Knowledge Management in projects

It has been fifteen years since I wrote my first solo KM book, "Knowledge Management for Teams and Projects".

I reproduce below the final chapter, that attempts to summarize the main conclusions for three groups of key Knowledge Management actors; the project managers and knowledge managers, the Community coordinators and SMEs, and the company management, and outlines their roles in driving KM in projects.

Some added activities have been developed over the past decade and a half, and these are included in italics

For the project manager, and project knowledge manager 

The project manager needs to ensure that the project staff are “Learning Before Doing”

• The project manager should ensure the project has a Knowledge Management plan, and performs some form of knowledge gap analysis.
• Right-Scoping meetings are a way of bringing knowledge during the Scoping phase of the project 
• Customer Interview maximizes the team’s knowledge of the customers’ needs and context
• The earlier you can bring in Contractors’ knowledge, the better
• Peer Assist is one of the simplest and most effective ways of bringing in existing knowledge from past projects
• Optioneering is one form of Peer Assist 
• If there is no existing knowledge, some level of Business Driven Action learning may be needed
•  Peer Review is more of an assurance process than a Knowledge Management process 

The project manager needs to ensure that the project staff are “Learning While Doing” 

• The After Action Review is an excellent way of doing this
• Communities of Practice are a crucial resource for “Learning While Doing”
• Knowledge Management can be built into project review meetings
• The project manager will need to appoint a Knowledge Manager for the project 
• The project knowledge manager manages the project KM plan
• Knowledge engineers and/or learning historians may also be needed in major projects
• A Lessons and Action Log will be needed 

The project manager needs to ensure that the project staff are “Learning After Doing”

• Retrospects need to be scheduled after each project stage (and perhaps more frequently)
• On a large or dispersed project, a Knowledge History may be needed 
• Knowledge Management needs to be linked with Performance Management, Risk management, and SSHE management
• A "knowledge handover" meeting should be held at the end of the project to share the lessons with other projects
• The project team should conduct a baton-passing meeting with the operations team

For the Community coordinators and SMEs 

• Ownership needs to be established for the management of knowledge between the projects, for the derivation of Best Practices and Standards, and for the operation and maintenance of communities or practice
• Best Practices, Knowledge assets and other knowledge-related guidelines should be constructed for key areas of knowledge
• Subject Matter Experts are needed for these key knowledge areas
•  Transfer of tacit knowledge can be facilitated through Staff Transfer and Communities of Practice
• A Yellow Pages system is also a useful tool
• The communities of practice require a Q&A tool, a document library, and a place to build best practice (eg a wiki).

For management 

• The organization needs a Knowledge Management framework
• A KM policy will need to be developed
• Knowledge Management Plans should be introduced at project level
• Some sort of audit or assessment of KM capability is needed
• A small resource is needed for monitoring, support, and coordination of KM (including performance measurement and the provision of training)
• The project organisation needs a lessons management system
• There will need to be a resource, probably within the PMO, to administer the lessons management system

The main reasons for KM failure

From our global survey, the reasons why 18 organisations gave up on KM, and how to stop this happening to you.

One of the questions in our 2014 and 2017 Global Survey of Knowledge Management asked about the current status of KM in the respondents' organisations, and for those 18 respondents who answered "We tried KM but gave up", we asked a supplementary question. 

This question asked them to identify (from a list of 6 options) the reasons why they had given up, choosing as many as were relevant, and adding additional factors which were not on the list.

The frequency of their selections is shown here and listed below.

1. Internal reorganisation was the most common reason, mentioned by 12 respondents out of the 18. I explain in a separate post how to make your KM strategy reorganisation-proof. Knowledge Management is a long term program in a short term world, and needs attention to delivering Proof of Concept exercises, and application of what the Army call a two-pronged approach, so that value is delivered early on through solving business problems, and the KM program proves its worth well enough and early enough to make a case for surviving reorganisation.
2. Cultural barriers was number two mentioned by just under half of the respondents. There will always be cultural barriers (see my post on how to address the cultural barriers). If they were too strong, then your Knowledge Management program was lacking something; either high enough support, or a careful enough change program.
3. Lack of involvement from staff. This often comes when you make KM an optional activity, and rely on initiative and goodwill for people to become involved. This is not a good implementation approach!
4. Technology did not deliver as expected. However technology is not the solver bullet, and n ever will deliver benefits on its own. That's why you need the complete KM Framework, including roles and accountabilities, processes, technology, and governance. 
5. KM did not deliver the expected benefits. I am not sure what was at the root of these two responses. KM, in my experience, when applied to business issues, delivers real value, However it can take a couple of years for that value to be realised. 
6. KM was taking too long to deliver. See number 1 above.

In addition, the respondents added the following reasons for failure. 

• Too much focus on technology platforms and not enough on incentives and cultural elements, 
• The Company was sold to government, which had no interest whatsoever, 
• No customer demand reported 
• New Top Management - Not interested in KM 
• Replaced with Business Process Management
• Lack of executive buy-in / drive 

There are some well-known failure reasons here, which every Knowledge Manager should prepare against, and the most common is Internal Reorganisation, leading to the loss of your support.

What's the best way to find "people who know"? Yellow Pages? Or Social Media?

A large proportion of your organisational knowledge is never written down, and is often too complex or too contextual to transfer in written form anyway. If you need to find this knowledge, you need find the person.  But how? 

This picture by unknown artist is licensed under CC BY_SA

The problem is similar to one you might face at home, when looking for an expert knowledgeable tradesman to fix a problem. Where do you look?

At home, most of us use one of two options.

Firstly, you might use your own network to find a trusted plumber, a good builder, a gardener who knows the difference between a plant and a weed. Then. if you need someone out of the ordinary and therefore outside your personal network, a "look-up" system is invaluable (Yellow Pages, or an online equivalent such as Rated People.com. Here you can find the registered contact details of everyone in your area with a specific set of skills and knowledge.

How can you emulate that at work? When is networking effective, and when is a  corporate Yellow Pages the answer?

Networking - advantages and disadvantages

The huge advantage of networking is that it is dynamic. People come and go, they join and leave the network, but the network remains. Through the connections within a network, you can quickly reach people you have never met; who are two or three degrees separated from you, but linked by mutual connections. Through asking a question in a community or practice, for example, you can often tap into a wide range of expertise. Networks requite little effort to maintain - they are usually self-maintaining. Other than the core group or the coordination structure they need little investment.

The disadvantage is that contribution in networks is voluntary and a network seldom reaches everyone with relevant knowledge. Network adoption, when purely voluntary and bottom-up, often stops at around 20%, so what happens when the knowledge you need is held by someone in the remaining 80%? When sponsored and promoted, communities of practice can reach far higher levels of adoption, but still levels of engagement are highly variable. Some staff are still suspicious of networking at work being purely social, and often it is the people you most want within the network - the older technical experts with a lifetime of experience - who are least willing to join. One of my clients constantly observes that "the experts just won't join the communities of practice". And without the experts, these communities have become communities of ignorance; lots of discussion but little knowledge exchange.

Corporate Yellow Pages 

The big advantage of the corporate Yellow Pages, if rolled out top-down, is that everyone can be registered, even the experts. You don't have to hope that a query will be passed (by the 20% of people active in the network) to the right person who will give you the answer. Even the obscure areas of knowledge can be registered and made available for search.

For example I was teaching a KM course in Trinidad some ago, demonstrating an in-house Yellow Pages system, and I asked the class “Has anyone got a topic you want me to search for?” A guy at the back called out “Microwave Towers”. He was putting a series of microwave towers in Trinidad to communicate with a remote base, and wanted to find others with experience in the company. So I did a free text search, and came up with one name, Stanley Patillo. So I said “There you go – someone else with experience” and he said “I am Stanley Patillo”. Well, at least he now knew that he was the sole expert on this topic!

The second advantage is that once you find the expert, the approach to them is a personal approach. Rather than a general request in a

The disadvantage of a  corporate Yellow Pages system is that it needs to be maintained. People have to keep their entries up to date, Even large public-domain systems like Linked-In suffer from this problem, and out-of-date entries are worse than no entries at all. However this is one-time effort, and doesn't require the expert to constantly monitor conversations. They can wait to be contacted.

Sometimes organisations try to use social-style personal pages as a substitute for Yellow Pages, but this seldom works, as I explain in a blog post from last year - the model for People-finders should be Dating sites, rather than Facebook-style personal pages.

What's the answer?

The answer, like so much else in KM, is that this is not an either-or situation.

Use both.

Use well-designed Yellow Pages systems, updated as part of the annual appraisal system, that work like dating sites, allowing you to find "just the right expert" for your knowledge needs.  Make sure the system links with the Communities of Practice,  and acts as an index of communities as well as an index of individuals.

Supplement this with Communities of Practice, which allow more free-form exploration and discussion within the community of practitioners. Make sure the communities link with the Yellow Pages system, and use this as a "list of members".

That way, you allow everyone in the company the chance to engage with the system they are most comfortable joining, and you allow everyone in the company two ways to find the right person with the right knowledge to solve your problem.

Knowledge Management Policies - what they are, and why you need them

Once KM is in place, to keep it in place you need a Knowledge Management Policy.

This picture by unknown author is licensed under CC BY-SA

Once you get past the early years of implementing Knowledge Management, when you are doing the testing, training and piloting, you need to be working towards an end state where Knowledge Management is fully embedded as a way of working, and where the organisation is fully committed to KM.

This can be achieved once people know what Knowledge Management means, and that it is something the organisation takes seriously, and when they know what they should be doing, and the part they should be playing.

On way to make these Knowledge Management expectations clear is by defining an  in-house policy, for Knowledge Management.  This clarifies

• The organisational commitment to KM
• The organisational purpose for KM
• The KM principles the organisation will apply;
• The expectations for staff and managers in terms of the application of KM, and 
• The expectations for staff and managers in terms of how they will behave towards knowledge.

The reasons for having a policy are as follows (see also what the NASA CKO said about the reasons for a policy):

1. As a statement of intent from the organisation; a message to staff and stakeholders
2. To set clear expectations, standards and accountabilities for all staff, so they know what they are expected to do. 
3. To demonstrate the full support of senior management. 
4. To provide a framework for departmental KM plans
5. To resolve tensions between opposing forces, such as the tension between open sharing of knowledge versus information security.
6. The ISO Knowledge Management Standard, ISO 30401:2018, requires you to have a KM policy in order to be compliant.  You may say, "so what, who needs to be compliant", but ISO believe that an effective management system must be supported by a polity, and that applies to KM just as it does to other management systems. 

Some examples of these reasons and components are shown below.

Organisational commitment and intent

In the NASA KM Policy, the commitment is expressed as follows;

It is NASA policy to: (1) Effectively manage the Agency's knowledge to cultivate, identify, retain, and share knowledge in order to continuously improve the performance of NASA in implementing its mission, in accordance with NPD 1000.0, Governance and Strategic Management Handbook. Individuals at all levels must take responsibility for retaining, appropriately sharing or protecting, and utilizing knowledge in order to meet future challenges, innovate successfully, and keep pace with the state of the art in rapidly changing times.

The Hong Kong Police have the following policy statement

The Hong Kong Police Force attaches great importance to effectively managing the wisdom, experiences and knowledge accumulated, accrued and acquired over the years either at the individual or the Formation/Unit levels. Such organizational wealth which exists in the form of Major Formation / Formation databases or intangible (tacit) knowledge residing within an officer is highly valued. With a view to enhancing the performance of the Force and in turn to delivering a better service to the public, the Force is committed to developing and promoting KM which should at all times be aligned with the Force Vision and Mission. 

Expectations on Staff

In one oil company, every drilling project over a threshold value is required, as defined within the Knowledge Management component of operating policy,

• to develop a Knowledge Management plan
• to capture lessons during operations
• to hold a learning review at the end of the well. 

These expectations are written out clearly, and have been rolled out to all drilling staff. Everyone is clear about what they should be doing.


Here is another example; an extract taken from the 2007 Intercooperation KM policy (no longer online). This extract covers the expectations on individual staff members for Knowledge Capture - there are other sections covering Knowledge Creation, Knowledge Sharing, and the Organisational and Project dimensions

• Staff members use and contribute to our web-based information system as a regular part of their activities.
• Staff members contribute actively to the documentation of Intercooperation’s field experiences (in written, film, photographic, or other form), especially where this is of a comparative or analytical nature. They are supported in time allocation/other resources (eg. editorial assistance).
• Persons leaving one position to take up another write a final report, focusing on "lessons learned" (both positive and negative experiences - at the organisational and the individual level).
• For those undergoing a “reintegration” period after working for Intercooperation, a feedback on this process is given (normally in a short written report).
• In all report writing, staff members endeavour to highlight experience relating to Intercooperation’s thematic and methodological (process) topics (as used in knowledge mapping under our web-based information system).

Purpose

The NASA purpose is in the quote above - "in order to continuously improve the performance of NASA in implementing its mission".

Avangrid (link below) quote the purpose as follows: "The effective development, dissemination, sharing, and protection of Avangrid’s intellectual capital enhances operational efficiency and is a key element in creating sustainable value for Avangrid’s shareholders.

For the Hong Kong Police the purpose is "enhancing the performance of the Force and in turn to delivering a better service to the public".

The Iberdrola KM Policy states the purpose as " - to enhance operational efficiency through the proper use of intellectual capital - In a world in which traditional production assets are ever more accessible, intellectual capital is what marks the differences between companies that are competitive and those that are not, and between those that sustainably create value and those that gradually lose their capacity to generate wealth."

Principles

A good principles-based policy from Avangrid can be found here

The US Army KM principles can be found here


Contact Knoco if you want help in developing a KM policy.

Why "Knowledge" needs "Management" and vice versa

There are many people who really don't like the term Knowledge Management, and would much rather use some other terminology. But logically, these two words go together. 

There is a common view that the term "Knowledge Management" is an oxymoron; that "knowledge cannot be managed" and therefore the term makes no sense.  They start to use terms like "Knowledge Sharing" instead of "Knowledge Management," and KM becomes a taboo term - something to be avoided.

However there are a number of reasons what Knowledge Management is not only a valid term, but a combination of two words that need each other.

Firstly the term "Knowledge Management" does not mean "the Management of Knowledge,"  nor does it imply management by control. Management is about  creating and maintaining organisational structures, frameworks, systems and processes to optimise the value of some area of focus, and in the case of KM, Knowledge is the area of focus.

"Knowledge Management" is therefore "Management with a focus on Knowledge".

This is the definition you will find in ISO 30401:2018, the management systems standard for Knowledge Management, and we based this on the definition of Quality Management in ISO 9001.  With this definition, there is no oxymorom. KM is Management with Knowledge in mind.

Management is what we do to make organisations work; to make them prosper and succeed. And if they don't manage with knowledge (together with risk, quality, safety, money etc etc) in mind, then they won't prosper and succeed to the same extent.

Divorcing "management" from "knowledge" also means divorcing "knowledge" from "management". If you are talking to managers, then they need to understand that these two cannot and should not be divorced.

They cannot manage properly, if they ignore knowledge.  And if we manage with due attention to the value and importance of knowledge, then this is Knowledge Management, and this is what we should be doing. Management needs Knowledge, and Knowledge needs Management, in the sense that it needs organisational structures, frameworks, systems and processes.

The two words belong together.

A KM framework for frontline sales

Knowledge Management case studies are often from the manufacturing, projects, operations or service world. However Knowledge management can be applied to any business activity. In this reprise from the archives, we look at how it can apply to Sales.

Sales team meeting by  Jim Larrison on Flickr

The sales force often work as individuals,  grouped into teams covering specific regions and specific products or product ranges for their organisation.  They may be selling FMCGs (fast-moving consumer goods) such as clothing or pharmaceuticals to buyers in high street chains, they may be selling IT solutions to blue-chip businesses, or they may be selling cars to fleet buyers in major multinationals.

They work to sales targets, and are often highly motivated and incentivised to meet those targets. They spend a lot of their time with the buyers and customers, and relatively little time at “head office” with the rest of the team.

In this blog post, we explore some of the issues of KM for frontline sales staff (we exclude the practice of Knowledge Management for bid teams - that is far closer to the practice of KM in project-based activity).

Critical knowledge for sales

The sales force needs the following knowledge

• Knowledge of how to sell. They need the basic knowledge of the sales process, such as relationship building, negotiation, and closing. This can be taught in theory, but the knowledge is really only acquired through practice, for example through role-play and coaching, as well as on-the-job learning and "learning before doing". As one sales director told us, “we always do a lot of scenario planning. Before reviews I sit with my team and I plan what is the worst case that might happen, and how do we combat it? What is the most likely case, and how do we combat this?  What is the best case, and how do we maximize the outcome”?

• Knowledge of pricing. Sometimes the price of an item is flexible, with the potential for offers and promotions such as “buy one, get one free”. The sales force need to know the pricing strategy, the pricing options, and how to sell the benefits of the pricing approach to the buyer. This knowledge needs to be provided to the sales force by the experts in the sales organisation, who themselves rely on input from the sales force. Pricing strategies can usefully be shared between sales forces in different regions and different countries.

• Knowledge of product. The sales force need to know the details of the product, and to be rapidly briefed in any new products that may be developed. In the conversation with the buyer, the sales person has to be the product expert. This knowledge comes from the product development unit, and may also be informed by feedback from customers and consumers. One firm producing motor oil products delivers regular training to its sales and marketing departments to bring them up to speed in new products.

• Knowledge of the consumers and their behaviour. This includes knowledge of buying habits and how to influence them; through display, promotions, education and negotiation. The sales person selling to a retailer, for example, must be the recognised category expert and understand the category shopper better than the buyer, and better than the competing companies. “One thing that we offer is our understanding of the local consumer, and we need to use that knowledge to advise the retailer” said one sales manager. This knowledge can be used to sell the products and brands better, to build more shoppable displays, and to help to grow sales for the retailer, and thus for the sales force. The sales rep starts to act as a consultant to the retailer, offering a knowledge based service.

• Knowledge of the sales to that buyer. They need to know the sales data, the margins, and the trend. This knowledge will be delivered by the central sales organisation, based on studies and on aggregated sales data from across the firm. One sales manager told us “we have to know our data and information much better than the buyers do. They will use a set of information on how much they buy and sell from us, we need to know this data far better than they do”. If the buyer understands the data better than the seller, then the buyer is at an advantage.  This knowledge needs to cover the buyer’s competitors’ data as well, if possible. The sales rep selling to a retailer will probably have data for all of the retailer’s competitors, and although they cannot give away any specifics, they can talk about trends, and provide them insight in terms of what is going on across the overall marketplace. This knowledge is much appreciated by the buyer, and becomes an added service the sales force can offer.

• Knowledge of the buyers and the buying companies. The best sales work through mutual advantage, so that both the buyer and the seller benefit from the deal. Therefore the sales force need knowledge of the buyers (both individual and organisational) and their goals and objectives.  They seek to understand their big customers, their game-plan and drivers, and develop and define a customer profile which is shared with and understood by the entire sales force. Although much of this knowledge comes from the sales force themselves, it will again be aggregated by the central organisation. 

• Knowledge of the production capacity of the organisation. There is no point in selling something that can’t be delivered, so the sales force need to know what can be produced for and delivered to the client. Again, this knowledge needs to be delivered to the sales force, by knowledge transfer along the internal supply chain, and needs to be incorporated into sales targets

A KM Framework for sales

A Knowledge Management framework for a sales organisation, to allow transfer of these areas of knowledge, will probably contain some of the following elements (obviously tailored to the specific organisational context).

• Roles - these will include  a KM person or team providing KM support for the sales organisation; also owners of critical knowledge, such as practice owners for the key areas of sales practice, product owners who ensure product knowledge is up to date and accessible, and key account owners, who hold the knowledge of dealing with key accounts.

• Processes - Coaching and training (including role play and scenario planning). Regular knowledge exchanges and mini-peer assists during meetings of the regional team, and the wider sales community. Regular (e.g. quarterly) Retrospects for the sales team to generate lessons. Creation of knowledge assets on pricing, consumer behaviour, effective techniques, and dealing with buyers (especially major accounts). These knowledge assets will have been developed through interviews with key successful sales staff.

• Technology - Access to the sales community of practice while on the road, to share updates and ask questions. Access to customer-related and account-related data while on the road, and in the office, through a CRM application. Provision of knowledge of products, supported by a mobile-enabled knowledge base.  Access to past sales lessons. 

• Governance - tracking the frequency and effectiveness of sales KM, including the completeness and availability of knowledge assets, and the interaction within the Sales community. Monitoring the effectiveness of Knowledge Management in increasing sales.

Together these 4 elements form a KM framework for frontline sales staff.

What are the most popular strategic elements of KM?

What do companies around the world identify as their primary KM strategic approaches?  This was another area we wanted to explore in our two global surveys of Knowledge Management.

One of the questions in our surveys therefore covered the topic of strategic focus areas for KM, and we asked the participants to prioritise, from a list of 11 potential approaches, those most important to them.

The pie chart below shows the frequency of each of these approaches as "first choice."  The approaches are of course not exclusive, and most respondents applied many of these. However

• 19% of respondents said their highest priority within their Knowledge Management strategy was to connect people through communities of practice or networks;
• 17% chose "better access to documents"as their highest strategy. This is the average of the two surveys, and if you look at the 2017 survey alone, this was the most popular choice. However the 2017 had a much higher percentage of contributors from the legal sector, where this is their default approach;
• 13% saw Knowledge Retention as their highest priority approach;
• For 12%, Learning from experience was the most important;
• 10% chose "Creating and providing access to best practices"
• For another 6%, Innovation was the most important;
• Provision of knowledge to customer facing staff was also the primary strategy for 6%

The remaining options all received small percentages of the votes.

Some of our respondents pointed out that there were maybe 3 or 4 strategic options on the list with more or less equal priority - Communities of Practice plus Learning from Experience was the most common combination.

The choice of primary strategy varied to some extent with the industry - 

• "Connecting people" was most popular in Aid & development, Construction,and Oil and Gas
• "Learning from Experience" was most common in the military and emergency services
• "Development of best practice" was the preferred focus for the military
• "Better access to documents" was the area prioritised by the legal firms, the public sector and the financial sector.

What does this mean?

I think we can take the results of this question and assert that it shows what the world of KM practitioners tends to choose as primary KM strategies.

On the whole, Knowledge Management seems to be recognised as a combination of Connecting People, Learning from Experience, provision of access to documents, retention of knowledge, creation of best practices, and innovation.  Individual industries favour one of these six over the others, but in combination they seem to pretty much map out the mainstream field of KM as it is currently understood.

Creativity is a process

Creativity is a process

We often struggle with innovation and creativity in organisations; assuming you need a sprinkling of lone creative geniuses - a few "Steve Jobs-type" people - to make new breakthroughs.

This is not true. What you need is a deliberate creative process, as described in the embedded PBS video. I list some of the key points from the video later in this post.

 

• You need "negative capability" - suspension of judgment until you have chased down a number of ideas
• The creative impulse is one piece of the process, but at some point you need to sit down and do the work
• Creativity is a spiral of excitement and despair and you have to keep working at it
• "Inspiration is for amateurs, the rest of us just get to work"
• Creativity proceeds through cognitive stages. There is a preparation stage, an incubation stage (where you let the task go for a while), an insight stage, and a verification stage.
• Collaboration makes a creative process better. There is no "lone creator" - the members of the group makes up a single meta-creator. The conversations create more than the sum of the individual viewpoints
• You have to believe that criticism of your ideas is not criticism of you, and you have to be willing to let go of your ideas as well
• You have to work with people who are very different to you
• When you work in a group, what you create is much grander
• Additional perspectives make the result better, 
• Nothing is original. There is no creation without being influenced. 
• We create new ideas by remixing. You innovate by transforming on top of platforms that already exist. 
• Anyone can be creative in the domain that best works for them. It could be a work of art, it could be making dinner. It could even be making process or product improvements in your own organisation.

In Knoco, the creative process we offer is the Deep Dive process, based on the principles of business-driven action learning. This is a structured collaborative process, put together to address a big audacious challenge by working through the cognitive stages mentioned above, using a disparate team with a mix of personality types. Contact us for more detail.

What Knowledge Management can learn from Asset Management

If knowledge can be seen as an asset, then knowledge management can learn from asset management

ISO 55000 defines Asset management as the "coordinated activity of an organisation to realize value from assets". In turn, Assets are defined as "a item, thing or entity that has potential or actual value to an organisation". Knowledge is one of those items.

So really, asset management should apply to knowledge management. Let's see how that argument plays out.

Asset management, in historical terms, originally focused on physical assets.

• Land was recognised as an asset, and land management was introduced, through practices such as rotation of crops, drainage, and letting land lie fallow in order to recover.  
• Then money was recognised as an asset and managed as such, 
• Then people, then plant and machinery, and so on.

More recently, attention has moved to the intangible assets.

• Customers, and the relationship with customers, are seen as an asset, managed through CRM.
• Brand is seen as an asset; hence Brand Management. 
• Reputation is seen as an asset, as are intellectual property, information, data, and an organisation's safety record. The value of all of these is realised through independent management disciplines.

Knowledge is one of the last unmanaged assets for many organisations.

Knowledge is an intangible asset, but one that is worth a huge amount to many organisations; for a large multinational the unrealised value of knowledge may run into billions of dollars. Knowledge Management represents an approach to realising the value of that huge asset.

Knowledge Management as Asset Management

So if we see knowledge management is seen as asset management, what conclusions do we draw? How can Knowledge Management learn from other areas of Asset Management?

Asset Management involves the balancing of costs, opportunities and risks against the desired performance of assets, to achieve the organizational objectives. So one of the early steps in Knowledge Management is to look at the current performance of Knowledge versus the desired performance. This requires running a Knowledge Management assessment and a Knowledge scan across your organisation as initial baseline surveys.  Much as an initial step towards managing a physical or financial asset is to survey the current state, so your first step in KM is to see what you already have, and find out how well it is operating.

Asset management, by the definition above, is driven by organisational objectives, and looks at the need for, and performance of, assets and asset systems at different levels.What is important is not the asset itself, but the business performance of the asset. Knowledge Management, just like any other asset management discipline, also needs to focus on the business-critical knowledge. Your knowledge management strategy should start with the business strategy, the business drivers that KM needs to support, and the performance of knowledge in supporting those drivers.

Asset management also enables the application of analytical approaches towards managing an asset over the different stages of its life cycle.  The Australian Government recognises four stages in asset life cycle management as follows, each of which can equally well be applied to knowledge

• Planning: determination of asset requirements. In KM terms, this is dealt with in the KM strategy, and includes a review of knowledge needs across the organisation.

• Acquisition: procurement of assets to meet an identified service need. In KM terms this represents Knowledge Acquisition; from in-sourcing of knowledge, creation of new knowledge through innovation processes, and acquisition of knowledge from first-time activity.

• Operation and maintenance: management and use of an asset to deliver services, including maintenance. In KM terms, this represents management of the knowledge you already have, including the creation of communities of practice and knowledge bases, the assignment of practice owners, and the creation of what we call "knowledge assets". It also involves attention to the risks that face the asset, such as the loss of knowledgeable staff.

• Disposal: treatment of an asset that has either reached the end of its useful life, is considered surplus, or is under-performing. In KM terms, this represent a core activity in the management of knowledge assets, namely the removal of the old knowledge, the out-of-date knowledge, and the just plain wrong knowledge. 

It is notable that the ISO standard for knowledge management, ISO 30401:2018, contains a clause to ensure that these four elements of the knowledge life cycle are given the attention they need.

The Australian report also contains these principles, which can also be applied to knowledge: 

The principles to guide asset management planning and decision-making focus on:

• ensuring service delivery needs form the basis of asset management; 
• integrating asset management with corporate, financial, business and budgetary planning;
• informed decision-making, incorporating a life-cycle approach to asset management;
• establishing accountability and responsibility for asset condition, use and performance; and
• sustainability, providing for present needs while sustaining resources for future generations.

For KM, service delivery (delivering the right knowledge to the knowledge workers at the point and time of need) is also crucial, as are

•  integrating KM with corporate, financial, business and budgetary planning, 
• a lifecycle approach to KM, and 
• establishing accountability and responsibility for the condition of the knowledge assets, and their use and performance. 

There is also a big issue about knowledge sustainability - providing for present needs while sustaining resources for future generations, which is what we call Knowledge Retention.

When you begin to treat your knowledge as an asset, there is much you can learn from the well-studied world of asset management, and much value you can add to the organisation from the largely untapped asset that is organisational Knowledge.  

Quantified Knowledge Management success story number 128; €136 million in one year at Continental

Here is another in our series of success stories quantified benefits, this time from Continental. 

The Tyre manufacturer Continental has a number of Knowledge Management initiatives under way, including

• The collaboration platform ConNext, which links wikis, blogs, and community forums.
• More than 16,000 communities, some of which are more like small working groups, while others have several thousand members.
• Lesson learning
• The innovation platform Contivation, for collaborative development of new ideas.

Innovation is one of Continental's three value creation streams, and gets a lot of attention. As their knowledge management page reports regarding the use of Contivation,

Some 420,000 suggestions were received in 2017, for example, of which more than 360,000 were implemented. This not only resulted in savings of more than €136 million, but is also a testament to the active engagement of our employees with the company and its values.

One of the things to note here is the rate of implementation - nearly 86%. This is at the high end of implementation rates for schemes such as this.

The 2 factors that determine the size of KM teams

The size of KM teams depends on the size of the organisation, and the maturity of the KM program.

Yesterday I talked about the need to put your A-team onto the KM implementation program, and discussed some of the skills you need on the team. What I did not discuss was how large that team should be.

I published some statistics on this in 2015 based on our global KM survey in 2014. We conducted a second run of the same survey in 2017 and so have some additional data, with now 596 responses from knowledge managers around the world. The updated plot below shows that the size of the central KM team is controlled by two factors, described below. (There will be other KM roles in the organisation, and this plot does not reflect all KM professionals; just the central implementation and coordination team).

The first factor is the size of the organisation. Larger organisations have bigger teams, but not proportionally to their size, and an increase in organisational size of a factor of 10 is not associated with a similar increase in KM team size. There is an economy of scale here, and the size of the central team remains similar across all organisational sizes. What seems to change instead is the time taken for KM implementation, and a team in a small organisation can implement KM much faster than a team in a large organisation.

The second factor is the maturity of KM in the organisation. Whatever the organisational size, the KM teams in organisations where KM is fully embedded are larger than the teams where KM is still in progress. This is either

1. Because mature KM requires a larger central team than "in progress" KM, or
2. Organisations where the KM team is too small do not get to the "fully embedded" stage.

Whatever the reason, this remains a useful plot for organisations to benchmark the size of their central KM team. 

The importance of choosing the A team to run knowledge management

Introducing Knowledge Management to an organisation is a process of massive disruption and change (or at least it should be!). You need your very best team on the job.

Image by Joe Haupt on Flickr

One of the most frustrating situations you can face as a consultant is working with an internal KM team that does not have the capacity to deliver. You want to help them, you want them to succeed, they are focused on the right things, but they are just the wrong people.

I am talking here primarily about the team that implements Knowledge Management - that introduces the framework of roles, technologies, processes and governance, and that leads the change to a new way of working. This is a big change process, you as asking people to change their working habits, and to change the way they see the world of work. You are introducing a new order of things and you need the right team to deliver this. You need the A team.

But who are the A team?

The team leader, first and foremost, needs to be a change agent. They need to be a visionary leader, capable of working at the highest levels in the organisation as well as the lowest. They need to be a respected organisational insider; this is a role that cannot be outsourced, as they need to "speak the language", know the politics, and have the credibility. They need to know enough about KM to translate it into business and customer terminology, but able to back it up with sound KM theory.

The skills of the KM team need to be varied. KM covers the area of overlap between IT, HR (or Learning and Development) and Organizational Practice, and so the team needs a blend of people who can cover these areas. The key skills here are the softer skills. This is what John Keeble, the CKO of Enterprise Oil, said about the make-up of a KM team

"If you look at the team more widely, rather than just the person leading it, far and away the most important things are the interpersonal skills, and we have said whoever we are recruiting anyone for the team, that's the most important thing. We can teach them the knowledge management skills, they bring their own network with them, but they have got to have the interpersonal skills, because so much of this is about persuasion. You cannot coerce people into sharing their knowledge, you have to be able to entice and cajole and persuade them to do it"

Some of the following skills should be on the team.

Facilitation skills. Most of the KM processes require people working together, and sharing knowledge, on groups, communities or meetings. The quality of dialogue in these meetings is vital, facilitation is key, and the KM team members play important facilitation roles. Secure facilitation training for the team members as soon as you can.

Influencing skills. The knowledge management implementation team has a hard job ahead of them, changing the culture of the organisation, and the soft skills are absolutely core. They will be working very closely with people, often sceptical people, and they need very good influencing, marketing and selling skills. Give them training in this aspect as well.

Coaching and training skills. If the aim of the team is to introduce new behaviours and practices to the organisation, they will need people skilled in training, coaching and mentoring. Look for people with skills as change agents and business coaches. One or more people with a training background should be on the team.

Writing skills. The processes of knowledge capture and packaging are in some ways very akin to journalism. Interviewing, group interviewing (e.g. Retrospects), analysis, summary, write-up, presentation, are all part of the stock-in-trade of journalists. Make sure there is at least one person on the team with journalistic or writing skills, and preferably more than one.

Communication skills. The early stages of implementing knowledge management are all about raising awareness, and "selling" the idea. The team needs at least one person who is skilled at presenting and marketing. This person will also be kept busy raising the profile of the company's KM and Best Practice activities at external conferences.

Technology skills. The team needs at least one person who is aware of the details of the current in-house technology, the potential of technology as an enabler for knowledge management, and who can help define the most appropriate technologies to introduce to the organisation. However do not staff the whole team with techies (this is one of the two common unbalanced teams - the team of techies).

Library and information science skills. Your team needs at least one person who can look after the issues of information management as it applies to documented knowledge, and who can take care of the organisational aspects of taxonomies, databases etc. However do not staff the whole team with librarians (this is the other common scenario of the unbalanced KM teams - the team comprised entirely of librarians).

The organizational backgrounds of the core team need to be varied. The team will be attempting to change behaviour and embed knowledge management into the business process across a large part of the organisation (or indeed the whole organisation). Ideally the team should contain people with good and credible backgrounds in each major organisational subdivision. This is really to establish as much credibility as possible. When members of the team are working with business projects, they want to be seen as "part of the business", not "specialists from head office who know nothing about this sector of the business". They have to be able to "talk the language" of the business - they need to be able to communicate in technical language and business language. They act as Best Practice champions within their area of business, and when the working team is over, may take a leading Knowledge Management role in their subsidiary.

The members of the team will also need to be passionate about the topic. The team members must be seen to be personally committed to best practice and knowledge management if they are to retain credibility. They need training in the skills and theories of Knowledge Management and Best Practice transfer, and need access to books, conferences and forums on the topic They must be enthusiastic about applying knowledge management tools and techniques in their own business, and to their own work, in service of improving their own performance.

Finding such people is not easy, but changing the culture of an organisation is not easy either. With the wrong people on the team, you don't get the right result, even with the best consultants in the world to support you. However ...

With the right team, the right leader, and the right approach, absolutely anything can be done, and Knowledge Management implementation will be assured.

How KM links with other project disciplines

Knowledge Management, if applied within an organisational process such as a project management structure, needs to be closely linked with the other disciplines within the project. Three of the key interactions are described here

image from wikimedia commons

Knowledge management is not a stand-alone discipline; it needs to operate within a ecosystem of other management disciplines. At organisational level, this includes disciplines such as Information Management, Data Management, Records Management, Talent Management, Learning and development, IT, Business intelligence and Customer Relationship management. Within a single project, there are other key interfaces, and three of the most important are described below. 

Performance management 

Knowledge and Performance are closely linked - the more you know, the better you perform - and it is fairly obvious from this link that Knowledge Management and Performance Management are also strongly linked. The management systems can be linked in the following ways;

• The frequency of lessons capture should be linked with the frequency of performance measurement. Knowledge Capture exercises such as Retrospects and After Action Reviews  are based on an analysis of “what actually happened” compared to “what was expected to happen”, i.e. on an analysis of actual performance versus target performance. Therefore every time performance is measured, and compared with target performance, there is an opportunity to capture lessons. So for example, if performance is reported at monthly project meetings, then an After Action Review can be built into the meeting to capture the lessons that arise.
• Under-performance should be seen as a learning opportunity. For example in one company, when any Major project over-runs its budget sufficiently to require sanction of additional funds, a special learning exercise is commissioned by the Head of Projects, in order to draw out the learning for future projects.  

Risk management 

 Knowledge Management and Risk management are also closely linked. Both are disciplines for managing the intangible factors the affect the operation of a project. Both need to be managed through the life of a project. Risk Management and Knowledge management also interact in the following ways.

• The project team may need to learn what the risks are which the project is facing. Other projects may be able to identify risks of which the project team was otherwise unaware. An analysis of lessons from past projects can also identify the common risks that need to be managed. 
• Acquisition of knowledge is a way to reduce risk, or to manage risk. Risks can be mitigated if you know what to do. Risks can also be avoided, if you know how to avoid them. Many of the areas of project risk identified in the risk management exercise, are areas where knowledge needs to be acquired, and should therefore appear in the Knowledge Management Plan. There should be significant correlation and coordination between the risk management plan and the Knowledge Management plan. 
• There will probably be significant overlap between the Knowledge Management Plan and the risk register. It might even be worth considering combining the two registers. 

SSHE management 

 Safety, Security, Health and the Environment are key areas of focus for many project operations. Good performance in these areas is not only a social duty; it also is a component of maintaining your License to Operate. However these may be very difficult areas to manage, particularly when working with a number of sub-contractors with varying interpretation of SSHE expectations, or in developing countries where SSHE performance has not been an area of focus, or where security may be an issue. Knowledge Management interacts with SSHE management in two main ways.

• Knowledge management can be a way of ensuring the project learns about the SSHE risks, and how to avoid them. In areas where this is an issue, SSHE should be identified as a key knowledge area in the project Knowledge Management Plan. The person accountable for this area of knowledge can then look for past projects with valuable experience, can set up processes to bring this knowledge into the project, and can join any SSHE communities of practice which can provide useful guidance. This level of pro-active Knowledge Management is crucial, if the project hopes to minimize or avoid accidents, illnesses, security breaches or environmental breaches. 
• Knowledge Management can help the project (and the organization) to learn from any incidents that might occur during project planning and execution. A learning system from incidents needs to be set up, involving Root Cause Analysis, the derivation of Lessons (for sharing) and Actions (for addressing any identified issues), for tracking the Actions and for sharing the lessons.

Make sure KM finds its place within the management ecosystem, and builds the links it needs with other disciplines.

How knowledge management can support a knowledge economy

It seems every country around the world wants to be a Knowledge Economy. Yet why do so few of them seem to want to invest in Knowledge Management?

A knowledge economy is one where  knowledge resources such as know-how and expertise are as critical as other economic resources. It is seen as an alternative to a manufacturing economy, or an industrial economy. A British definition is that a Knowledge Economy is "where distinctive know-how is vital to competitive services and products".

According to the World Bank, a country needs four “pillars” to compete in the knowledge economy:

1.  an educated and skilled population
2. information technology infrastructure 
3. a regime that encourages technology and entrepreneurship
4. a tightly knit network of public and private research organisations ("innovation system"

Do you see the missing 5th pillar? The 5th pillar is Knowledge Management.

A key concept of the knowledge economy is that knowledge can be treated as both a business product, and a productive asset. For a knowledge economy to work, this productive asset needs to be treated carefully, nurtured and grown. In other words the Knowledge needs to be Managed.

Yet few governments seem to have grasped this fact; the Gulf states being notable exceptions. Even the World Bank does not seem to see KM as the 5th pillar, and a search of their flagship publication finds no mention of KM, other than as a tag for the book. They seem not to realise that if an economy is to be based on an asset, then the role of the government is to ensure that asset is well managed. They see knowledge as an issue for individuals rather than for organisations; to be managed by training individuals rather than by enabling organisations to learn.

The role of KM

There is definitely a role for Knowledge Management in the knowledge economy, and one which government can and should promote. At Knoco, we see the government has doing 4 things to promote KM in service of the knowledge economy.

1. The government educates. In every resource-based economy (with the current exception of the knowledge economy) the government plays a key role in educating the key players in how to manage the key resource on behalf of the economy as a whole. Whether this is managing land, managing fish stocks, managing forests or hotels or seaside towns, the government understands that good management is key to a healthy economy, and so provides awareness, training and skills development. This is not yet the case with the knowledge economy, as the government does not yet seem to fully grasp good knowledge management and how it protects the knowledge resource.


 
2. The government sets standards. Today, in every economy (with the exception of the knowledge economy) the government sets standards; marketing standards and labelling requirements for fisheries, standards for agricultural produce and organic farming, star ratings for hotels and "standards for responsible tourism". If a government wants a thriving knowledge economy, then this is exactly what they need to develop, and here ISO 30401:2018 may be a help.

 
3. The government offers tax breaks and incentives. For example, agricultural fuel ("red diesel") is free from tax. Governments can financially incentive the tourism sector through low-interest loans, or provide free advertising, and can provide grants for forestry management programs. They do not yet provide incentives for KM development. They could  do this if they chose - they could provide tax breaks for investment in KM technology (so long as this doesn't lead people to think that technology is all you need), or even better could provide grants for the development of KM strategies.


 
4. The government provides specialist advisors.  Fisheries management advisors, regional tourism advisors, "Farming Advice Service" accredited advisors and so on. Where are the Knowledge Management advisors? There aren't any, because governments generally do not yet understand knowledge management, and do not yet understand the key message, highlighted above and repeated here - Where an economy is based upon a resource (in this case, knowledge), the government should play a key role in ensuring that resource is well managed, in order to generate value for the economy.
 

If a government wants a knowledge economy - an economy based on the asset of knowledge - then they need to ensure that asset is properly managed, and provide the understanding and support for the Knowledge Management that safeguards the economy. 

KM for start-ups

If a start-up is successful, it needs to think about Knowledge Management from the beginning - not because KM is important at the beginning, but because without KM it could really struggle to scale up.

At the beginning of its life, a start-up company is built on the insight, creativity, hard work and determination of a small number of people.

The knowledge of the product they create, the market they serve and the business model that fuels their dream is held tacitly and collectively; forged in coffee-fuelled conversations and only ever sketched on napkins.

The start-up becomes successful - more staff join the company and join in the conversations, and the vision and working approach is still shared and held tacitly. All is working well. Knowledge flows informally, tacitly and richly.

Then staff numbers hit the Dunbar limit; 150 people. This number is "a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships" - a limit to the number of people you can know well, and therefore share closely and tacitly with. Beyond this point, informal Knowledge Management begins to fail.  Sales staff go slightly off message, support staff no longer intuitively "get" the product design rationale, and the boss is increasingly called in to fix things.

The start-up opens it's first branch office overseas, and things take a sharper downward turn. People in different countries receive different levels of service, the success in one country is not replicated in another, clients begin to grumble, employees increasingly "don't know the answers", and the boss is continually on a plane "fighting fires". Knowledge Management is now overdue. It can be brought in to stop the rot, but should have been introduced earlier.

What does start-up KM look like? 

Start-up KM should start simply and grow with the organisation, but should start on day one. the founders of the company should be performing their After Action Reviews, and documenting their lessons from the earliest stage. They should be discussing, agreeing and noting down their knowledge and experience on:

• How the product works;
• Why it is designed the way it is;
• How to market and sell it;
• Who to sell and market to;
• What the customers want;
• How to explain and demonstrate the virtues of the product;
• How to support the product;
• What the customer FAQs are, and how best to answer these;
• How the company works;
• Why the company works that way;
• What the company believes in;

And so on. 

Initially this can be documented on a wiki (for ease of editing), with all conversations happening in the coffee shop.  The documentation can be in the form of lessons and "best" artefacts (best sales presentation, best answer to customer etc).

As the company grows, especially as it grows beyond the Dunbar limit, the wiki will need to be supported by online discussion - Yammer perhaps, or Jive, or the Agora Knowledge Hub.  Many of the working methods will need to be proceduralised into "current best marketing approach, current best sales presentation, current best demonstration, top 10 tips for sales, standard customer FAQ" and so on. You even appoint someone to keep an eye on Knowledge Management within the organisation, and you can draft your own internal KM policy. You now have all the elements of a Knowledge Management Framework - Connect and Collect, Roles, processes, technologies and governance.

Then once you hit the big time and your company is definitely on the way to the top, you need to bring in a full scale Knowledge Management Framework, with process owners, lesson-learning, collaboration and communities of practice, and dedicated software for community interaction and for lesson management.

The point is that Knowledge Management should begin at the beginning of the start-up and then scale up as the company scales up. Otherwise - look out for problems as you pass the Dunbar limit.

10 signs your KM strategy is in trouble

In a post from 2009 (no longer available) Lucas McDonnell provided 6 signs that your Knowledge Management strategy could be in trouble. I have added 4 more.

Image from wikimedia commons

Lucas' 6 signs are as follows, with my comments in brackets, and then I add a few more trouble signs of my own.

1. People outside your group don’t understand what you’re doing (a failure in communication);

2. You keep changing vendors/technologies/products (often a symptom that technology alone is not working, which also means that changing technology won't help);

3. You keep layering vendors/technologies/products on top of each other (this seems like a "sweetshop" approach to KM, rather than a strategic view of what technology is needed, as modelled by Schlumberger);

4. You find it difficult to explain what you’re trying to accomplish (because you do not have a business-led strategy);

5. You’re prescribing organizational change (by which Lucas means that change is prescribed, rather than delivered through solving a series of business problems);

6. You’re making big promises (I struggle with this one a bit - but Lucas means "don't overpromise").

I think we can add a few more signs to this

7. All you are focusing on is vendors/technologies/products, rather than on a balanced framework of roles, processes, technologies and governance;

8. You are  selling KM on its own merits, not on value to the business; 

9. You still haven't an case studies of KM adding value; 

10. Nobody outside your group has started doing KM yet.

Some of these warning signs (2, 3 and 7) show that you are operating a model where vendors, technologies and products take centre stage. Others that you are not communicating, and in particular not communicating value) (1,4, 8). Than there is a third group, which suggests you are going for a top-down prescribed approach, rather than an agile approach (5, 8, 10).

The solution to this is simple.

1. Introduce KM as a holistic framework
2. Communicate, and sell KM on the value it will bring to the business and the individual
3. Use an agile approach, deploying proofs of concept and pilots.

Watch out for these warning signs, and avoid the crash

What it really means when people say "I don't have time for KM"

Very often people will say to you "we don't have the time for Knowledge Management". But what does this really signify?

Image by on Paul Downey on Flickr

"We are busy" they might say;  "We have lots of real project tasks to do - we can't take time off for an After Action Review, or a Retrospect or a Community of Practice meeting. That's just another thin to do no top of the day job."

But in fact, it's not a question of time, it's a question of priority. They have time to

• do their timesheets
• prepare reports for management
• attend teambuilding events
• listen to senior management briefings
• attend appraisal meetings
• go to risk workshops
• go to safety workshops

and none of these are any more "real project tasks" than Knowledge Management.

The difference is that these activities are prioritised. They are treated as priority activities; things that it is valid to spend time on. They are seen as part of the day job. Risk, safety, accounting for time, supporting management, building the team, are all priority activities that are part of doing a good job.

So when I hear people say "we don't have the time for Knowledge Management", I know that this really means "we don't prioritise Knowledge Management" and "we haven't made it part of the day job".

If you meet this rebuttal, you need to work on making KM a priority. Get clear on the business driver, and the core purpose of KM, figure out what its worth, and use that value figure to make the case to management that KM should be a priority. Ask management to cascade this downwards. Get them to ask the two driving questions. Get KM into the job descriptions and appraisal conversations.

If people say they have no time for KM, then work on making KM an organisational priority.

More on learning from success and failure

Here is a useful boston square on learning from success and failure

I blogged earlier this month about "Win or lose, you should always learn".  However the learning strategy you employ depends very much on whether you are in a fail-safe environment or whether (as in the Apollo 13 tagline) "Failure is not an option". 

There is a lot of praise on the internet for learning from mistakes, almost to the effect that  it seem that if you don't fail, you can't learn. Learning from mistakes is imperative for sure, but in some contexts, where mistakes are costly or fatal, they should be avoided at all costs. In these contexts the focus should be on learning from the experiences of others (both successful and unsuccessful) to eliminate your own mistakes as much as you can, and when you do eventually encounter the mistakes, to know how to recover quickly.. 

The Boston Square above breaks out these scenarios.

1. In  failsafe environment, study carefully the root causes for your own success and failures (and those of others) to continuously improve and finally succeed. 
2. When failure is not an option, study carefully the root causes for your own success and that of others, to avoid failing, and study even more carefully the root causes for failure of others, and the mitigations they used to address that failure, to minimise failing yourself and to recover quickly if you do.

I make the point about root cause - it is not enough to replicate the actions of others if you want to succeed; you need to understand the root causes behind success if you want to replicate it on your own context. 

For a final word on the matter, here's a quick video from Jack Ma.