Thursday 2 June 2016

5 steps to Knowledge Management culture change

There are 5 generic steps to go through when introducing a Knowledge management culture. These are as follows.


  1. Define the culture you want to develop. Don't define it in woolly terms - "we want a knowledge sharing culture" - but define it in terms of the attitudes and behaviours you wish to become the default within the organisation (you can define culture as a set of default attitudes and behaviours). These might be things like
  • People are open about their successes and failures 
  • Honesty is acknowledged as requiring courage and is rewarded
  • People feel valued for how well they learn, rather than what they already know
  • People’s default behaviour is to share knowledge with others 
  • Collaboration gets you noticed and is rewarded, etc. 
  1. Measure the culture you currently have. Again, measure specific beliefs, attitudes and behaviours. Measure leaders and knowledge workers alike. Measure what people think about their own behaviour, and what they think about others'. We have a KM culture survey which we can run for you, if you like, which measures 10 dimensions of a KM culture.
     
  2. Identify the gaps between the existing and desired attitudes and behaviours.
     
  3. Identify what is causing those gaps. Look at factors such as 
  • The reward and recognition scheme
  • How bonuses are awarded
  • The messages leaders give
  • The stories people tell
  • The reasons why people get promoted
  • The organisational policies (for example information security)
  • The layout of the building
  • etc
  1. Address these factors in order of priority.
  • Revise the reward and recognition scheme so knowledge seeking and sharing are rewarded rather than individual heroics
  • Revise the bonus scheme in a similar way 
  • Give the leaders new messages
  • Tell new stories
  • Promote different people
  • Change or clarify the organisational policies. 
  • Write a KM policy.
  • Change the office layout if needed.

We can help you with this - contact us to find out more about our KM culture services.

1 comment:

Ping-fa said...

The largest culture change needed is having senior management take a walk in the park and get the notion out of their heads that their lives depend upon, and will be saved by IT. And BTW "Big Data" is "Big Duh."



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