Today, successful organizations have established Knowledge Management as a key driver for driving their Digital Transformation roadmap. To achieve this, it is imperative that the collective objectives from the km program. should be aligned to the individual goal setting for the team. However, there is a problem?

It is a known fact that not everyone in a team can work at full capacity 100% of the time. This means that only a percentage of their efforts are at full capacity. So, most individuals learn to focus on perfecting proven skills based on aligning to know what they do best and not NECESSARILY something that should take up one's day.

The obvious question that comes to mind is while KM can do many things, how do we ensure our teams understand their goal setting is to transform our enterprise into a learning organization, and help achieve organizational excellence? We need to begin by designing the KM roadmap and align the KM workplan to goal setting by following the 'Pareto Principle'.

To be effective leaders we need to align the 5C Roadmap to goal setting.

If you can relate the activities to the Pareto principle in the above graphic, then we need to start with defining must-do activities around the below.

• Content Strategy helps you drive traffic and ensures it generates the right leads that translate into meeting your business outcomes. Most teams define this at a high-level starting in the beginning of the year, promote it throughout the year, and manage it through the content lifecycle which is a quarterly exercise. Then where is the problem? It's the content pieces that are a priority for our teams, and we must deliver them in a timely manner which is where we mostly fail to relate them to our content strategy and hence get away from our goal setting.
• Critical Knowledge is knowledge that if managed well offers a sustainable advantage. This also can be tacit knowledge that is gained through real-life, on the ground experiences and requires not just capture but creation techniques. Most organizations are building CoPs , Ask an Expert systems and other techniques including de-briefing meetings at the end of a project. Then where is the problem? We need to acknowledge that keeping the balance between keeping a watch on the grassroot level knowledge needs with prioritizing the ones with the highest likelihood and consequence of knowledge loss. There is a need to develop a knowledge map to identify at risk knowledge and then build upon this to understand how the knowledge flows within your organization.
• Communication Strategy is aimed at ensuring our critical knowledge flows with the aim to reach the right targeted audience and it flows across the organization to ensure its aimed at prompting right action. Then where is the problem? For example, organizations align as part of the KM team Communication Strategists, tasked with sharing km impact stories that talk about the business value. These practices however do not always connect with users share it on their own as the means are not standardized and this creates ambiguity for adoption.
• Culture is related to people's behaviors and many organizations align to designing incentive programs around km activities for encouraging knowledge sharing. However, if we look at small organizations, they purely drive their practices based on culture as they are constrained by human effort, time, and budget to implement KM. Then where is the problem? So, is it the founder's mindset and the values of the organization that ensure everyone shares critical knowledge as their existence depends on it for growing the organization?. Knowledge thrives if there is a sense of openness, autonomy, experimentation and above all trust that promotes risk taking with collaboration.
• Change Management Strategy is about dealing with change, and it helps in aligning the changing employee processes and behaviors. It ensures that as organization transform through their Digital Transformation journey KM continues to flow ensuring the right information goes from those who create it to those who need it. So where is the problem? The larger problem is that as we focus on organizational excellence leaders fail to turn believers and call out how through KM is where we can promote employee participation to progress on continuous improvements that foster innovation. So, there is a need to make sure leaders promote that its only through KM that the development goals can be achieved.

In-Summary

While we continue to transform our enterprise into a learning organization and help our leaders in our Digital Transformation journey it is important, we relate to the 80:20 Pareto Principles and objectively manage our goals rather than other way round.

Here are three key steps

• Identify what your key results / goals are
• Apply the 80/20 rule to prioritize your tasks for achieving the collective goals
• Protect the most important activities from the least important ones and then prioritize them among your teams and ensure you re-visit them once a quarter

This will help us to design our teams around the 5C's KM roadmap. We as leaders need to act like founders and promote a more risk-taking appetite among our teams, and show that it is only through KM that we can achieve organizational excellence.

Today, securing a budget to implement Knowledge Management at scale is a prime challenge, as the business wants to ensure you are promising to deliver tangible business value every time.  Most large organizations acknowledge that these complexities are so dynamic that often we depend on predictable answers to solve the business problem, although we know the situation might have changed. Are we asking the right questions?

Let me take three simple examples to understand this point.

• Snippet-1 (client): You have signed a new contact and the client is asking for what best practices have been delivered for other similar clients and the team is expected to make a presentation around the same.
• Snippet-2 (partner): You have secured a project as a service partner for a large digital transformation project however the incumbent is transitioning out and hence there is a need for their support for the right amount of knowledge transfer.
• Snippet-3 (vendor): There is an existing software that your users are happy with for collaboration and your sales team has received a good pricing from another global player who is offering a better deal. You need buy in from your leaders to proceed basis their experience.

If you look at these three examples, all talk about situations where one needs to depend on others being knowledgeable. We are accustomed to the same old practices for delivering business value through KM based on predictable answers. However, as one can assume in the real world, this stable state keeps changing and creates new complications that raise questions that need to be solved. It is for these questions that one must be knowledgeable to solve the right answers. How can we train ourselves?

Let me introduce you to a proven practice: the 'SCQA story telling model' and explore it a little to understand why one requires to understand the question before we find the answers.

The SCQA model is an acronym for Situation - Complication - Question and Answer. You might have heard about the 'elevator pitch' where you must try to summarize something in five minutes. This method makes it extremely easy. Let us see the below example, which I am sure most KM professionals would be familiar with.

Situation: We are talking about any user (players) who visits a KM portal and they do not see the bigger picture of how they can benefit from sharing their expertise and experience through knowledge harvesting & sharing (context of what is happening)
Complication: This deals with what is changing and needs attention as you can see only few leaders are believers, most users come sparingly and few that visit regularly feel they are not rewarded.
Question: As we can see there is a problem. Basis the problem statement being defined we start developing the questions, many a times its hidden in the complication. Like in our case one can see that the problem is as below

To DESIGN a nimble KM system that is intuitive to the user [group] and advances them to contribute and get incentivized

Answers: Finding the answers would in-turn give rise to a solution(s). For example, in our case we design a more rewarding system through gamification, ape client systems so users start actively contributing. We involve leaders to sign the petition, so their word of mouth motivates individuals to intrinsically contribute and make HR aware of the critical touchpoints to reward users.

In-Summary

Typically, business leaders are looking for a solid pitch to assure their buy-in and sponsor budgets for KM. Most teams focus on the status quo and begin with the quality metrics and start with collecting raw data, analyzing the information to arrive at facts and then present their conclusion. However, they fail to impress largely because the pitch is not convincing.

Through the SCQA method you immediately capture the attention of the business to presenting an abstract of what is intended to achieve through a storyline which is appealing. Once we have got their buy-in then we go deeper into the facts and how we have arrived at the basis for the same which is the raw data interpretation.

Are we continuing to build for the future without really looking back?

Today a large number of product companies focus on ensuring their products are revolutionary and are game-changers - something that the larger universe desires. For these product companies there are a large number of investors who are backing their idea and pending financial viability there is a good consensus that the market would respond. However, how desirable is the product - that's the big question.

If you look at the above, there are three important criteria for every solution at the heart of innovation. Reference from The Sweet Spot for Innovation | Medium.

• A desirable solution, one that your customer really needs
• A feasible solution, building on the strengths of your current operational capabilities
• A viable (profitable solution), with a sustainable business model.

If we relate KM as a product to the above and run a survey, then most of our user's would call out 'desirability' as critical. So, is the COO of every company trying to mimic its competition and build advanced KM products aligned to this, is the larger question. The answer is most leaders do what is important for the business and hence are designing their KM products with a balance of the organizations' core operational strength, its mix of existing people, processes, and technology.

Further, as the organization grows, so does its nature of business change, and so do our practices & processes evolve to ensure we are contributing to community and society. Does KM remain the same, or does it evolve?  That might be something interesting to think about.

If you are looking at the below graphic, you could do some sense-making with the above design thinking, product-based mindset. Then we need to develop a model that imbibes 80% of our existing operational construct of the org + 20% builds new capabilities for the future.

Below is a simplistic technique where one can combine the existing people practices, current processes, and build for the future.

Automate where behaviours are known, not just repeatable practices & processes

1. Make downloaded material interlinked with the KM system so it expires every X week and the user must download again
2. Give insights to the user on areas where they utilized KM systems
3. Make KM the 1st entry point in the day

Backup in-line with the defined km policy

1. A KM audit to be done and in-line with KM policy and content for archival defined
2. Past project artifacts are archived before a resource is tagged to a new project  

Combine KM practices with existing people practices & org-wide processes

1. Make KM a mandatory section in leadership reviews so its habitual to the leaders
2. Managers get variable pay salary only for completing all pending reviews on KM portal

Divide how KM is accessible and introduce right steps for governance

1. Make all organizational announcements mandatory accessible through the KM portal
2. On entry user's provide justification and on exit must rate downloaded information 

Eliminate old practices and introduce new ways of thinking

1. Make all artifacts viewable only if linked to active users for managing content quality
2. Conduct certificates for exit employs to be granted against declared artifact checklist  

In-Summary

The ABCDE technique will ensure we can link the below five success factors and ensure KM as a Product is well acknowledged as below.

1. Exist in the “Natural Flow” of our Processes (Automate)
2. Increase Discovery to Real-time Information (Backup)
3. Improve Cross-Functional Decision-Making (Combine)
4. Enhance Enterprise Collaboration (Divide)
5. Show Value Through KM measures linked to key business objectives (Eliminate)

The Knowledge Management Systems—Requirements, ISO 30401 (shortened to, ISO KM Standard) was published in 2018 and provides guidelines for organizations to develop a management system to promote and enable value-creation through knowledge. As such, it offers definitions and a high-level framework and process for this purpose. It is meant to be used in any organization, and in any industry or sector, which makes it a good place to start when explaining how Radical KM fits within and enhances traditional KM.

There are four areas I will focus on: the definition of KM, the spectrum of knowledge, the knowledge development lifecycle, and knowledge management culture.

Starting with the ISO KM definition, which defines KM as a discipline focused on the ways organizations create and use knowledge that and says KM is a holistic approach to improving learning and effectiveness. The ISO Standard notes that knowledge is created by people and is intangible and complex. Radical KM supports and agrees with this definition in that what is added in Radical KM is creativity, which is about helping organizations and people create knowledge and to thrive in our VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) world. Radical KM supports breaking down silos and looking at things differently, questioning the status quo. Radical KM is definitely a holistic approach to doing that in that because it includes creativity, not just analytics and processes. It supports people because creativity is a human characteristic, helping people be who they are and facilitating people bringing their whole selves to work to be both creative and analytical.

Moving on from the definition of KM, the ISO KM Standard also references a spectrum of knowledge that starts from knowledge that is a tacit to the point that the individual isn't aware of knowing it, ranging all the way to the other end where it's documented, codified, and/or structured. Radical KM plays a role in the tacit knowledge end of the spectrum because it helps access it and make it explicit or at least move it along the continuum towards being more tacit allowing people to make new connections and putting the pieces they have together in a new or different way. Radical KM plays less of a role in codified and structured knowledge, although it can have a role there too, depending on what the purpose is.

Looking at the knowledge development lifecycle that ISO sets out, starting from knowledge development where knowledge is created, moving through consolidation, retaining, sharing, adopting, applying, and ultimately retiring. Radical KM plays a role most clearly in the development through the use of creative methods to inspire and create new knowledge, however, it can also play a role in sharing, adopting, and applying knowledge as it asks people to be curious and open-minded and to adopt through learning and decision making. Radical KM through the utilization of creativity thus makes the knowledge development lifecycle more holistic and complete.

Finally, the area where Radical KM potentially has the most significant role is KM Culture. There are many components of KM Culture, elaborated in the ISO KM standard including helping people be more open, more curious, feeling more empowered, helping them develop autonomy, and curiosity and being open to collaboration as well as helping them learn continuously and recognize the value of knowledge. The art-based interventions envisioned in Radical KM play a role in all these behaviours and helps build trust and respect which is also key to having a KM Culture.

In conclusion, through the addition of creativity, specifically arts-based interventions, Radical KM makes traditional knowledge management a balanced, integrated, sustainable whole, ready to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

Note: a more expansive version of this discussion will be published in the June 2022 edition of Business Information Review.

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Knowledge Management: Key Questions and Answers

Do you understand the difference between information and knowledge? In a business context, information gathering happens at all levels of an organization. It can include everything from customer interactions to internal company meetings. On the other hand, knowledge is what every member of an organization understands and uses in their everyday activities. 75% of companies realize that knowledge management is crucial for their success. Let's look at knowledge management and its benefits to your workplace. 

What is Knowledge Management? 

So, what is knowledge management? IBM defines knowledge management as a way to identify, organize, store and share information. A knowledge management system is a platform that gathers business information to help streamline operations such as:

- Recruitment
- Training, and
- Communication

Additionally, knowledge management can foster better:

- Transparency
- Accountability, and
- Collaboration

Each of which helps improve employee satisfaction and retention.   

What are the Goals of Knowledge Management? 

Knowledge management serves several key goals in an enterprise. The goals of a knowledge management system are to: 

• Keep knowledge in an easily-accessible form
• Share knowledge with the right people at the right time
• Break down information silos 
• Maintain knowledge if valuable employees leave the company
• Create a culture of continuous learning 

What are the Benefits of Knowledge Management? 

The main benefit of knowledge management is efficient business operations. A knowledge management system makes a business more agile because it: 

• Improves the quality of business data
• Boosts collaboration within your team
• Identifies skill and competency gaps for training opportunities
• Enables faster decision-making at all levels 
• Increases data security for intellectual property 
• Creates standardized business processes 

What are the Challenges of Knowledge Management? 

Like every business process, knowledge management can present challenges to an organization. Here are four of the top challenges organizations face when it comes to knowledge management:

• Some employees may hoard their knowledge to maintain their positions in the company
• Knowledge sharing is not a priority for employees because of their existing workloads
• Knowledge management systems need proper configuration with the right permissions. The aim is to protect sensitive business information
• A knowledge management framework takes more time and human resources to update and maintain

What are the Types of Knowledge in an Organization? 

Three main types of organizational knowledge drive your knowledge management process: 

1. Explicit knowledge

Documented information like policies, product specifications, service functionality, and other business-generated content.

2. Implicit or embedded knowledge

Information about business processes such as:
- Recruitment or merit systems
- Routines
- Manuals, and 
- Organizational culture

3. Tacit knowledge

This is practical know-how about business operations gained through experience. This includes subject matter expertise held by certain employees.

Practically speaking, these types of knowledge come from: 

• Organizational documents like reports, business records, and market research 
• Structural information such as:
  • Company hierarchy charts
  • Handbooks
  • Presentation formats workflows
  • Best practices, and 
  • Business strategies
• Group data like mentorship programs, project teams, and training groups
• Individual knowledge like customer inquiries, notebooks, or even a team member’s memory

Knowledge Management Use Cases

A knowledge management framework finds value in the following business processes: 

Onboarding

New team members can quickly search and find what they need on a centralized knowledge management system. This significantly reduces training time and increases competence levels. 

Customer support

Customer service teams can find quick references and answers for inquiries. 

Internal communications

Teams can seek out knowledge directly from the system and save emails and chats for priority queries. 

Inventory updates

All departments get notified of product changes like prices, upgrades, or shortages. 

What is the Knowledge Management Process? 

To manage knowledge in your organization, first you must understand how knowledge arises in business and how to make it work for you. 

The ideal knowledge management process has six steps: 

1. Knowledge discovery

Figure out your organization's implicit, explicit and tacit sources of knowledge.  

2. Knowledge auditing

Check that all your information is relevant, up-to-date, and error-free. 

3. Knowledge structuring

Organize your information into a searchable, accessible knowledge management database. 

4. Knowledge sharing

Grant your team secure access to your knowledge management system. Encourage them to contribute and share their knowledge on the platform and create an incentive program to promote the sharing process. 

5. Knowledge application

Reward team members who use the knowledge to improve their performance. 

6. Knowledge creation

Keep gathering and updating your knowledge management system according to the outlined steps. 

What are Knowledge Management Tools? 

Anything that captures business information and generates insights is a knowledge management tool. That qualifies your basic spreadsheets as one. However, knowledge management tools can be highly specialized to match your industry. The most common tools include: 

• Content management systems (CMS) for online publishing
• Intranets for sharing business information securely within an organization 
• Data warehouses that use machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to aggregate and analyze data
• Feedback databases for project management communications 
• Document management systems for hosting all digital business documents 

Conclusion 

Your knowledge management process depends on your company's size and structure. Smaller companies can build a goldmine of business data and scale up over time. Larger companies can put in place a system for digital transformation and business forecasting. Implement a knowledge management strategy to improve your business outcomes today!

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