Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Keys to KM Success - Strategy & Integration

In a recent article, Rao (2013) listed and described 15 tips to increase the success of knowledge management initiatives.  After reading these suggestions it is clear that knowledge management efforts cannot exist as a stand alone initiative and require both strategy and integration.

As organizations apply knowledge management (KM) practices there must be a considerable amount of strategy involved in selecting the knowledge that will be collected and disseminated.  The KM practices should target knowledge that is valued by the organization.  In addition to focusing the practices on high-value knowledge, organizations should also integrate KM practices into existing work patterns.  Knowledge associated with key processes and activities should be targeted and the knowledge must be made available to employees as they need it in a form that is easiest to find and apply.

The author also provided recommendations about growing the organization's KM practices.  Organizations should not feel the need to term these initiatives as knowledge management if the term is not meaningful to the employees or welcomed (bad experiences in previous efforts).  Rather, organizations should use application-specific names to provide more meaning and acceptance.  Additionally, and I really like this one, communicating successful KM practices in the organization should not just focus on the more innovative applications but should also showcase more basic practices in order to show how departments can begin to develop KM practices.

All of these recommendations require the organization to develop strategies to identify key knowledge areas, design methods to best optimize the organization's intellectual capital, integrate the knowledge capture and dissemination processes into existing workflows, and communicate successful KM efforts.  A strategic KM plan is needed and the KM processes must be integrated.

Reference
Rao, M. (2013, July/August). 15 tips ensure KM's success. KMWorld, 22(7), 1, 20.

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