I have had the privilege of designing and deploying KMS and the opportunity to speak to many KMS Heads in companies (mostly information technology companies in India) on the early phases of KMS in their respective companies. In my experience I see a pattern emerging for infant mortality of KMS in many of these companies. I propose to describe this in 2-phases: 1. The enthusiastic phase and 2. The justification phase. Both these phases happen roughly in about 24 months from the initiation of KMS.
1. The enthusiastic phase- In one of the strategy meeting the CEO and the Management team agree that Knowledge Management (KM) is very important for the success of the company. This idea is checked with the Product Heads and R&D Head for their inputs. As usual the Product Heads and R&D Head tag the lines of the CEO and Management team. After this an expert in KM is identified from inside the company or hired laterally as Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) to setup and drive the KM initiative. The CKO is asked to form the KM team, which he does with lots of enthusiasm. The team comprises of people mostly from within the company who were earlier working in projects and have little idea of KM. The team is enthusiastic and energetic as they get to present to the senior management on the development of KMS like- design of the KM system (mostly it is KM portal), reward mechanism for contributing to knowledge repository, internal branding, etc. The first six months is full of activities for the CKO and the KM team. KM-portal gets developed, posters on KM are put-up, and the CEO and CKO talk on the KM initiative at various forums.
2. The justification phase- Approximately 18 months later. I meet the CKO (that is if he is still there). His enthusiasm of the KMS seems to have evaporated. The KM team is now about one-third. CKO tells me how the projects people did not show interest in using the KM portal as they did not have the time as they had more than enough problems to fix or they had to deliver on immediate business requirements. The CKO is also angry that some of his key team members were moved back to projects. This has de-motivated rest of the KM team and they are contemplating to move back into projects. The CKO feels that the Product Heads could have mandated use of KM portal, by asking their team members to put the artifacts and re-use solutions/artifacts available in the KM repository instead of recreating the solutions/artifacts. Try to speak to the CEO about KM, the personal assistant tells me that he is very busy or is traveling. The impression I get is that the CEO is not very keen to talk on the subject. Speak to a few members of the Management team about the KM initiative they tell me that KM initiative had got their full support, but they did not see anything tangible coming out… Some of them say it may be early to expect tangible results.
In my experience when these kind of pattern emerge it means that KM will not succeed and will see an eventual death. Do you recognize this pattern and do you agree of the consequence?
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Hi Pradeep
These are my views below: My comments are meant for those who are users of a KMS.
It maybe the case that the hype of KMS will suffer from infant mortality, however KMSes per se will remain and grow as a culture. There is no doubt that performance of any kind, (be it services and client satisfaction or products for new markets), have to track and follow the learning curve. A KMS is essential for learning cultures to happen. KMSes take care of multi-disciplinary interactions, language corrections, removal of redundancy and reinventing the wheel. They are a way of life for an employee, not an extra fitting or extra piece of work to do. When its utility is not seen then any top mgmt team will definitely get it out of the way. But the truth is that there is no output of KM that can be seen except that performance is improving after such a system is introduced. Intro of KM per se is not likely to see new customers or products pouring out, but more of improvements in cost and cycle times. I will not be surprised also if I see a dip in initial performance followed by a steady growth. The dip is likely to happen as employees learn the KM way. KM is about introducing a learning culture into the organization and the rest of its impacts will naturally follow in due time. From my humble non practioners view, I say that its not important that the CEO gives KMS any hype (i.e. show it extra interest), make sure you have a moderate budget to steadily sustain the KMS, and reach it out to all employees.. one must sizeup the minimum manpower required to do so.. maintain the portal and glean meaning out of the inputs. KMS cannot have the impact that quality interventions and automation interventions had, these showed speed, KM is slower and its a learning culture change that will in due time lead to performance. Although what Im saying may sound closer to 6 Sigma, over time KMSes will build up the knowledge base or knowledge capital of the company.. when these are assessed the company has more value. Without the KMS this knowledge wd be scattered and all over the place and cannot be assessed for a better value of the company.
Mary Mathew
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