The three levels of Km training

When we are working with a client to introduce Knowledge Management, we generally recognise three levels where KM training is needed.

I am talking now about the later stages of KM implementation, when the tools and processes and technologies and roles (in fact the entire KM framework) for that company has been decided and agreed upon, and the implementation has reached the roll-out or the deployment stage. I am not talking about the early-stage awareness or engagement training.

Here are the three levels;

• KM for managers. Here the managers need to understand the value of knowledge management, and they need to understand the basics of the M framework. They need to know what expectations to set for their staff, they need to know what sort of KM activity they should be seeing and what sort of activity they should be encouraging and rewarding, and they should understand their role in setting the KM behaviours. We have had a lot of success with the Bird Island exercise at this level.
• KM for general staff. The staff in the projects and the departments need to know what is expected of them in terms of KM, they need to understand how the processes work, how the technologies work, and what the value will be to them and to the company. At this stage we generally give them hands-on experience of any technology they will be expected to use (community tools, yellow pages, lessons databases, wikis, RSS feeds, Yammer etc).
• KM for the specialist KM roles. This is for the knowledge managers, the subject matter experts and the community leaders and facilitators. As well as the details of their roles and accountabilities, they need to know the details of how the technology works, how to facilitate the processes, how to address the culture barriers, and how to deliver the benefits. This last training may require tailored training and coaching for the individual roles - community facilitator require a different set of skills to the project knowledge managers, for example.