How to Deliver an Actionable Knowledge Management Plan (Video)
Mary Little: So this is the approach that we've taken so far. Some of you may be familiar with some of these concepts, such as Current State and Target State but for us it was really important to understand what the challenges were that this organization was facing and it really differed from group to group and as a whole across the organization.
So we spent a lot of time doing interviews and focus groups with different groups within the bank, and within those groups, the little subgroups, to really understand what their challenges were across these five KM work streams. So we talked about the people. Who within your group or within the organization holds knowledge and who needs it?
And what does that flow look like from one person's head to another person's head. Is that something formal like capturing content on SharePoint? Or is it a little bit more informal such as knowledge sharers? And it really differed across the bank.
We also evaluated their processes as it relates to capturing and managing information and sharing that information. We talked to them about what was working well and what needed some improvement. We also talked about the type of content that they had and the different topics of content so that we could get a really good idea of what the subject matter is that they were dealing with on a day-to-day basis.
And something that really stood out with this project is our evaluation of their culture. So within the bank and within the various groups was there a knowledge sharing culture? Were people open to taking the expertise that they had, and were they open to sharing it with others or were they more siloed? And they built that expertise and just kept it to themselves to do their work.
And then lastly, and very intentionally last, is technology. We looked at the various systems that Hassan talked about, but we were very careful to communicate that this wasn't a technology project. This was more so a cultural transformation project. And that's really key because we knew that in order for this to stick, we weren't just going to put a new tool in front of everybody and say here is the solution to all of your KM challenges.
We really had to approach it from all of those different angles. And then we took the inputs that we received from these interviews and focus groups, came up with common themes, and matched it with the information that we found in their actual content and in their systems. So a top-down, human-driven approach matched with a bottom-up approach looking at the actual information that they were creating.
And we took those findings and we put them in front of leadership and said here's what we're finding. Now help guide us in prioritizing these challenges. To see what's foundational. And we matched those findings up with Enterprise Knowledge's 32 factor benchmark, which is very observation-based. Some of you may be familiar with similar tools that are kind of date-based, but this is us actually talking to people and observing them in their work environment and really understanding how they match up to each other within the bank and with similar industries as far as their maturity level, and where they needed to be.
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