Growing a Knowledge Management System

Organizations that are committed to implementing large-scale knowledge management (KM) initiatives must ensure that pilot projects grow into successful enterprisewide deployments. More is involved than testing the validity of a project and fine-tuning it. Many people in the organization must adopt the idea of organization KM. They must be shown how the project adds value to the organization’s activities and to the effectiveness of their job performance. To be successful, a particular KM initiative should gather both implicit and explicit information. The project’s technology will be most helpful when it reduces the changes in the processes that the people who are affected by the venture are doing already. For example, realization of a single log-on process is one practical way to minimize the cultural aspect of such changes. As is true with other change efforts, the organization’s senior executives must support an enterprisewide implementation of a successful KM pilot project. They need to be aware of both what worked in the pilot project and what did not work, and why this happened. Someone should be identified who has a suitable strategic vision of what an enterprisewide KM implementation can accomplish. This vision should be reinforced by training that enhances the understanding of KM value on the part of the individuals who will be impacted by the implementation. This training should emphasize that sharing knowledge rather than hoarding it will be rewarded. Ideally, it should be given to small groups, for example, 10 to 12 employees at time. And, the success that individuals achieve in doing this can be a metric that is applied to their job performance appraisals. For example, is the KM capability being exploited to generate new products or services, or to obtain new customers? “Integration Issues: Back-Office Discipline Moves To The Front Lines” by Kevin Sharp. ID Systems Magazine. Helmers Publishing (174 Concord St., Peterborough, NH 03458-0874) February 2001, pp. 50-54; 63.