It's heartening to see more and more articles being written concerning the power of people when it comes to Knowledge Management.
Today's column comes from Fumiko Kondo in ITWorld.com, in his article Five Steps to a Successful Knowledge Management Initiative, where we once again here that it is not technology that is key, but people.
I will regurgitate Fumiko's 5 steps to a successful KM initiative along with my commentary....
- Understand Key Business Drivers. This is unfortunately not obvious, but KM must improve the bottom line....by improving efficiency, helping customers, saving time, creating income producing opportunities, etc.
- Get Executive Sponsorship. One voice managing a project just won't get the job done. Someone at, or near the top of the particular business zone, must support - vocally - the project.
- Analyze Knowledge. Don't try to capture all knowledge...capture that knowledge that will best help support the key business drivers. Scope creep can kill the benefits of the project.
- Provide Rewards and Recognition. This is always the tough part, rewards and recognition for sharing knowledge. While no one seems to have a definitive plan, it is important to at least have a strategy for discouraging the hoarding of knowledge.
- Implement in Phases. There's no way to do it all at once...just roll out the project step-by-step, achieving more and more little-by-little.
I think someone should track these articles, if the volume of print covering these basics is an indication of adoption, I think we're in good shape.
Great post, Tom ! I have enjoyed your take on the article itself and I think you are just spot on ! I have tried to take things a bit further and have added some additional input directly in my weblog through this post: http://www.elsua.net/2006/02/15/five-steps-to-a-successful-knowledge-management-initiative/
Posted by: Luis Suarez | February 15, 2006 at 07:09 PM
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Posted by: Hero | October 04, 2007 at 09:19 PM