Signs that your KM strategy is about to crash

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In a great post, Lucas McDonnell provides 6 signs that your KM strategy is in trouble. These are

1. People outside your group don’t understand what you’re doing.

2. You keep changing vendors/technologies/products.

3. You keep layering vendors/technologies/products on top of each other.

4. You find it difficult to explain what you’re trying to accomplish.

5. You’re prescribing organizational change.

6. You’re making big promises.

Now numbers 2 and 3 make me think there is a missing "sign 7", namely

7. All you are focusing on is vendors/technologies/products

It still amazes me how often you hear "KM is all about people" from teams who are concentrating solely on technology. we have known for Years that KM is about technology AND people AND process.

So however much time and money you spend on technology, spend the same on People - coaching people, training people, listening to people, setting people's roles and people's accountabilities, and looking at people structures.

Then spend the same amount of time on Process - work process, knowledge seeking process, knowledge sharing process, community process, team process and project process. Finally there is the issue of governance, which is often neglected completely.

Driving a KM strategy on technology alone and neglecting the other three aspects of people, process and governance, is like driving a truck with only one tyre inflated.

Sooner or later, something is going to crash.