The question we’re exploring: If you were given the task of starting KM in your organization, how would you begin? Let’s continue with our strategic road map:

Now you’ve spent a little time exploring the organization as a knowledge culture (remember the definition: a knowledge culture is an environment with shared beliefs and values about the role of knowledge in the company’s achievement of its corporate mission).

As you’ve looked around, you’ve found some folks doing what you could define as KM work or taking some approach to knowledge services, although they might call it something else. With each of these, these knowledge workers have the goal of making information, knowledge, and strategic learning just a little easier to work with, providing some tool or techniques (or even just setting up an ambiance) that will enable their colleagues to work smarter and more efficiently through knowledge sharing.

What are some of these activities? Has someone created a more efficient way for people to get to regularly needed documents? Has a management team figured out a way to harmonize substantive planning and reporting formats so that each time a report is required the affected knowledge workers don’t have to “re-invent the wheel”? Has there been an enterprise-wide mega-effort, such as the development of a new tool for managing all financial reporting and analysis? Or even the re-development of the corporate intranet?

Whatever you’re looking at (and – obviously – for KM/knowledge services activities that were successful), give some attention to the ideas we’ve put forward so far in these posts: who were the knowledge thought leaders in this activity (although, since you’re the employee handing the new knowledge services initiative, these people are probably not thought of as “knowledge thought leaders”)? What first steps did they take, and who did they call in to work with them? Who sponsored the activity? What was the scope of the activity (enterprise-wide or relating to one department or functional unit)? How big was it? What resources were required? Who signed off on resource allocation for the project (meaning, who approved it and permitted it to move forward)?

And quite frankly, if you’ve uncovered some attempts at knowledge services development that did not work, take a look at these as well. Why didn’t they work? Was it a communications issue? Was it, as was noted in response to an earlier post, a lack of interest at the middle management level? Or fear of this-or-that role or activity being “taken away”? Was it a change management issue, in which the players were not prepared sufficiently for making the change?

Look around at some of the knowledge services models already in place and identify how you can apply how they were developed to building a new KM/knowledge services initiative. You’ll find that some good work has been done, and you want to match it if you can.

Next Stop: Identify resources.

- Guy St. Clair