Starting KM in Your Organization: Here’s Your Strategic Road Map (Implementing Your Start-Up KM Initiative – Journey’s End?)
Guy St. Clair
NO WAY!
Is that emphatic enough to make my point?
The question we’re exploring is this: If you were given the task of starting KM in your organization, how would you begin?
We’ve been developing a strategic road map for the project, and so far we’ve come up with ten basic steps, described in previous posts:
1. Define what you want to do
2. Define your terms
3. Don’t go it alone
4. Think big – and lead the change
5. Identify what’s been done already
6. Identify resources
7. Develop a corporate knowledge strategy
8. Develop your strategic plan
9. Conduct the knowledge audit
10. Establish measures and metrics
Now we emphasize that having given thought and study to these ten “stops” on your strategic road map – and having taken actions – we keep going. We don’t put our strategic road map down (in fact, some knowledge strategists like to take a list of this kind and post it, so it can be referred to on an on-going basis).
Having come up with our strategic road map – the overall plan – we keep referring to it and sharing our ideas with anyone who will listen. Our responsibility now is to ensure that all the topics we’ve thought about are ingrained (that’s not too strong a word) into everyone’s thinking. Throughout the workplace, it’s our job now to ensure that the changes take place and that the KM initiative leads to the corporate knowledge culture we’ve got to have for our organization’s success.
So keep in mind that – as important as anything that has been stated here – your KM start-up is only the beginning. Once you have a good example in place, once you have a solid team prepared (and inspired) to work with keeping the good work going, and once you have senior management committed to an enterprise-wide knowledge culture, your work is just beginning. As has been made clear (I hope!), everyone in every part of the company needs to manage knowledge, and there are many, many opportunities for bringing KM and knowledge services forward in the organization.
If it helps, go back to our early great mentor, the late Peter F. Drucker.
Often called “the father of management,” Drucker’s work impresses me even more as I move deeper into KM, knowledge services, and knowledge strategy. Indeed, from my perspective, I like to think of Drucker as not only the father of management but as the “father of knowledge services.” It’s my personal opinion, of course, but I go this way because it was Drucker (so I’ve heard – I can’t find a citation) who articulated that the successful manager has two critical attributes: opportunity focus and results focus.
Thank you, Mr. Drucker. The same is exactly true for the successful knowledge strategist: if we can identify (and take advantage of) opportunities for strengthening KD/KS in the company, and if we can establish and clearly describe mission-specific results, our knowledge services initiatives will succeed, supporting the company as a knowledge culture.
Good luck.
- Guy St. Clair
Thanks, Guy, for this truly informative series of posts. You have done an excellent job summarizing how to go about planning, implementing and maintaining a successful KM/KS plan that can be revisited as needed to keep the momentum going.
Just a thought..shouldn’t Knowledge Audit preceed Developing a Corporate Knowledge strategy and Developing a plan?
With reference to the step Don’t go it alone, I presume it implies ensure involvement of all staff as a thought leader.
Could this to be also taken to mean that its best to not go alone when one implements KM in a hitherto unventured field as an independent KM professional.
Thanks for the good response, Hemangi.
Of course. And it all depends on how you’ve set up your own schedule and what you’re trying to accomplish.
At our company, we see developing the knowledge strategy as prior to the work we do later, since it is (in part) the “inspirational” and “aspirational” step and in most of our experience that’s what we’ve found works for our clients (see how we explain this in our blog post for April 10, 2011).
Hope this helps. Thanks for your good comment.
Thank you Guy for your opinion.
I agree that one might need to chalk it out depending on several factors and what works best for a particular organization; the same would in turn depend upon the type of organization and its workings so to speak.
Appreciate your views a great deal.