Knowledge Management (KM) as a recognised business discipline has been with us since the early 1990s, yet it somehow never seems to have lived up to its initial billing as the best way for business organisations to become more efficient and effective. So, has KM outlived its usefulness, or can today's organisations still benefit from it?
To answer that question you have to understand how KM has evolved over the last 25 years, and also where it may be heading in the next quarter century.
The history of KM has three distinct phases: first, the way it was understood and implemented by early adopters; second, the way changing business requirements forced it to adapt to the 21st century; and third, the way the adaptations in phase two have laid the foundation for the possibility of a new type of KM to emerge.
So, let's start with a look at phase one, or what I would call the "Anatomy of a Failure".
Managing knowledge is something we do from the moment we're born, learning from others as we get older, and expanding our understanding from what we've learned. And that's more or less how we function as adults in our working environments, and the way business organisations also operate. However, when someone thought to attach the label Knowledge Management to these activities, managers suddenly saw KM as a new and exciting evolution that would need serious consideration.
These early adopters believed that, as with most other business disciplines, there should be a recognisable way to manage knowledge, a KM "template for success" if you like.
But what they found was that instead of a universally accepted approach, there were hundreds of ways to implement the discipline. Soon the business landscape was littered with managers considering new KM models, concepts and theories, most of which came from academics and researchers and were not grounded in the operational reality of the business world.
Given this, it was not surprising that many managers, planners and strategists ignored these new and complicated structural models and instead put their faith in IT systems as more likely enablers for their KM ambitions. They acquired complicated software that could collect and store huge amounts of information, leading to what I call the "Repository Age of KM". The costs varied enormously but the results were often strikingly similar: low user take-up, and an ever-increasing mass of data getting stored, never to be used again.
Looking back it's obvious to see that while KM vendors said they had the answer, none of them really knew what the question was to begin with.
So, why did so many of these technological approaches fail, and what lessons did those failures teach us? Here are just a few:
Enterprise-wide KM technology solutions are seldom the answer. When they have proved to be useful, it was in a tightly structured business environment where the majority of workers were focused on a small (or even singular) number of business outcomes, such as in sales or manufacturing.
Deploying technology with a top-down hierarchical mindset is a recipe for failure. The best chance a KM technology has of succeeding is if it has been deployed at the explicit request of line managers or working groups and can deliver on their specific needs.
KM technologies that are billed as "function rich" are usually a waste of money, as most users need only a very small range of functions.
Corporate KM approaches, such as repositories, are difficult to keep up-to-date and relevant, and buy-in and take-up will be an uphill struggle.
Localised solutions can be effective, but they need to be managed and maintained within the local environment if they are to remain viable in the long term.
These are all potential failure points that are just as likely to happen today as they did 25 years ago.
So, if you want to give KM technology the best chance of success, here is a short checklist of essentials before you start:
1. Find out exactly what users actually need, and what can be done to assist them in order to ensure that they will use any new technology you deploy.
2. Never deploy a new technology without first running a pilot project to find out what benefits users see in using it, and whether it needs to be modified to make it more acceptable to the wider workforce.
3. Always keep the user community in the communications loop. There should be regular meetings between them and those in charge of deploying and managing the technology.
4. Ensure yearly reviews to see whether adjustments need to be made to ensure the technology remains relevant to the workforce.
The bottom line here is that the success of any KM technology will depend on the people who will use it, not on the people who will deploy it.
In the next article I'll look at how KM adapted itself to the needs of the 21st century, and how it fits into today's business landscape.
Niall Sinclair is a KM consultant and the author of 'Stealth KM'. He can be reached at nterpriseconsulting@yahoo.ca