How Knowledge Management Is Evolving…

Knowledge management (KM) may well now be a hot topic and an area that all of the leading companies are strongly focusing on. But it wasn’t actually too long ago that the ‘death of Knowledge Management’ was being widely declared. In fact, you’ll probably still find murmurings of that sort from companies still unconvinced on the importance of knowledge management.
 
Therefore, without wanting to over use the word ‘important’, I think it’s important that I now go over as to why Knowledge Management is just so, erm, well… IMPORTANT.
 
 Why knowledge management is so important

Knowledge management offers organisations an array of business benefits. But for me, what KM ultimately comes down to, is best explained by the following quote:
 

A firm’s competitive advantage depends more than anything on its knowledge: on what it knows – how it uses what it knows – and how fast it can know something new.

(HR Magazine)

 The quote shows the link between knowledge management and a competitive advantage. This relationship has become vitally important because we are now in knowledge-based economies. Knowledge based economies, where increased competition means that for organisations to grow and succeed they need to achieve innovation, as innovation has become the only sustainable competitive advantage. And innovation is largely achieved by creating, sharing, managing and utilising knowledge – Aka, KM.
 
 Further reasons driving the need for KM, include:

• KM helps organisations to share valuable insights
• To retain intellectual capital when employees leave
• To better adapt to changing environments and markets
• Globalisation requires organisations to share knowledge across countries
• Reduce training time for employees

 
These are just some of the key benefits. There’s a wealth of literature on this particular area, so admittedly I’m doing ‘why knowledge management is important’, somewhat of an injustice. Well for now anyway, later on when I reveal how KM has evolved, I’ll introduce a few more important benefits of KM.
 
Yet, given the reasons for KM, the importance of KM still manages to fall short on some people/organisations. So it’s worth touching upon some of the reasons why this might be.
 
 Why organisations were/are doubting the importance of Knowledge Management

Ultimately, organisations that were/are doubting the importance of Knowledge Management, are simply doing so, due to – fairly obviously – having not experienced the benefits they were promised from their knowledge management programs.
 
Failings when it comes to knowledge management are due to a number of pretty fundamental reasons.
 
Organisations fail to:
 
– Identify what the actual practical benefits they are trying to achieve from KM are
– Align their KM activity with business strategy
– Explain what KM means for employees
– Design and manage KM programs effectively
 
Again, there are whole books dedicated to the failings of KM, but above are what I deem to be the key and most common reasons for failure.
 
Enough of the negative thoughts though, let’s get positive again by looking at the reasons for KM success.
 
 Reasons why organisations have experienced success with KM

Given the reasons I gave for knowledge management failing to deliver on its promise, it should be obvious what the reasons for success are. But before I dive a bit deeper into these reasons, I want to reveal something else that I feel fundamentally separates those who have had success with knowledge management from those who haven’t:
 
The former have recognised and understood how knowledge management is evolving.
 
I will talk in a bit more detail about just how KM has evolved, in the next section, but for now I am going to ask you a quick question.
 
This question will also help you to see where your understanding, or perhaps more importantly your organisations understanding is, when it comes to knowledge management.
 
 Question: What does knowledge management mean to you?

A simple question, yes. But the answer to which will give a great insight into just how your organisation is using knowledge management. It’s worth jotting down a rough answer now to yourself – which you can then refer back to shortly, to see where you sit on the path of knowledge management evolution.
 
 Answer: It’s basically where we store all of the documents and information that we may need to use at some point in time.

If your answer is along the lines of the one above, then you – well, your organisation – are not actually that far down the path of knowledge management evolution.
 
That’s because the view of KM as a huge single source where an abundance of information is housed, and one that everyone in an organisation uses, is an out-dated one. However it is a view that a great deal of people still hold, which I think they can rightly blame their current organisation for.
 
If your answer to the question I asked before was different to the sample answer I gave, then the chances are that you are further along the path of knowledge management evolution.
 
To reveal why you are likely further along that path, I’m going to return to the reasons I outlined for why organisations haven’t experienced success with KM, and flip these to show the reasons why organisations are experiencing success. And ultimately, how they have moved on from seeing KM as being one monolithic source of information. Here’s a diagram that will help me to do so:

Immediately, what the diagram should show you is how KM is very much not a ‘one size fits all’ approach. Instead, organisations need to understand their knowledge management needs, which they can do by focusing on the four main areas shown above.
 
By using the model, organisations can better identify what knowledge management solution they require based on an area of focus. Therefore within each of the four sections, an organisation can work with the parts of the business related to that specific area.
 
The different parts will of course have different people, purposes and processes – all related to achieving strategic goals. By understanding these, organisations are better placed to apply the appropriate KM solutions.
 
Apologies for sounding like a broken record, but a huge failing of KM is trying to impose a KM solution where it quite simply doesn’t apply. For example, trying to impose a ‘Customer Knowledge’ KM solution onto an ‘Operational Excellence’ part of the business just isn’t going to create the desired results.
 
It’s about understanding the strategic goals of the parts of an organisation, and then through an effective KM strategy, connecting the right people with the right technology so that their processes best leverage knowledge.
 
The above is what we have been lucky enough to experience first-hand from our clients when using Skim.it as KM solution. For example, some customers were focused on the Innovation part of their KM strategy. Their innovation strategy included knowledge gathering activities such as market research, and then sharing and collaborating on the research. Hence Skim.it was utilised as an effective KM solution that addresses this area of focus.
 
To better illustrate my point about KM’s relationship with people, process and technology, it’s best I introduce another diagram. This time it’s a Venn diagram!
 
 Knowledge Management could also be called process management

The following diagram shows how KM has progressed, to being a vital part of business processes. This is the view that those proclaiming the death of knowledge management are likely to be unfamiliar with – that arguably KM is now simply about focusing on improving processes through the use of technologies to leverage knowledge.

Therefore, KM programs have evolved so much so that they could easily go under the guise of business-led enablement programs.
 
 Conclusion

 Right then, to conclude I’ll briefly pull together what I have discussed in an attempt to answer the titled question ‘How is knowledge management evolving?’.
 
Knowledge management has moved on from being what was essentially one big storage unit of hard to find, share and utilize information – not necessarily even valuable knowledge. To what it is now, where successful KM programs can be said to be KM programs within KM programs due to the fact that KM programs are tied to clear and specific business purposes and processes.
 
Remember, the goal of KM programs is to leverage knowledge for business purposes. And so to do this, organisations must focus on connecting people, processes and technology. To achieve this, it should now be clear how a huge ‘one size fits all’ KM repository just doesn’t cut it, and was always going to fail to deliver any value and benefit to an organisation.
 
Instead, KM has evolved to now being about managing the right technologies with the right people for the right processes, all based on a clear business purpose. This approach helps to ensure the continual flow of knowledge throughout an organisation. Meaning knowledge is continually created, shared, utilized and importantly leveraged for business success.
 
Actually, to be even clearer, perhaps ‘management’ is the word that has become a bit misleading, and in need of updating. In fact, this is probably how the evolution of KM can be best described. That being KM should now not be described as a management tool, but instead either as an operational or strategic tool. The two diagrams I have included within this article are evidence of that. And so also hopefully evidence of just how important KM has become.