Why KM Initiatives Fail

Yes, this topic has been "kicked around" many times before. But something occurred to me this morning that I thought I'd share.

First, if you subscribe to the idea that organizations are complex unordered systems, and cause-effect relationships are un-predictable, then perhaps the complete, detailed picture of why KM initiatives fail is to some degree unknowable and unique to every situation and organization - or at the very least too costly to determine.

Perhaps that is why most causal discussions seem to present factors that contribute to failure, or report against the critical success factors presented in the KM initiative business case or project charter.

So, here are some of the factors I think contribute to a KM initiative's success (v.s. failure) - and I'll try and avoid the more popular ones.

• strategic / enterprise-wide orientation
• willingness to have the status quo challenged in a productive / meaningful way
• recognition of the link between knowledge and the human learning process, which will help ensure that the "solution" is not overengineered with a rigid implementation plan
• proper positioning of the value and purpose of external and internally created information in the learning process
• recognition that a significant amount of learning takes place every day in the workplace, and the importance of this learning on knowledge work/workers
• understanding that knowledge management initiatives are learning initiatives in and of themselves, requiring frequent after action reviews to adjust plans, evaluate and revise overall direction, or perhaps even stop completely and move onto another focus area

Let me balence these success factors with some challenges rooted in many of the characteristics of adults as learners as they apply in the context of decision making.  The implementation success of KM initiatives are often hampered by: 

• a lack of an imminent crisis (life changing) event to trigger consideration of a change action
• need of decision-makers to forsee some form of immediate, tangible value in the initiative
• lack of decision-maker comfort with an initiative that is radically/dramatically outside the current thinking/mental models or what is already known
• being overly complex / multi-facited / multi-dimensional
• being led by experts using a prescriptive engagement model, rather than providing opportunities for those affected by the proposed changes to be involved in determining priority actions
• perceived personal risks to decisiion-maker reputation, self-esteem and personal ego in:
• admitting that the current situatuation, that they may have played a role in creating or sustaining, can be improved on or is in some way insufficient
• acknowledgeing that they don't know the answer / solution already

All this leads to what I think the real value in a "start small" / pilot approach that is often recommended in KM articles and literature - low risk, experential LEARNING. This notion goes well beyond the "proving value or ROI" benefit of a small pilot.  A real learning approach enables key stakeholders to participate in a low personal risk setting, make sense of underlying concepts and principles, gain comfort with approaches/methods and tools, and participate in designing and affecting organizational change. For this learning to happen, it is mandatory that the project plan include frequent opportunities and events (after action reviews/restrospectives) to alow time for reflection, sense making, and learning.

What is still required, though, are decision makers with the willingness to experiment and provide support and access to the necessary resources for the learning pilot, and a "client" with the strategic foresight and avilable attention to offer their problem or opportunity for the pilot.

With the prevalence of crises to manage every day, willingness, resources and attention are difficult to find for a learning pilot. And crisis management, which drives tasks and actions to deadlines, offers few opportunities for good pre-and post action learning..

Framework for Collaboration

In a spontaneous conversation with Peter at Cognitive Potential talking about some key elements of collaboration, regardless of scope, I/we came up with this simple framework.  I thought I'd share.

Are we becoming "Always on-the-record?"

Government 2.0: Five Predictions for 2010-12 - A very interesting predictions post from O'Reilly Radar. For me, the most notable prediction - "Always on-the-record." Perhaps with the increasing visibility enabled by social media, and behind-the-scenes data collection, aggregation and repackaging, the "average joe" will also be always on-the-record.  I think this may have some long term cultural implications, gradually shape common "public" behaviours, and perhaps over the short term, even lead to risk averse, "share less not more."

Bridging Organizational Silos

Gems from Karl Albrecht's white paper titled Organizational Intelligence & Knowledge Management: Thinking Outside the Silos.

• Albrecht's Law: Intelligent people, when assembled into an organization, will tend toward collective stupidity. (Who hasn't experienced this one?)
• Intelligent organizations are those with Strategic Vision, Appetite for Change, (internal) Alignment & Congruence, “Heart”, Shared Fate, Free Flow of Knowledge, and Performance Pressure.
• Enablers of organizational intelligence are Thought Leaders, Communities of Interest, (judicial use) of task forces /ad-hoc teams, and knowledge platforms to support knowledge deployment.

One element I think is missing from Albrecht's list is rewards and recognition. A very smart colleague and friend once said that you can't expect an individual to be an effective team member if they are rewarded/recognized more for solo effort than team contributions and playing a role in team success. I think bridging silos is also about ensuring that implicit / explicit reward/recognition systems and actions do not reinforce a siloed model, despite our very human tendency to think of "me" and "we" before thinking about the broader "us."

Let's Acknowledge "Practices"

I was reviewing some documentation about Information Management governance today and came across that ubiquitous people-->process-->technology model again. When I see it, regardless of its flavour, I always reflect on the way we approach organizational change, in particular change driven / enabled by technology, with an underlying presumption of a completely "engineerable" end to end solution.

There seems to be a regular failure to acknowledge that "people exercise free will as they see fit, in all circumstances." Knowledge workers in particular make hundreds of micro-decisions on a daily basis. Their attention, time, support, contributions and even compliance with changes to how work is done, when there is latitude for discretion, can only be volunteered. This means clear direction, encouragement and support at a wide variety of levels are required vs. an expectation that either staff will "do what they are told" or that they simply need options other than compliance removed.

So let's start using a people-->practice-->process-->technology model so we can accomodate the human factor, and acknowledge that not all work can be reduced to a series of detailed "must do" steps in a process flow chart.

Social Media Increases User Information Management Burden

On Monday December 7th, Google began including real-time feeds from Twitter, Facebook and MySpace in search results, with more real-time feeds to be added in the future.

Certainly, the upside is the accessibility of a lot of outstanding content created/captured in these social applications. The downside is that it also increases the burden on each and every user to:

• pick the right (one or few) communications/ information sharing channel
• manage privacy settings/security in each channel to ensure that only the information we want broadly available is broadly available - in so much as the software enables you to control security
• be expremely dilligent about reading social networking sites privacy policies
• carefully consider the broader impact / implications of content contributed in one context to other contexts / channels through which you are known - for example, being consistent with ideas and perspectives across multiple channels to ensure that contradictions aren't surfaced and criticized in online discussions
• manage the connections / potential colisions between one or more "personal' presences and professional ones - it may be getting more and more difficult to separate the two
• be dilligent about the type and nature of information about themselves they expose on the internet as it is becoming easier all the time to aggregate, combine and analyze through advanced data mining techniques

Perhaps in the past siloing of information in the differernt Internet-based social media applications provided a certain degree of de-facto information security, but, based on the recent Google announcement, "times they are a changin'."

Respectful Practices in Social Media

A few years back, I had some great conversations with The Email Shrink, and a concept that he spoke of often was "respectful practices" in the use of email - one of them I'll paraphrase as don't flood your colleague's business email boxes with unnecessary junk - anything from a pointless "CC" to forwarding those intrnet chain messages containing jokes, photos or videos. The impact of doing this is pretty obvious - additional workload to deal with the unwanted emails. The point I take from this is consider the receiver before pushing Send.

So, I was looking at Facebook last night noticed that over 1/2 of the news feeds are generated from apps like Snowball Fight, Island Paradise, The Warlords, Tartan Treasures, Farmville, etc. etc. etc. which makes it difficult to identify (what for me is) more important updates and information provided by the friends network. I certainly respect and support people having the right to decide what they do (plus, "people will exercise free will as they see fit in all circumstances"), but I also think that social media, in particular as it is used in the workplace, will require additional considerations by everyone to ensure we all don't end up collapsing under the weight of having to deal with all the unwanted information. Plus, many of the min-apps available in social applications require that recipients take specific steps to block / opt-out of receiving information automatically generated. Again, more unnecessary work.

So, to all social media users out there, consider for a moment the impact of your choices on the members of your "network".

For business looking to leverage social media inside the enterprise, it might be advantageous to consider limiting the number of non-work related apps that can be installed on your social media platform. The risk of unnecessary distractions and productivity loss is significant, as is the impact of having this type of content around the organization in scope for any form of legal discovery.

Rewarding Employee Engagement

The November/December 2009 edition of Ivy  Business Journal features The Four Intrinsic Rewards That Drive Employee Engagement by Kenneth W. Thomas.  Unlike many other discussions abour rewarding employees that are rooted in industrial age "carrot and stick" thinking, the author offers a far more realistic approach, and some great tips for taking action.

 

Thomas identifies the key rewards highly relevant, from my perspective, to knowledge workers in all generations:

• meaningful work
• control over how work is performed
• sense of competence, pride and satisfaction in the work
• sense of progress

Later in the article he further defines the rewards and what is required to implement/changes in an organizational context.

He concludes with a point that resonates a lot for me. Thomas advocates not using a traditional top down method for building the rewards, but a participatory one, where employees themselves analyze situations and suggest solutions.  This approach, the author claims, will foster the high levels of engagement and excitement that will enable the organization and its people to better adapt to the changes.

Given what I'm reading and experiencing with multiple generations at work I think Thomas provides an excellent framework and approach that will be useful in many different contexts.

8 Things You Need to Know About Collaboration

IMHO:

1.  Collaboration is over used and mis-used and is becoming a buzzword for business people and technologists alike
2. Collaboration isn’t the same as cooperation or coordination - each have different processes, practices and depth of engagement
3. Collaboration is a human process – throwing technology at people won’t magically/automatically create collaboration
4. Meaningful, productive collaboration won’t happen without mutuality of desired outcomes, shared values of transparency and information sharing, compassion, compromise
5. Collaboration implies that "the needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few or the needs of the one" and sometimes people aren’t really interested in living by that principle
6. Collaboration isn’t always the best process
7. Collaboration is not equal to Web 2.0
8. Collaboration can be a source of real value in the face of complex environments and situations where no single person has the right answer

Important Things Facilitators Should Know About Adults in a Group Settng

Does anyone doubt that a facilitated workshop of virtually any type involves learning? Hopefully not. So if you have a room full of adults who are learning as part of achiving a shared outcome, it is a good idea to have an understanding of the adult as a learner.

In the mid '80s when I joined a training company, the VP Education made it a point of ensuring that I had a good grounding in andragogy and adult education popularized by Malcom Knowles in the 1970s. Since then, and in a number of roles throughout my career, including management consulting, change management, facilitation training, developing e-learning strategies, marketing and communications, I've always tried to keep adult learning in mind, and have regularly refered back to 30 Things We Know for Sure About Adult Learning, written by Ron and Suzan Zemke, and publised in a number of trainining related magazines.

Many of these "things" should have a direct bearning on workshop design and the presentation of new learning content leading up to any analysis, cause analysis, decision making and planning etc..

Another good reference is The Adult Learner, Some Things We Know by Robin Fogharty and Brian M. Pete. They explore the adult learner in a change context.

I was listening to Stefana Broadbent's Ted talk this morning titled How the Internet enables intimacy and was intregaued by a couple of her key points.  The first is that despite the possibilities social media provides for connection and communication, despite having hundreds of "friends" in Facebook, MySpace or IM, people are truly intimate with less than 5 on a regular basis. The second is that "institutions" as weve come to know them over the last 150 years or so, have implicitly and explicitly enforced and encouraged social isolation and continue to do so via means that include blocking access to various communications channels, and training people in how to work in teams of strangers. Yet people can often find innovative ways to overcome the isolation and connect with close friends and family, further enabled by emerging technologies.   

A very interesting talk.
(The Economist has an article about her work titled Home Truths About Telecoms.)

No More Consultants! According to Collison and Parcell

Not sure how I missed it, but just came across a reference on Chris Collison's blog for No More Consultants, co-authored with Geoff Parcell.

Interesting premise.. why spend money hiring external consultants without (perhaps first) tapping into the knowledge and experience of staff / employees? Great question. 

There are lots of good resons to hire consultants; validation, "sober second thought," expertise etc. But certainly this should go hand in hand with tapping into the experience and knowledge of the people inside an organization.

The book, and the Ning site, look like excellent resources. Learning to Fly certainly "set the bar pretty high."  I'm looking forward to seeing how much higher No More Consultants takes it.

The Magic of 8 in the ECM World

AIIM President John Mancini has a very interesting initiative going that is yielding some ideas in the broad realm of Enterprise Content Management. Through his Digital Landfill blog, John is inviting people to become an "8 things" author, and ultimately be published in one of AIIM's e-books.

Interesting concept ... and already a number of good guest blog posts on managing your inbox, building an ECM strateg etc. and AIIM has released full e-books titled "8 reasons you need a strategy for managing information — before it's too late", and 8 secrets of an effective content or records management implemementation."

Google 3D Warehouse

I just stumbled across Google's 3D Warehouse - with links for Google SketchUp, free 3D modelling software. Looks like 3D models that meet selection criteria can be uploaded to Google Earth.  Very cool!

Where We Are and Where We're Going

An updated to XPLANE's 2007 "Did You Know? 2.0", this video was again developed by XPLANE, in partnership The Economist, Scott McLeod, Karl Fisch and Laura Bestler.  I find the amount of change outlined is amazing, and the impact of technology and the web profound and fundamental.  Have societal values kept pace?

Implementing Enterprise 2.0

Highly recommended: Ross Dawson's Implementing Enterprise 2.0. I find it an excellent strategic overview of the concept, components, key issues and implementation strategies from the business/organizational/people perspective. Sample chapters are available for download on the web site. On the site as well are discusssion forums for the different chapters, and a forum for offering suggestions for "Release 2.0" of the guide.

I see this as a highly useful key resource for building common language/understanding and engaging key stakeholders on building Enterprise 2.0 strategies.

Magic of the Internet

Yet another example... a reference to "Informing Oursleves to Death" on an Information Zen Enterprise 2.0 discussion post let me to a thought provoking speech by the aforementioned title given by Neil Postman to the German Informatics Society, 11 Oct 90, Stuttgart sponsored by IBM-Germany, which led me to the Neil Postman information page, which kindled my interest in reading his book Amusing Ourselves to Death as well as pointing me to Joshua Sowin's thoughtful Fire and Knowledge blog, and a post that references an interesting cartoon, based on the forward in Amusing Ourselves to Death, that compares/contrasts the future created by Huxley and Orwell. 

The links/relationships created between information can be as valuable as the information itself.

A Solution to the Attention Economy Challenges

(tongue in cheek)
In his book the Attention Economy, Tom Davenport discusses how attention is the scarecest organizational / individual resource, and how difficult it is to attract it.

I think the folks at Air New Zealand have found the solution.

A Living Library

Stumbled across an interesting story on CBC News about The Living Library - "an innovative method designed to promote dialogue, reduce prejudices and encourage understanding." - where people can check out "living books" (other people) that are representative of and have experienced specific stereotyping / common prejudices. A great concept / approach, and I wonder if it can be implemented inside an organization.  It does have much in common with mentoring, but I can also see it as a possible extension of Library services - connecting the right people with each other about a topic. (Though maybe I'm being seduced somewhat by what the above initiative is titled.)

Value of Facilitation in Emergent Collaboration / Crowdsourcing

In The Crowd Is Wise (When It’s Focused), a NY Times article by Steve Lohr, the author makes a pretty good point: "Evidence suggests that crowdsourcing succeeds when it’s designed for specific tasks — and when the incentives attract the most effective collaborators."

Would indicate to me that even in the brave new world of Enterprise 2.0, some form of facilitator  is required ensure that great ideas are generated, and that the right ideas are acted upon to yield meaningful results, all within a resontable timeframe.

(Thanks to Peter Z at Cognitive Potential for pointing me to the article.)