Mistakes to Avoid and Principles for Success
6. No perceived value to contributors for sharing knowledge. Often, organizations will expect contributors to share information based on benevolence or by mandate. Unfortunately, business users can be stubborn about performing tasks that they perceive as no-value-added. A mid-size professional services company had identified their standards and practices as a core intellectual asset and critical knowledge to the company. The problem was the standards were not being maintained by the senior consultants. Executives believed the solution was to make it easier for the consultants to contribute best practices by exposing it through the portal. Unfortunately, no additional time was allotted and no recognition provided to the contributor as part of the process. Given the choice to work on an urgent and challenging project or update documentation, the users chose not to contribute. Although management said it was very important, their behavior was to reward the "fire-fighting" work, and not to recognize the captured knowledge necessary to prevent the fire.
7. Selecting portal technology that is too difficult to maintain and use. If a deployment gets bogged down in complex portal or application customizations, sponsors soon lose interest and the project is bound to fail. The portal technology should have integrated, yet easy-to-use, components to produce successful KM communities, such as: content directory, content management, collaboration tools, search capabilities, personalization, application integration and business process management. These components should be easily available, and integrated right after the initial framework is established.
8. Failing to use business measures to drive improvement. Departments within an organization (HR, IT, etc.) often find it difficult to quantify impacts from a KM project. If you can't quantify the business value, the project is guaranteed to fail. Companies once viewed as the "best" at KM have greatly diminished their efforts over time or stopped supporting it mostly because of a lack of quantifiable business results. In other cases, where a business value is calculated but cannot be substantiated, the result is similar. If the supposed $200+ million per year savings resulting from KM efforts cannot be supported by financial results, projects are eventually terminated. Sustained improvement and momentum requires an ongoing cycle of financial measurement for KM efforts, and should be planned for during the design stage.
KM Principles for Success
Avoiding these eight common mistakes can help you reduce your risk of failure in KM. But what should you focus on? Results for the organization can be achieved following these simple practices:
Solve real business problems. This may sound like a no-brainer, but in the throes of a technology roll-out, managers may lose track of the underlying business problems to be solved. Clearly stating the problems has further benefits in scoping the requirements, managing deliverables and selecting quantifiable metrics. In addition, objectives and benefits that are clear to users have a positive effect on the adoption process.
Secure executive commitment to KM. Executive support is critical since it involves the assignment of people and a change in process. Gaining long-term commitment from executive sponsors comes from solving their business challenges, delivering business value and, ultimately, gaining their trust. Keep them informed and have them play a visible leadership role in the launch.
Own the process within a business unit or organization. Unlike many support functions, KM needs to be embedded in the business unit or support function. Having it "outside" the groups delivering the value will only hamper widespread use. A small KM core team within the business unit is required to help facilitate the solution and help ensure similar processes and scalability between projects.
Emphasize people and process. Unfortunately, in many cases, projects are driven by the technology. One secret to getting people to participate and collaborate is to ensure they get value from doing so. This can take many forms—streamline business processes, reduce their workload or enable them to spend time on job-related initiatives with people inside and outside the organization.
Embrace technology as a key enabler. One of the key struggles for many companies is the variety of databases, content and applications. KM solutions delivered through portal technology can provide the initiative to tap these disparate systems and deliver information to the user in context. When combined with content delivery, search, business process management and collaboration tools for sharing and capturing implicit knowledge, portals can deliver significant value for KM.
Integrate the process into the employees' workflow. Weave KM processes into the normal workflows and, where possible, simplify and optimize for the particular user. If the solution is extra work or a bolt-on, user adoption will remain low.
Capture business metrics to determine success, drive improvement, and communicate your achievement. Too often, the only captured metrics are for portal or application usage. Executives and users want to see value that relates to the business proposition, which can involve tools like business activity monitoring and analytics. For example, a portal community of practice to support technician repairs would track and see improvement in failed repairs, average repair times and repairs per technician with high portal site usage. Having limited or no business metrics weakens justification during the budget cycle or when a change in management requires a review of the project value.
We learn as much from our mistakes as from our successes. The challenge is to take what others have learned, to avoid the same mistakes and to produce a consistent, repeatable KM program that delivers significant business value.