Master These Five KM Practices for Success
Implement relevant KM approaches and capabilities
By understanding foundational KM definitions and concepts, such as the importance of focusing on people before technology or the distinction between explicit and tacit knowledge, KM teams are in a better position to select from a suite of approaches and capabilities for KM. These include, but are not limited to, the following:
♦ Communities of practice (CoPs): Groups that share ideas and learn from each other around a shared topic of interest
♦ Search and discovery: Enterprise search tools and recommendation engines to help people find and discover knowledge content
♦ Content management and curation: A structured process to ensure critical enterprise content is fresh, findable, and meets employees’ knowledge needs
♦ Lessons learned and after-action reviews: A process to capture learnings from an event or project in order to identify reusable best practices and mistakes to avoid in the future
♦ Mentoring: Formal and informal mentoring programs to help employees learn from each other and build their network
♦ Knowledge mapping: Developing a visual representation of the organization’s intellectual capital to understand where knowledge resides and how it flows
♦ Knowledge-capture interviews: Structured interviews to capture critical knowledge from experts and other knowledgeable people
♦ Expertise location: Search and discovery tools to help people find knowledgeable colleagues across the organization
Focus on a scalable, holistic KM strategy
Leading organizations expand their KM efforts as opportunities arise by leveraging partnerships and buy-in from early successes and continuing to respond to changing business needs. For most mature KM programs, the ultimate goal is an enterprise KM program that promotes standardization, agility, and scalability.
Leveraging APQC’s Knowledge Management Framework is a great place to start and track progress, expand to an enterprise level, and continually improve KM capabilities. An organization may have some pieces already in place, but using the framework helps bring it all together into a cohesive strategy and leverage existing capabilities.
Key takeaways
Knowledge management is a journey— not a project or a technology—and people are at the heart of it. Whether an organization is starting a new KM program or continuing to evolve and expand an existing program, it is critical to have a documented strategy and focus on all the essentials. A clearly articulated strategy and road map ensure the KM team remains focused on goals that support the business, implements the most relevant KM approaches and capabilities, helps secure stakeholder buy-in and engagement, and provides alignment and credibility to the work of the KM team.
Leading organizations remind us to do the following:
♦ Focus on what matters—business issues and tangible value.
♦ Always communicate KM’s role in helping knowledge flow.
♦ Use and reuse KM best practices rather than reinventing the wheel.
♦ Recognize that people hoard their time and energy, not their knowledge.
♦ Break down the barriers for people to participate in KM activities.
♦ Remain aware that people don’t know what they know until a specific question is asked.
♦ Measure success! We all need to continuously show value.
Some common KM roles