Using video to sell KM to leaders

Senior Management support is both the biggest enabler your knowledge management implementation can have, and also the biggest threat if it is missing. Here's one way to gain that support. 

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Senior managers will support Knowledge Management if they believe it can be done, and can add value. Like most people, they "believe it when they see it".

This is where social proof comes in.

Social proof is the honest and supportive testimony of a user of knowledge management, speaking about the value knowledge management can bring. My colleague Ian Corbett, of Knoco South Africa, speaks below about using video testimony from a young engineer as social proof to convince senior managers of the value Knowledge Management can bring.

The value of the video was that the senior managers could see that this was a real story, from within their own organisation, told by "one of their own".

“This was a high-profile project with big returns and the opportunity to do some marketing of what the processes will do. The embedded video is the best way to market how powerful this approach is. I recorded one of the engineers talking. He is young, credible and eloquent, and I put his video in a presentation for the senior management team. I gave the talks, and I showed Steve, and it transformed the presentation and got people on the edge of their seat. This was the turning point for Gavin Beevers, the Director of operations and now the high-level sponsor for KM”

If you need to convince your senior managers, then try this sort of approach; it is very powerful.