The lessons from the pioneers
Jaap Pels - Friday 04 November 2005
Pioneers *) on KM formulated a number of lessons for KM initiatives / interventions to succeed. These lessons are:
1 Enthusiastic champions are needed and to be located
2 Build on existing core competence
3 Address an urgent strategic imperative
4 Firm commitments from the top
5 Early quick wins neutralise the nay-Sayers
I think people referred at in lesson 1, are the participants of this e-conference. They are the ones to convince managers to give KM higher priority. Lesson 4 teaches us that the managers must buy in, so we cannot navigate around them. Lesson 5 points at ‘think big and start small’.
Lessons 2 and 3 will guide us what type of challenges to tackle by KM interventions; it should concern core business and be of strategic importance.
Knowledge management:
• Emphasises organisations / people to value knowledge as key asset
• Is essentially about managing people’s activity
• Starts (and fails) at personal level and aims at organisational change
• Focuses on knowledge sharing mechanisms and practices
So, the KM activity should be something like better preparation for winning bids for projects, developing new services / products (like trainings, courses, information, lessons learned, briefing notes and partnerships) through better knowledge sharing mechanisms within and between organisations.
I just attended the WEDC conference in Uganda (November 2005) where SEUF India, TREND Ghana, IWSD Zimbabwe, NWRI Nigeria and AMREF Kenya presented case studies on the impact of a first KM workshop and the results were amazing. The presentations will be published on the IRC website shortly.
One of the case studies reported just a small thing: getting the PC attached to Internet and e-mail out of a manager’s office into a more public space.
It improved staffs possibilities to start sharing knowledge by using e-mail, creating PowerPoint presentations and write about their projects to save lessons learned. All case studies reported management to give KM high priority.
A first KM awareness workshop, or even better a workshop to create KM plans is a good way to get managers priority for KM.
* ) See http://www.sveiby.com/articles/Kworkerdvlpment.htm
