Knowledge Management ≠ Rocket Science

                 Twenty years back, when Knowledge Management (KM) as a term was in its infancy and Lotus Notes was the king of KM, it was all about storing and sharing data. It was more of a corporate lexicon until Google democratized knowledge management to the masses. With powerful search engines and smart algorithms, search giants ensured every web user would be a content consumer as well as a creator. In the last five years, smartphones and tablets have accelerated the KM growth in the public domain and leveled the playing field for everyone from kindergartners to Nobel laureates.

                 However, in business and government organizations, it is still a challenge to create the same kind of KM effectiveness. There are numerous KM vendors, some of them are very successful as solution providers. Nevertheless, it is hard to replicate the KM success stories of Google, Yahoo, or Bing. Organizations spend millions on KM solutions all over the world with varying degrees of success. KM success eludes many because it is usually treated as a document management project. If document management is alike a filing cabinet, Knowledge Management is akin to a library. The challenges for organizations pursuing KM include, but are not limited to, standardization, security, and change management.

Standardization: Irrespective of the size of the organization, it is difficult for people to agree to a few standard formats for all its content. Standardizing the Metadata that is stored with the content, which is a critical component of any good KM solution, is an enormous challenge. Defining them can take several long and laborious meetings. Even if one becomes successful and comes up with a standard, ensuring that the end users follow them for all their content is nothing short of a miracle.

Security: Content sensitivity is a common problem. Who can access what content from where and when is a major challenge. Another question is where to store the sensitive content: on premise, or on the cloud (private, public, or hybrid?). Global organizations must determine who will decide the access: the individual country managers or the headquarters.

Change Management: It is common knowledge that change is hard and change management is one of the critical success factors for any project. From a KM perspective, the project team will face:

1. Resistance to share.
2. Lack of discipline to follow the standards.
3. Language barriers in global organizations.

Since KM is not perceived as a mission-critical application like email, HR, Finance, etc., it is hard for users to take a KM application as serious business.

How to execute a KM strategy

1. Define "knowledge" from the context of the organization. The definition may vary from universities to financial institutions like Treasury, to the private and public sectors to nonprofits. This will help to determine the scope granularly.
2. It starts from the top by communicating the importance of KM, and explaining how it fits into the overall organization's success. Aligning KM with business objectives is an excellent starting point. Executive leadership must make it a priority across the organization from top to bottom.
3. Identify stakeholders from every part of the organization to develop standards, metadata, data classification, and security roles.
4. If it is an international rollout, include stakeholders from other countries; decide on how to use Translation features to break language barriers.
5. If it is a hybrid cloud environment, decide which data goes where. If it is in the public sector, decide on how "Right to Know" laws will influence your decision to store on premise or on the cloud.
6. Make it easy for users to classify and categorize data. If metadata has hundreds of parameters, it is hard for users to follow on an everyday basis.
7. Train the end users on security classification, and audit regularly. You would not want sensitive data accidentally classified as public and available to all.
8. Now comes Technology. Ensure steps 1 to 6 are completed before engaging in technology search. Project Management 101 starts with clear requirements and a thorough statement of work. Almost all major vendors will have a solution that fits most of your needs, if not all. Select the one that fits your Enterprise Architecture.

               KM is not rocket science, but is even more difficult. Unlike rocket science, in KM, people and processes play a larger role compared to the technology. Planning, Perseverance, and Patience are the three MVPs of any successful KM.