How (and when) to update your KM strategy
Updating best practices
Once organizations decide to update their KM strategies, there are several best practices to which they should adhere. The first is to implement a KM audit of present and future needs. However, Kamien noted, “Too often, heads of knowledge management start bottom up, doing the KM audit by asking people what impedes their ability to implement a knowledge-intensive process. That’s like shooting fish in a barrel, because there are always problems with data, information, collaboration, and so on.” For a clearer understanding of how to update a strategy, it’s better to begin with a top-down methodology, or to supplement the bottom-up approach with it. Kamien articulated a conceptual model for a KM audit characterized by analysis of these areas:
♦ Business priorities: These core business objectives underscore the need for a KM strategy, as well as which factors it should encompass.
♦ Metrics: Organizations should have metrics associated with business priorities to determine how well they’re actually meeting those goals. “You want to know when you’re achieving goals by measuring them,” Kamien added.
♦ Business processes: According to Kamien, “You’ve got business processes that an organization has in order to achieve those business priorities. Then, you look at those business processes to find opportunities to improve the flow of information to people and other aspects of knowledge work enhancement.” Scrutiny of business processes will identify gaps in efficiency, effectiveness, and productivity, which can be aided by modifications to an organization’s KM strategy.
Updating and democratizing KM
There is a plethora of focus areas for organizations seeking to implement an updated KM strategy and successfully democratize it throughout an organization. By tailoring implementation efforts around these points of concern, organizations increase the likelihood of attaining the strategy’s desired ends. Specific areas of focus include the following:
♦ Creation: Assembling or devising the knowledge at the department and enterprise level is foundational to modernizing the strategy for managing it. “What any company should be looking at and adapting for itself is, how do we create the knowledge?” Petruzzelli specified. “What is the best way to find it? What is the best way to gather it? What is the best way to compile it?”
♦ Organization: Once the knowledge is assembled, organizations must decide the optimal way to organize it. Doing so includes answering questions like these, Petruzzelli said. “Where are we going to be putting it? Who are the departments that have it? What is the best format for this knowledge? Is it one format? Multiple formats? How can we make it easy to understand?”
♦ Dissemination: Once the knowledge is organized, organizations must effectively share it to “get it out to people and make it always available," Petruzzelli stipulated. The knowledge-sharing focus area is contiguous to that for adoption, which is integral to the strategy’s success. This area, she said, requires companies to answer questions like these: “How do we make sure people look at the knowledge? How do we make sure people
understand it, and how do we make sure people decide to look at it, because otherwise, what was the point?”