Tuesday, 22 May 2012


Don't wait for the KM culture shift - start now


waiting We know that implementing Knowledge Management requires culture change, specifically the change from seeing Knowledge as something personal, to be hoarded, to seeing knowledge as something collective, to be shared.

We know that there can be very many cultural barriers to knowledge management.

We know that the wrong culture can kill your KM initiative.

However, here's a lesson for you - Don't wait for the culture to change, before you start to implement Knowledge Management.

The most powerful agents of KM culture change, are the processes of Knowledge Management themselves. After Action Reviews, Retrospects, Knowledge Exchanges, Communities of Practice, Peer Assists (in particular, Peer Assists), are all agents of culture change.

So make a start.

  1. Find an area of the business where the culture is not so much of an issue, and start there. 
  2. Set up a pilot project tacking a real business issue using KM processes and principles. 
  3. Demonstrate success. 
  4. Use that success as a springboard, an exemplar, a source of killer stories.
  5. Use those stories to begin to change the culture elsewhere
  6. Repeat from 1 above
Before long, the culture change will be unstoppable.

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