Saturday 9 January 2010


The Tipping Back point






toppled liberty st chair
Originally uploaded by
le
We all know about the tipping point, when it comes to culture change. I was talking about it on Thursday to someone, and he shared with me that when 28% of the people have made the change, and 40% see this, then the tipping point has been reached.

We can make use of this concept when implementing knowledge management.

However there is an anti-tipping point, or a "tipping back" point.

I have seen many companies make great strides in KM, fail to embed it, and then see all their hard work unravel as the organisation "tips back" to its previous state.

I suspect this tipping back point comes when 28% of the people refuse to do KM (however KM is defined by the organisation), and 40% of the people see them "getting away with this". They see over a quarter of the organisation refusing to play the game, without any comeback. That's when they realise that KM is optional after all, and that they themselves need not bother either. Once you have reached this point, your cause is lost, and the culture tips back.

See blog posts on embedding, to see what can be done to stop this happening.
http://www.nickmilton.com/2009/06/motivating-km.html
http://www.nickmilton.com/2009/07/km-in-projects-optional-or-mandated.html

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