our larger Community?,  the ways we enable business value through execution enabling self, teams and larger enterprise.  
• What’s in it for me? Knowledge Management Governance frameworks define the span of control and if a user is outside this circle then it is obvious they would want clarity on the reason they should be involved in enabling Knowledge Management.
• What do you want me to do?  This question aims to involve the user and engage them in contributing to KM as a Decision Maker (sponsor), Implementer (KM Team) or Influencer (KM Governance Team including the Steering Committee at times)

 
In-Summary to Put it all Together

As Knowledge Managers we make an Elevator Pitch each day in ensuring through our Conversations we enable our leaders to build trust through Internal Communication Digital Channels. Leaders are looking for Connecting with the larger enterprise and building trust to increase employee engagement and morale indirectly impacting financial performance as employees feel wanted.

There are myths of an elevator pitch and how as Knowledge Managers our behavior should be contrary to ensure we deliver impact. It is important we reinforce how KM can enable our teams and in-time help our community to elevate their understanding of how KM is beneficial.

We are called to Practice-Practice-Practice our Elevator Pitch and make it consistent rather than confusing our audience each time. In-time our km champions likewise leaders should recognize elements that ensure they revisit the KM portal and apply the knowledge rather than have us catch them or practice a pull-based rather than push-based KM. 

With time we should focus on ensure a strong KM governance framework and ensuring our internal stakeholders find KM relatable to participate in driving the adoption and we as KM practitioners can focus on capturing more business value of use-cases that they partner with us to capture each day.

For years, it has been proven that Storytelling helps audiences connect with a Brand. Storytelling has helped products connect with diverse audiences by enabling them to emotionally connect and become loyalists. Leaders have used Business Storytelling to Humanize a Business and increase profits, which in turn helps establish the values and messaging, creating a sustainable business model. Now, how can Knowledge Management learn from Business Storytelling and if we are already using it effectively, do we identify with some of its elements?  Let’s find out.

There are 5 elements of an Effective Business Storytelling framework; let's correlate these to our 5-C KM Roadmap.

Circumstances (Communication Strategy)

Each conversation in KM can be a different story, and as Knowledge Managers we engage with Leaders, Delivery Teams, and New Hires with have different knowledge needs but fail to recognize these as different plots. Each user has a very different circumstance on how KM can impact their need. Many times as Knowledge Managers we fail to go deep and want to go wide, and rely on our proven KM framework to deliver results for our teams and report ways KM is benefiting our communities. However, the result is our users fail to acknowledge how KM is enabling them, as they have not been engaged by us as KM Professionals. Is having a strong Communication Strategy the key?  Let’s find out more from KMI Blogger Amanda Winstead, who calls out 5 ways of Building effective Knowledge Management through Communication, to ensure we can deliver improved outcomes.  The key takeaway is to contextualize knowledge and encourage more open dialogue, which encourages networks to make people help each other and who are passionate to share their Critical Knowledge.

Curiosity (Critical Knowledge)

Curiosity is the most important element of Storytelling. Today, users want instant gratification and often it's the realm of the unknown as the need and the outcome are different. So, as Knowledge Managers how are we to develop these users into believers? We can definitely start with defining what is Critical Knowledge and speak to Leaders and Experts, and engage our teams to ensure we are defining it correctly. The larger question is how do users get access to this knowledge and acknowledge that it’s truly benefiting them and their KM Needs? This is where Communities of Practice, Lessons Learned Practices and other proven techniques help engage users and influence behaviours so users accept these proven methods each time they are looking for something.

While there are a host of KM Tools, Mind-Mapping is a great tool to understand the diverse user personas and reasons impacting KM Adoption. It’s important that we don’t exclude KM Teams, Leaders and IT/HR teams enabling in sharing Critical Knowledge.  Below is a simple graphic of Play-in-Action that is a great starting point to develop a Content Strategy.

Characters (Content Strategy)

Every Story has to have relatable Characters. Often, if a user looking for something they know in their subconscious mind then they form a Connection that helps them want to participate in the experience. 
Often Knowledge Management is narrowed down to just Collecting Content and building a heavy Knowledge Management systemic processes to keep it up to date. We fail to go beyond and KM is embedded in the organizational practices and slowly begins to demonstrate tangible value and align to what matters to the business. We need to draw a fine balance and be seen as People Leaders, and then make systemic approaches work to Collect Knowledge that can be aligned to our Content Strategy. It’s also important to not reinvent KM Best Practices and acknowledge teams who are practising KM in different ways that the methods or tools we are suggesting.

Conversations (Culture)

A story should be capable to evoke emotions and your audience will Share-It.  Imagine if our user community shares the impact that KM has enabled through expanding organizational networks. As Knowledge Managers, we should practice Conversational Leadership and ensure KM is aligned to the Culture Setting of the organization. We should shift our own behaviours from providing answers to developing systemic thinking to enable our leaders to explore critical issues and encourage our teams to participate and ask more questions. KM Tools/Systems have to be seen as Collaborative Social Technologies that facilitate this process and cannot be done away with. The ultimate goal is to guide collective intelligence towards effective action, ensuring capacity development of leaders to believe in KM as a platform to drive change.

Conflicts (Change Management Strategy)

A Story is incomplete without a Conflict that encourages the audience to think of possible options to solve the plot. Many times leaders fail to acknowledge KM and it’s seen as an overhead many strategic KM initiatives fail. It’s important as leaders / KM practitioners that we continue to align and capture KM Success Stories and align them to Organizational Metrics and make these visible. These Knowledge Nuggets will help our community of users see value and invest in showcasing how KM is a value-enabler within their teams. The goal is to go enterprise-wide but most initiatives fail as they fail to create unique business cases that KM can resolve. 

In –Summary to Put it all Together

People seek our great stories as much as food and water. Leaders for years have used Business Storytelling to improve their narrative on how they augment business value to organizational performance. As Knowledge Managers we enable them through our Conversations and support embeds a Cultural shift mind-set. It’s often that no two Circumstances are the same, and this is where the disconnect happens as the leaders see Conflict with KM and hence don’t develop the believers' mindset to support the KM team. It is during these times that an effective Change Management Strategy has to be enabled where we capture Knowledge Nuggets and share with our user community, resulting in Success Stories being showcased linked to organization performance.

Finally, as we align to KM Maturity and there is acceptance, we as Knowledge Managers need to ensure we continue to define user personas and don’t limit it to discounting our known experiences for developing Critical Knowledge. It’s important we are seen as important Characters and create avenues to recognize KM practices that are enabling teams to share passionately and practice continuous learning. It’s important we bring our own Curiosity to each Conversation and indulge our community to develop organizational ethos of being Conversational Leaders and enable teams to ask critical questions and aid in improving the collective intelligence. The final goal is to help our leaders in Capacity Development helping our leaders to believe in KM as an enabler for Change,