Curious about the role of knowledge services in today’s workplace?

Take a look at this: Knowledge Services and Change Management: Building the Company’s Knowledge Culture [Presentation]

For more information about how your company can strengthen knowledge sharing in the workplace and reduce management and transaction costs, contact SMR International at: info@smr-knowledge.com

Or get in touch with Guy St. Clair, SMR’s President and Consulting Specialist for Knowledge Services.

Guy’s in New York at 917.797.1500 or 212.683.6285, or you can contact him at guystclair@smr-knowledge.com.

In today’s KM/knowledge services marketplace, Privat continues to bring customer-focused products and services to a continually expanding target group: knowledge workers in the nonprofit and philanthropy community who must access information, knowledge, and strategic learning content to achieve organizational effectiveness.

Working with the King County Library System’s Nonprofit and Philanthropy Resource Center, which she created in 2000, Privat brings the professional expertise, subject strengths, and marketing skills of specialized librarianship to an extremely popular program. In cooperation with The Foundation Center, NPRC provides access to Foundation Center databases for NPRC clients and offers a heavy schedule of educational, awareness-raising, networking, and strategic learning opportunities to nonprofit staff of the Pacific Northwest.

A side benefit of Privat’s involvement with NPRC has been the development of a nonprofit community of practice, a networking opportunity ready-made for people who seek to learn how they can work better and smarter in the nonprofit and philanthropic arena.

For the full story, read the latest SMR International e-Profile: Never Lunch Alone… And Other Immutable Precepts for Creating a Knowledge Culture, by Marcie Stone.

The SMR International corporate mission is to help organizations build their own knowledge culture, to use knowledge for achieving the parent organization’s corporate mission and for enabling everyone affiliated with the company to pursue the same corporate vision.

In its strategic alliance with SLA, SMR International now offers a course in the subject and strategic knowledge professionals can learn how to lead the knowledge culture strategy in their organizations. Just contact SMR International to learn how to have the SLA team come to your organization for customized strategic learning about building the knowledge culture.

For strategic knowledge professionals who prefer a Web-based learning activity, SMR International – through its strategic alliance with SLA and SLA’s Click U – SMR International offers a three-week course: Building the Knowledge Culture: Leadership and Knowledge Services.

Why take the course?  Simple: In the course, you learn techniques for establishing the relationship between the management of KM/knowledge services and organizational leadership. The critical result is the development and on-going implementation of an enterprise-wide knowledge culture.

What are the dates? May 10, 17, 19, 24, and 27. Each class meets at 3.00 pm (ET) for one hour. Three lectures and two group discussions, including one discussion, on May 19, with Guest Participant Ken Wheaton. Read Ken’s The future of the future: Rise of the knowledge librarian if you want a good take on what will be discussed.

More information and registration is here. The course is open to all (you do not have to be a member of SLA to participate, and you do not have to be taking the entire Click U Certification Program for KM/Knowledge Services – although that would be a good idea and save you lots of money).

Shared both implicitly and directly with clients, colleagues, and affiliates, Building the Knowledge Culture declares SMR International’s intention to use its influence to ensure that knowledge is used both to enable employees to do their best work and to empower the organization to act responsibly in the larger global social environment.

At SMR International, it is our belief that all institutions, including those in the private sector, have a responsibility to all of society. We believe, as Peter F. Drucker wrote in the Preface to Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973) that “if the managers of our major institutions, and especially of business, do not take responsibility for the common good, no one else can or will.”

As a management consulting practice specializing in knowledge strategy development, it is our goal to enable and empower organizational leaders for addressing the responsibility gap in management and in society.

Not so in the workplace. When we work with KM/knowledge services, we are confronted with a whole host of conditions and environmental issues to deal with, and one that is on the minds of strategic knowledge specialists on an-almost ongoing basis is culture change. How do we get people to think about knowledge, the value of knowledge, and the role of knowledge in their work? All of us who work with strategic knowledge agree on the foundational characteristic of KM/knowledge services: the better workers manage knowledge, the better the work.

So how do we get colleagues in the workplace to pay attention to knowledge?

The subject was much discussed in Kenya on Thursday, 8th April. Meeting at the Faculty of Architecture and Building Sciences of the University of Nairobi, the 7th UN/University Librarians Meeting and Workshop heard SMR International’s President and Consulting Specialist for Knowledge Services speak about KM/knowledge services.

In a day-long workshop focused on KM/Knowledge Services in institutions of higher learning, St. Clair frequently addressed the subject of culture change, which he asserts is fundamental to the successful management of KM/knowledge services in any environment, regardless of the organizational framework. The workshop presentation called attention to the critical role of university librarians in leading culture change, and an ongoing theme in the presentation and the group’s discussions had to do with identifying specific steps to take, to move the process forward. [See: Shaping the Knowledge Culture in the Academy: The Librarian as Knowledge Thought Leader - Knowledge Management, Knowledge Services, and Change Management]

As the workshop moved to its conclusion, the group continued its discussion of the importance perception and culture change, and St. Clair provided four “key steps” (he called them) for success:

1. strategic learning: if KM/knowledge services and an organizational re-structuring to a knowledge culture is to be successful, the organization must have a formalized and operational functional unit for managing strategic learning and training. Knowledge workers cannot be expected to grow intellectually unless they have a structure to use
2. awareness raising: whoever is in charge of KM/knowledge services – whether it is the university librarian or corporation’s Chief Knowledge Officer, opportunities for knowledge sharing, discussion, communities of practice, and knowledge networks must be provided – and on a continuing basis
3. sponsorship: KM/knowledge services won’t succeed if it is just a “good idea” of someone somewhere in the organization; a key member of strategic management must agree to sponsor the KM/knowledge services function, to express his/her enthusiasm for KM/knowledge services-related activities, to utilize knowledge tools and techniques in his/her own office, and to reinforce the value of knowledge in the organization to that everyone throughout the organization “gets the message”: it’s done at the senior management level and the rest of the organization might be wise to do it, too
4. succession planning: the formalized “passing on of information and knowledge” is essential if time and energy is not to be wasted in learning what the previous employee in the position knew, and took away when he or she took another job or retired – the essence of knowledge sharing is to ensure that the knowledge can still be used under different (and often later) circumstances.

We know what we want to do with KM/knowledge services. Our objective is clear: We expect to establish a knowledge culture, a workplace in which KM/knowledge services is exploited (in the positive sense of that good word) to support and advance a workplace environment in which we all work smarter. And, once the knowledge culture is established, KM/knowledge services will be the management methodology we will use to sustain it, to ensure the highest levels of research, contextual decision making, and innovation in the futre.

But to achieve that knowledge culture (or to achieve any objective as we seek to strengthen organizational performance) requires developing a strategy, a framework for how we’ll get there. In dealing with a KM/knowledge services strategy, one of our first findings is that we must first focus on another culture, the larger organizational culture that defines and distinguishes the overall enterprise.

And here is when we start to get a little nervous, because as we look about we find any number of possible impediments to moving forward to our goal, and practically all of these will have something to do with that larger corporate culture. And this is when we begin to speak about “culture change,” with the message that to move to the implementation of the new strategy, to set things up so the new strategy will be implemented with success, some elements of the corporate culture will need to change.

These considerations are especially relevant with KM/knowledge services (even under the new management circumstances in which ICT and KM are recognized as the critical enablers they are). For some reason, a lot of people aren’t very interested in the methods, principles, or even the results of a successfully integrated knowledge strategy. Despite the fact that there are obvious and easily documented costs (often very high costs) to sticking with the status quo, many people just can’t handle moving to a new way of dealing with the information and knowledge they must have for their work. They do not have the time, their managers are not interested and discourage their participation (so they think), or they are just not the type of people who are ready to take on something new and different while they try to deal with what they think of as their day-to-day work.

So culture change is hard to come by, and we all know why. As organizations develop, the people involved in developing the organizational structure bring their own ideas and – not to put too fine a point on it – their own agendas to the workplace. As a result, a great many points of view, organizational arrangements, and personal interests become associated with the larger enterprise, to the extent that some of these – over time – become literally embedded in the organizational structure. “It’s what we do,” people say. “It’s what our company is all about.”

That’s what we mean when we speak about the corporate culture, the one that is in place. It has to do with shared beliefs and values, an accumulation of shared beliefs and values about how the organization functions and about how its people succeed. And the organizational culture is – especially – about how those shared beliefs and values converge for the benefit of the larger enterprise, for groups of people working within it, even for individuals as they devise strategies to succeed at what they are trying to do in the workplace. It’s our challenge to work with that, to change that culture, if you will, and to re-frame it so that it will include the elements that support the  knowledge culture.

So what do we do? How do we “fix things” and come up with some techniques and methodologies we can take up – or put before the organization to take up – to ensure that change happens?

A cool first step is to initiate the discussion among people you’ve already identified, folks who have a stake in working smarter, who understand the value of information, knowledge, and strategic learning in the workplace and who would welcome bringing a good strategy for KM/knowledge services into the picture. In my work, what I’m seeing (very often) is that among the people who are going to be implementing KM/knowledge services strategy on the floor, so to speak (not necessarily the company’s leadership), there is great enthusiasm for undertaking whatever steps are necessary to bring about culture change. They are ready to move forward with KM/knowledge services, but no one has ever invited them to think about the subject before.

I know this because when I meet with them individually, these company employees are amazingly willing to go forward. The problem is that in the past the subject just hasn’t come up. And then when they come into a meeting to discuss the subject with other people (also people I’ve identified as being enthusiastic), you can almost feel the eagerness to get moving, to come up with some speedy and high-profile solutions and get started. Since these people have not come together before to talk about how they might use KM/knowledge services to help them work smarter, just the opportunity to brainstorm and explore a few KM/knowledge services recommendations is welcomed. They get to jumping all over the place, and the suggestions fly back and forth like crazy.

So it’s pretty exciting, this experience. It is very gratifying, too, especially for those of us who focus our professional energies on looking at KM/knowledge services applications as the way to go. I can’t help but wonder if our success with KM/knowledge services enthusiasts relates to what Peter Bregman talks about in an interesting little thought piece from last June, the idea of finding the right stories to tell. These meetings I’m describing are full of story-telling (even if it’s not called that) and the discussion often begins with everybody talking about how this doesn’t work or how that needs to be fixed. But once the attention is re-focused, with some prodding to get people in the group to share their own ideas of what they think could be done to solve whatever problem is being described, things move forward at a very fast pace.

It’s amazing what these people come up with, and I think the main thing that makes it work is just bringing people together – often people who don’t even know each other, or if they do know each other, not in a KM/knowledge services connection. Guiding the conversation so they talk about what works, what could work, what might work is a very gentle way to get things moving. And soon the discussion isn’t about what’s wrong, it’s about what we can do to make it right for the future.

In the not-too-distant past – back when we had to argue and cajole and use all our manipulative tools to get management to have some interest in KM/knowledge services – one trick we used was the old “low-hanging fruit” idea. We would find some high-visibility, catchy KM/knowledge services technique, go to management with some discussions about how the organization needed to be thinking about how we were dealing with strategic knowledge, and make a case for putting it in place. Usually on a sort of experimental basis, focusing on one department or functional unit – probably a fairly small operation – and we would work on it as a “pilot” project, just to be safe and just to be sure too many fingers weren’t burned if we failed.

That’s not so much the case anymore. What we’re seeing now is management coming to us, the KM/knowledge services professionals, and asking us to prepare a business case for figuring out how the organization can deal with strategic knowledge. And as often as not, management (at least up-to-date and well-educated senior managers who recognize the viability of KM/knowledge services in the organization) is not asking for pilot projects or some easy-to-fix situation that has little risk. Now management is looking for an enterprise-wide KM/knowledge services strategy, and the gauntlet has been thrown down. It’s up to us to rise to the challenge.

So how do we do it? How do we tackle this “big picture” opportunity?

One scenario I’m seeing in my work has to do with taking advantages of the enterprise-wide approach: since you’re working with such a large group, you get to identify the different layers and operational functions in place throughout the company and you work with different people to understand what information, knowledge, and strategic learning is required for them, at their particular level. Meaning of course that the people working in production on the shop floor are experiencing one KM/knowledge services need, the people in middle management with another, the employees in the executive suite with even another (or several if you separate out what the executives themselves require as opposed to the office management staff, personal assistants, and others).

You get the picture. We’re now at the point where it’s OK – even good – to identify that managing strategic knowledge is not going to be the same for everyone in the organization. Indeed, it will be this over-arching collaboration and knowledge-sharing experience that will enable the organization to break down those “silos” and “smokestacks” we hear so many managers lamenting about. If we – as the KM/knowledge services authorities – are able to get our arms around the enterprise-wide strategic knowledge challenge, our colleagues and co-workers will be able to do the same.

Is this a new direction? I think so, and it might be one of the future trends in KM/knowledge services people talk about from time to time.

And certainly the beginning of a new year (and of a new decade as my pal Cindy Hill has pointed out) is the ideal time to identify some of the new trends in KM/knowledge services that are coming down the pike. And talk about how we can adapt them in our own workplace.