Getting Management Buy-in For KM
The objective of this collaborative research project is to discover a variety of strategies for getting management buy-in for knowledge management initiatives. It covers both senior and middle management levels.
In the first phase of this project, we are gathering examples from the practical experience of knowledge management practitioners, where buy-in has been sought, whether or not the attempt was successful. Some early contributions from the ACT-KM Forum are listed below, and you are invited to make your own contribution here.
In the second phase, we will be working with the material gathered and KM practitioners in a number of locations (Singapore, Australia, maybe more) to identify issues, themes and potential approaches. We’ll be using techniques developed by the Cognitive Edge (formerly Cynefin) network.
The results and a write-up of the methodology will be made available to participants and the ACT-KM community. (For an example of an earlier research project about online community culture, see this article).
PLEASE REVIEW THE EXAMPLES BELOW AND ADD A CONTRIBUTION FROM YOUR EXPERIENCE.
You can anonymise the details or refer to an incident “in an organisation you know”. The main thing we want is a description of the incident itself and its consequences, good, bad or interesting. While you might feel like reflecting more generally on what happened or might have happened, we are more interested in the actual story of what happened than getting advice at this stage on how to approach managers for support. The following prompt questions may help:
- Give an example of a time when you needed support from managers for a KM initiative, and either succeeded or failed in getting it
- How have you tried to enlist support for a specific KM initiative? What happened?
- Describe a time when you met challenges from managers while trying to implement a KM initiative. How did you address these challenges? What was the outcome?
- What support or lack of support do you get from managers in your organisation right now in relation to KM? Give an example.
Due to the number of contributions on this page, we have now opened up a supplementary page here.
Many thanks for your participation!34 Contributions
I know I’ve got buy-in when someone senior starts telling we need to do something (set up a community, run a lessons learned exercise) that I told them we needed to do 6 months previously and they think its their own idea.
When I worked for a consulting firm, I would continually ask a senior stakeholder (let’s call him “Luke") if we could do some lessons learned work with particular project teams. Luke was an ex-accountant, a big, gruff man who in some lights resembled a bulldozer. Luke would listen for a while and then cut in: “Look, we don’t want to bother the project teams with this”. As far as Luke was concerned, he was glad that Knowledge Management was going on in the background provided hee didn’t have to involved with it. Then one day he called me into his office and said, “You know about xxx large project? Well, the team there are doing some bloody good stuff that the rest of the world needs to know about. Do you think you can interview those people involved to extract what the key lessons might be?”
If I had to identify some stereotypes of stakeholders, I would suggest:
- The Dream Leader: Knows as much as you about KM. Has respect over their reports & peers so can open doors for you. Pushes you to do new & innovative things. Proactively reaches out to you.
- The Opponent: Views KM as a complete waste of time & you as a nuisance at best.
- The Obsessive: Has a pet hobby horse (a piece of technology or method) they want you to push - whether it’s appropriate or not.
- The Hand Washer: Make all the right noises but do nothing themselves and do not hold their own people to account for milestones in KM project.
I was a very senior technology strategist in the corporate IT function. My immediate managers instigated research into the needs for technology support for KM in the corporation. They were very responsive and understanding of the need for corporate level business engagement to define needs and context before we got into the technology. Over a period of years we tried to get the necessary engagement but always failed. Two examples:
One example, a meeting with the Corporate CIO, Two department CIOs, the GM Infrastructure, my boss - the Chief Architect, and myself. Discussed examples of business unit engagement with the KM value proposition, discussed ITs role, discussed how KM could address some of ITs strategic issues. Result: a number of agreements focusing on broadening the discussion with the business and within IT. Real result: zero follow up.
Another example, there was a corporate steering group for the Intranet that would have been a good basis for some corporate level KM support. During 2002 individual lobbying of members resulted in a presentation and discussion of the value and potential of KM. Committee decided that it wasn’t something they could take on but that chair of group (a direct report to the Company Secretary, I think) was to table this issue in senior leadership meetings. Sounded promising but again the real result was zero follow up.
P.S. I left XXXXXX in 2003. During 2004 & 2005 the technology group tried to tackle KM by introducing a firm wide knowledge portal. This included financial reward for contributions. It was shut down earlier this year
A more positive story this time. And one that is still unfolding…
I’ve been with UrbisJHD for a tad under two years now. The decision to join was a tough one… stay in my own one-man band consultancy… or become a salaried worker once again. One of the important factors in my decision was that I was being hired by the managing director of our company and he had a passion and vision for what knowledge management means to the business.
Since joining, I’ve found that virtually none of the other directors understand or care about KM and most of what they wanted me for initially was in face information management. It’s been a slow process but I finally feel that we’ve got good engagement and increasing commitment. Some of the things that made a difference:
• Building my reputation by delivering on the important information management items they care about.
• Talking about the difference between IM and KM where ever possible.
• Various presentations to various groups of staff.
• Showing the director’s that I care about their money.
• The MD setting “becoming a truly knowledge based organisation” at number 3 of 7 strategic objectives.
• Individual meetings with directors to talk about what I can do for their business unit.
• Visioning exercise at a recent director’s conference considering what value it would have to “become a truly knowledge based firm” and what it take to get there.
• Creating and selling (individually) a KM business plan that helps the company take the steps the director’s seem read to take.Where I could improve this engagement process is to ground my discussion more in stories and examples that the director’s and other staff can relate to.
I teach I and KM at Canberra Institute to mostly mature students in the workforce. This semester as part of a new marking regime, I put in the 3 minute lift speech (for you Americans this is the elevator speech)…. they had 3 mins to convince a senior executive, boss etc of what was needed in knowledge or IM in their organisation.
Well the students did really well. The class agreed that hearing every one’s story was really good, working on making it short was really good and they were all going to have a crack at it in real life.
Best story was about by one woman who works in an area that makes specialised defence hardware with special software. She told her boss (in her speech) what, why when and where it was important to their organisation, then as a practical exercise, that they should film some really difficult technical work with the specialist talking it through with some more junior techos.
Well not only did she do well with her marks she then did the talk to her boss, then did the filming, and everyone came down to watch and reckoned it was a great way to move some of their stuff forward as senior techos look at leaving the organisation. The moral of this story is that the essence will be slightly different for everyone and you do need to work on that, but getting lots of ideas always helps.
Here’s a follow-up to this story. Some weeks ago, I mentioned a student of mine who had used a lift speech to convince her boss that they needed to do something about the loss of a very significant engineer, (and interestingly not to age retirement, as usual, but a Gen Y who decided after having $30K spent on his training that he wanted to travel the world - note to managers, they are leaving faster than the boomers or should I say not staying.). Some of you contacted me about how it all went. In more detail.
Well the filming was done with a couple of engineers asking questions as part of the process, however they also had an engineer who had the manual in front of him. First page, taking off the cover of the piece of kit, and they found the kit didn’t match the manual!. Thus after 2 plus hours they had a revised manual, and a video film both of which have gone on the shelf. The company is in the process of doing this with every piece of kit that they supply to the DoD. The output will be a revised manual and a video for who ever wants to use them.
Another result of this was the boss asked my Student if she had any more of these bright ideas from her class and she said she had a report full, so that has gone to him as well. Good outcome for her, the company, and I can tell you I feel pretty chuffed as well.
I have not asked our executives what they think KM is because they would say that’s what they employ me to advise them on.
However, in selling KM concepts to them we use this set of bullet points.... (to engage their logical and data oriented left brain. “This makes sense")
• Get the most out of what we have globally
• Understand what we have that can be leveraged
• Align programs (requiring better Knowledge management practices) with global strategies
• Build active networks and communities of practice
• Build and facilitate a collaborative culture
• Focus on some specific projects with tangible benefits
• Demonstrate benefits to build confidence and reduce resistance to changeand this phrase..... (to engage their emotional & intuitive right brain “I like the sound of that")
Imagine when.....
CS S&T personnel have a very good understanding of what knowledge, capabilities and expertise we have across our global businesses
We exercise agile processes that quickly bring together the right teams to address development needs and innovation requirements
Everyone knows how to quickly access the people they need to assist them, they are confident that their request for help will be positively addressed and they trust what their professional networks deliver for them.
…. morale is up, creativity and innovation are maximised and value generation is booming.We adjust the Science and Technology KM strategy each year to align it to overall business goals and reflect what activities we are doing within the team. We build upon the foundation from previous years, so there is continuity in the program as a whole (even though the specific focus shifts each year).
This year’s “KM strategy” summary statement is “S&T feels and operates as a single globally connected team”
We have 3 focus areas under which all projects are structured: Connect, Collaborate, Capitalise. It is focused on building knowledge sharing behaviours. Short, sharp, easy to remember and most importantly linked to key business functions and outcomes.Yesterday, our global CEO made a business update presentation here in Australia and specifically mentioned the value of the knowledge sharing work we have been doing. Before these statements were pushed up through the hierarchy, I am sure he was completely unaware of any programs we had running (let alone who I am). Words work, if presented right for the audience
- Patrick
Here’s a story about an organisation I know, where half way through a KM project, the senior manager who was sponsoring the project moved on to another job elsewhere.
The new appointee came in from outside, and wanted to re-examine everything from scratch. The KM project was halted, and everybody had to go back to ground zero to build a rationale, do all the senior management convincing, build a new framework, etc etc etc. As far as I know, the original project is dead in the water, I’m sure they are doing something now, I suspect it’s very technology focused.
It does seem to be a common thing in organisations here, that new leaders feel the need to “pee on all the trees” marked up by their predecessor. Or is this a male thing?
- Patrick
In one project we’ve worked on, the main challenge was to get the attention and time of senior managers. The project required some fairly significant decisions on the degree of cross-organisation harmonisation of practice and policy, and decisions could only be made at this level.
However, the organisation was undergoing a lot of internal change, including management and structure changes, and this just didn’t appear high enough on their list of priorities - as far as they were concerned, they’d delegated the KM effort to a project team and they should just get on with it.
The result, very slow progress, difficulty in getting the time of middle managers too (because no clear mandate coming through from above), and a final smaller scale set of proposals that were within the power of the project team to implement. Lots of the identified needs and opportunities were left unmet.
- Han van Loon
This may seem contrary to the title, but I hope it helps. First I ask the question why do you need management buy-in? This is only necessary when ‘management’ has the power and resources, but there are many CoPs that work without ‘management’. In addition as an executive manager in one company I worked in, I gave my department workers the power to meet and exchange knowledge, initially at monthly meetings. This may seem simplistic but the power of regular meetings for knowledge exchange, particularly when the people were normally in separate projects and buildings, was enormous. The rebuilt team that came from this found these meetungs so useful that when I left they ignored a new ‘manager’ who thought the meetings were a waste of time, and continued to meet until he joined them. So stop thinking in terms of ALWAYS needing management buy-in and think instead about how as a team you can achieve what you need.
Dear Folks -
Here’s something Graeme Simsion (http://www.simsion.com/) presented at the 1996 DAMA conference in Canberra. Sure, it’s aimed at data managers, but the parallels are so frighteningly close that I’m sure that you can work out the applicability to KM…
Data Management - The Big Picture
The three biggest issues are not too different from 15 years ago. They are:
- Getting Management Support
- Defining What We Do (Reinventing DM)
- Staying Employed (What’s In It For Me?)1. Getting Management Support
Understand what management wants. That’s the key.
Usually, we only _think_ we know what they want, or (more likely) think we know what they need.
What they want:
a. Support for their pet projects (initiatives tied to their real goals)
b. Help with _identified_ problems
c. Understanding, sure - but _action_, too
d. Projects with deliverables
e. Short-term results
f. Measurable (and measured) outcomes
g. Bite-sized ideas (not because they are dumb, simply so they can cope)
h. Focus more on revenue creation than cost containment.Just _listen_. Listen a _lot_. Use empathy. One day, you’ll find somewhere you can help.
What they don’t want:
a. Prophets of Doom
“The sky will fall in, if you don’t do xyz...”
People remember PoD’s, especially when they are proven wrong.
b. Salespeople (except their own, of course)
c. Zealots ("unreasonable men")
d. Children with hammers (everything is a nail)
e. Missing the big issues (the 300kg gorilla)
f. Infrastructure (= ongoing cost)
g. Abstractions and diagrams they don’t really understand
(they hate being intimidated into making a decision)
h. Simplistic models of management behaviour
(especially of decision-making)
i. Simplistic models, period
(e.g. tell them data => information => knowledge => wisdom and they’ll laugh at you)
j. Insight (they don’t want mere insight, they want results!)Guess what? Sometimes, people simply don’t want to share data. (The horror!!! The horror!!!)
2. Defining What We Do (Reinventing DM)
The traditional model led people to make unachievable promises. It also encountered heavy opposition and inevitably led to failure.
The game has changed! We must fit into the organisation’s business model.
For example, right now there’s too much data for a centralised group to manage - we have to change styles.(Note that the most important factor in DM success is a charismatic leader. The thing doesn’t work in it’s own right - it needs a salesman.)
Have a focussed view. Ask the following:
- where is the pain in the organisation?
- how much are you willing to pay to get it fixed?
then…
- do whatever it takes to _get_ it fixed.Key changes from the traditional approach:
- philosophic sell ==> hard benefits
- policy ==> projects
- global solutions ==> Pareto’s Principle (80/20)
- telling ==> listeningAnd here’s the kicker: “Which single DM initiative would deliver the greatest value to your CEO over the next 12 months?”
(And if you’re not doing it, WHY NOT???)What should a DM group do? Co-ordinate? Provide economies of scale? Provide specific skills?
Try narrowing the focus - if someone else can provide it, why are we doing it?Instead, define a niche:
a. Broad perspective: Where are the big hits, generically?
b. Local perspective: What is wanted, _here and now_?
c. Professional perspective: What are we good at? What objectives require that expertise?3. Staying Employed (What’s In It For Me?)
[Here, Grahame talked about the elevator spiel. His idea was to tell the boss that we are like architects for houses, except we do it for databases. And for heavens sake, don’t say you’re “creating the universal discourse of the organisation”, he’ll think you’re nuts. And he’d be close to the truth.
]
Finally, Graeme gave a workload filter to use for a few days:
1. Who Wants This - and how badly?
2. Theory, or Evidence?
3. Is the DM team the best place for this?
4. Is this what I want to do?
5. Where’s the best place to do it?Acknowledgement: please remember that these are not my ideas, they are from Graeme Simsion. Go on, buy his book (http://www.simsion.com/dme.htm). You Know You Want To.
- Martin Dugage
Obtaining buy-in from my company on KM is definitely the most difficult challenge I came across in all my career, because it is not so much a question of resistance to change than a question of lack of awareness of the dramatic changes occurring in the business world as a result of demographic changes, globalization and the Internet. Developing CoPs, obtaining the MAKE award, creating powerful knowledge fairs… all of this has been done in my company with real success, and yet I still fight the huge gap between the advocated strategy, which is in favor of KM, and the “real” strategy, which is still very much driven by the industrial age.
I sometimes wonder if we are not missing the point. The KM revolution (or Renaissance) is happening under our eyes. Just look at how teenagers and young adults communicate across the globe. When the time comes for them to enter the job market - now as a matter of fact - they will shun the dinosaurs of the industrial age and join post-industrial age companies, or they will join the dinosaurs and start implementing change from the ground up in an underground mode.
If the colossus has clay feet anyway, I wonder if telling him is such a smart thing to do.
http://www.mopsos.com/blog/archives/000306.html
Dear Folks -
If you are interested further, there’s an excellent article by Graeme Simsion entitled “What Managers Want”.
It is located here: http://www.tdan.com/i033fe02.htm.
- Hyphen
This is a story of initial success capped by ultimate failure and perhaps indicates the risk that KM initiatives face in certain circumstances.
Some five years ago now, we were engaged by a major metropolitan transportation provider in the UK to undertake a number of small KM infrastructure development pilot projects. The company had discrete funding for its KM development programme and two enthusiastic full-time staff - one a senior engineer who had been with the company for decades - dedicated to driving the KM development programme forward. The projects were undertaken sporadically over a period of about two years.
The pilot projects included a major effort to develop an expertise directory. This was developed initially for one of the ten directorates in the company and proved very successful, such that a year later, we were engaged to conduct an extensive consultation programme in all of the remaining directorates with a view to extending the directory to include the whole company. Another pilot project involved knowledge mapping with a view to establishing a methodology for mapping competence profiles onto specific business activities to facilitate workforce planning. A third pilot project examined the major communities of practice and interest in the organization, both formal and informal, including those which extended outside the organization to include parties from similar companies worldwide. The aim was to improve how lessons were learned. This project then analyzed how these communities were supported and how they communicated, and recommended ways of capturing and re-visiting lessons learned, which included both procedural and cultural elements and technological support.
When the pilot projects were completed, they were generally regarded as being very successful and provision was made in the ongoing KM programme to roll them out across the whole organization. At that point however, the company (whose majority shareholding was publicly owned) was made a subsidiary of the larger cross-platform transportation authority for the city. This body had no discrete KM programme and immediately scrapped the smaller company’s KM programme and withdrew funding. The leader of the KM programme was made redundant soon after.
As far as I know, the company still has no KM development programme as such, although various technology-based initiatives are proceeding, such as EDRM. As external service providers we were OK - we got paid. But it was painful to see an enthusiastic KM team with a number of successful initiatives under their belt simply snuffed out by a ‘higher’ authority which simply didn’t see the value it was throwing away.
The moral? Well, I suppose it is that it’s all very well to have buy-in for KM at the top of your organization, but if there’s a change of management at the top, or you’re subject to an M&A exercise, where executives ignorant of the imperative for KM move in, then all the ground you’ve gained so far can simply fall into an abyss.
- Shawn Callahan
In 1996 I bought my first book on knowledge management was Nonaka and Takeuchi’s The Knowledge Creating Company. I remember being blown away by the idea of systematically harnessing knowledge in an organisation. At the time I was working for a consulting company and had organised monthly breakfast forums and suggested we talk about knowledge management at the next session. I presented the ideas from The Knowledge Creating Company and at the end of the session the branch manager (who eventually became the CEO) dismissly quiped as we walked out of the session,"stop wasting your time on these peripheral activities and focus on the main game.” I protested at which the manager said: “well it seems to me that what we know at the moment is only as good as a book review.” Ouch!
- Patrick
Here’s an example where we had too much management buy-in, not just for KM in general, but for Taxonomies in particular.
A very senior manager in the organisation who was a true KM convert, understood it very well, decided to become a “taxonomy evangelist”. He had us communicate taxonomy theory to audiences that had no idea why we were spouting this stuff, and it took excruciatingly long to plough through the theory and into the practice of what this meant for them. He would come into a meeting and say, “I want every manager here to submit a proposal for how they can use the corporate taxonomy in their everyday activity in their departments, not counting the portal”.
Of course, when we realised what was going on (glazed eyes, supremely bored participants), we tried to tune our messages to the audiences, and what they needed to know about taxonomies and how it fitted into their work and their responsibilities. But it was still overkill.
This also happens with selling “KM” too, and I am still trying to figure out the balance between education and simply letting the audiences know what is expected of them and why it’s relevant, without using the official jargon at all.
Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, there was talk of a new organisation, that would provide citizens of this planet, with a one stop shop for any government services that these citizens might need.
As the new organisation came into being and as part of how this organisation needed to provide this service, it became obvious that the use of information was going to be critical to the new organisation.
So this someone, lets call them Merlynne, had a long think about where the information was in the organisation, how people used the information and it seemed that none of this stuff: the information people connection, was working very well.
Now Merlynne prepared a short, hopefully powerful talk and asked to speak to the CEO and DCEO of this new organisation and explained, that over the next few years a lot of people would leave the organisation because of their age (now too old to cut it in the cut and thrust), and some would leave because they did not want to be part of the new organisation, and some would leave because their skill sets were not needed any more. Merlynne explained that previously in another organisation 15.000 people had left the organisation as it had transformed into a commercial organisation and 15.000 brains had taken their knowledge and walked out of the door.
Merlynne was given a mandate to start work on sorting out these information and knowledge issues. She was also given some people and some money. Over the next 6 months she beavered away at doing some things to sort out where things where, how they were being used etc. But she also asked one of her staff to do some serious research on the KM and IM space so that she could present a more detailed view of what might be possible in the future and what that might mean for the organisation.
When the research paper was ready, she booked up the CEO and the DCEO and the head of the People Team, telling them they needed to understand what could happen if this went ahead. Then they were taken through all the conceptual stuff around KM and connected this back to the services agency and its business. After 2 hours no one had spoken, at this point Merlynne was feeling pretty fragile and thinking it had gone very poorly. A couple of questions and another half an hour went by. At that point the managers stood up said ‘best piece of original research done by someone in government’ and yes this was where they wanted to go.
Lots of other positive things happened to move this forward and this is what Merlynne learned:
· Be sure of what the business really wants to do, (special lesson - often they are not very sure, and need help working it out)
· Deliver, Deliver, Deliver, (on anything that has been requested)
· Explain, Explain, Explain, (anything and everything to anyone who asks),
· Keep Executive in the loop, make time to chat about wins, stalls and where you need them to show an active and noticeable interest,
· Badge things, so that they are seen to be part of the exercise,
· Keep your Champions bubbling, they keep the story going,
· Support the Knowledge team staff as they struggle with the non-believers
· Be involved in any and all special projects because they will pull the knowledge work processes through,
· Be on every high level committee in the place, as this is the lobby space, again activities out of these pull through knowledge exercises.
· Sometimes magic dust really helps (we always kept a pinch at hand)
- Patrick
Here’s a story told me today: big KM implementation (IT infrastructure and information management and collaboration, quite complex) project being run by a well established (4-5 years old) KM department ... organisation suddenly gets restructured, the KM team is disbanded, dispersed to different departments, and the KM project handed over to corporate affairs dept, who have none of the history, context, specialist knowledge… there’s a project where apparent management buy-in (organisational structure, budgets, well-defined large projects) appears to have evaporated overnight.
I joined Org A when they set up their KM Dept. Prior to the setting up for the Dept, there was a KM initiative (portal) that was undertaken by the IT Dept which was deemed a failure. When I joined, there were 4 of us in the Dept - a boss who only had an IT background, me with about 5 years of KM experience with a MNC and 2 staff with Librarianship background.
My previous President was very gung-ho about KM because in his previous company was big on KM (one of the big 4 accounting firms) so he thought it would be great here. He insisted that a Lotus Notes system be put in place and had visions of Intellectual Capital initiatives.
I don’t know what when wrong but by the time I joined, most of the Senior Management was pretty sceptical about KM. I’m wondering whether it could have been due to the previous failure (IT’s Portal) or perhaps my boss? He wasn’t much of a communicator and seem to always rub people the wrong way. THis became worse when got a new President because he had no idea what KM was.
As a result, everytime we presented a list of initiatives to Management (we needed to get their approval before we could proceed with anything because most of our initiatives involved culture change i.e. sessions with staff, etc so we needed Management to give approval so that the HEads of Departments would allow their staff to attend) they would “pooh pah” our ideas and basically KM had to fend for itself with no support.
So, KM basically lay dormant for a long while. My boss left and the Dept became 3.
Now we have yet another new President. She’s really big on cultural transformation and change. So, to get her buy-in on KM, we’re focusing on creating a knowledge rich culture and she loves it. She’s also decided that the physical Library should be part of the KM Dept.
IMHO, Management support plays a huge role in whether KM initiatives take off or not. At the same time, because it’s still something relatively “new”, it’s also about how one “sells’ the concept to Management. Once they’re ok, it’s up to the KM team to chalk up ‘successes” (I do this in the form of Success Stories) and constantly communicating with Management about what they are doing (I send Management a monthly newsletter on KM activities, etc)
In order to get management buy-in, you either have to have a leader who gets it without having to be sold, or start to speak the language they understand.
Business leaders are looking for ways and means to help them to reach their business objectives, and I have rarely found one that can be convinced with soft, difficult to measure benefits ( time saved, increased speed and quality of decisions, etc).
Find an area where there is a significant issue, a critical risk and sell risk prevention or mitigation rather than KM. KM is embedded in the solution, but they don’t often care nor need to know.Example: The Big Crew Change - in our industry the demographics are horrible. The bad old 90’s meant downsizing, so what you are left with now is a bimodal distribution of mature people getting ready to retire in the next 5 years and new employees with 5 years or less experience, but very few in the 10-20 years experience range. How do you mitigate the risks inherent in all of that knowledge walking out the door? Is the Business Plan do-able from a human resourcing/competency requirement?Recommend specific, pointed solutions that identify and retain critical knowledge and increase the speed of knowledge acquisition for the new people.
Middle management poses a bigger barrier unless they too already get it. They’re all from Missouri - you have to show them. Convincing them that knowledge seeking or sharing activities are more time effective and yield better results than just focussing on your asset and getting the work done is a tough sell. If you can gain upper management support, then it becomes more straightforward. If the required KM activities are supposed to be built into the business processes, then there can be measurements implemented to demonstrate compliance (Have you searched for previous solutions to this problem? Did you consult with x? etc.)What gets measured gets done.
If there is no imposition from upper management and you are coming from a position of bottom up, then things will work if you have a functional organisation or you are effectively managing the functions as a discipline across assets in an asset-based organisation. Use the disciplines to define their own discipline KM requirements, and have them champion KM. Effective use of KM will show in improved quantity and quality of output, and thereby satisfy middle management. If middle management can define the deliverables, then they will be less concerned about the process by which they were achieved. Once sold by results, they become eager to replicate.
In our company there are three examples.
- The first is functional sharing on a local level.
- The second is getting Global management buy-in for functional KM across regions, and
- The third is for cross-functional KM within one office.1) Functional KM on a local level.
Within Engineering Division, this is the standard story:
- Executive leadership, start with a pilot, show results, expand scope.
- We missed here the buy-in from HR and IT, and managed everything within the dept.
This got approved but without buy-in from supporting functions. Resutls are limited because of this.
Also, the limited scope in the company brought no change in culture.2) Functional KM on Global level.
Get a Vice President from (1) to champion the selling to Global management.
Salient points from his presentation:
- Management buy-in : Focus on costreduction, no $ but long term value.
(Tools, Reusable Engineering, Standardization, Education/training)
- Employee buy-in : Sharing culture, link rewards to contribution: yearly assessment
- Global Project specific quick wins
- Global CoP’s for competitive edge technolgies
- COmmon taxonomy (not existing yet)
- IT facilitates, not lead : Distributed databases & custodians, common portal
Qualitative benefits;
1 : Free-flow of information -> Global organisation
2 : Change corporate image in the market -> Leading practices
3 : Lively, vibrant, sexy organisation to work in
4 : Bind organisation, and retain knowledge
Quantitative benefits:
1 : Cost reduction through manhour savings. (Committed by VP)
Approval received and going strong with Standardisation as the winner.
Global IT was initially the bottleneck, and HR is not necessary on global level.3) Cross-functional KM on local level.
Propose multi-tier approach:
Overall lead: KM Champion
Knowledge audit - KM champion
Culture - HR leads. Organisational learning program.
Process - Quality Dept leads. Embed costodianship of portal content in ISO.
Pilot Projects - Under Balanced Scorecard lead: cross-function teams
IT - IT leads intranet redesign.
Proposal Approved with complete buy-in from all operations!
- Paolina Martin
In a service organisation, a cross-functional team to implement KM is formed. The Project Manager is from the KM Department and the Project Sponsor is his Director. The initial KM roadmap that they present to senior management includes developing a KM strategy, doing a cultural assessment and starting work on a foundational document and records management system. The presentation to senior management goes smoothly.
Along the way, the Project Sponsor decides that maybe he need not be the Sponsor afterall, and decides to get the newly-promoted IT Director to be the new Project Sponsor. Big mistake, for as circumstances would have it, a CTO is recruited into the organisation about the same time.
CTO and IT Director have different views about how the project is to proceed which leaves the project team very puzzled as to who calls the shots on the project. It suddenly becomes all about technology.
One thing they both agree on is that a KM strategy and knowledge audit is unncessary at that time, and that it is more important to call the tender for the system and have it deployed.
All resources goes into building the document and records management system, with both chiefs having different and separate influences on how the IT systems are to be configured - so there is not just a DRMS, but the works - system integration with other back-end systems (ERP, SCM) and with the front-end customer systems, with complex metadata repositories, crosswalks, etc. etc.
The Project Manager from the KM Department is concerned and raises the issue of the risks with his own Director. There is no KM strategy, no processes defined, no roles assigned for content management, no participating end user departments, and no content identified, and the response is “there is a process for escalating issues on projects, and that is to take them to the Project Sponsor.”
In the meantime, another inspired project springs up - an Intranet project by Corporate Communications.
The KM Project Manager jumps on the opportunity to do a knowledge audit of sorts. He is given 2 weeks to complete it, so he choses the quick and dirty way - using an Excel template. Same thing - system with hardly any content, and hardly findable content.Years after, the rivalry continues and the DRMS is still not in sight. Management says nothing seems to have happened with KM in our organisation. The CTO is made CIO and the IT Director bows out - of the organisation.
Management buy-in is useful only when it is for doing the right thing and by the right people. Even if Management may buys in, they may trust the wrong guys to get the job done.
In this story, KM becomes the victim of the political rivalry between 2 senior management members - a sad but real possibility!
I work for a faith-based organisation, brought in to manage OD. The organisation’s culture is highly relationship oriented and maintained by personal interactions. In addition, KM, within our context, has to make do without technology most of the time because in many areas access to ICT is limited.
At the beginning I was misreading the organisational culture and did not take it into account enough. Thus I was brought down on occasion by questions like ‘where does faith come into this?’ The point that I am trying to make is not whether faith plays a role, but relationships and organisational culture certainly do. If my aim is to see that change in my organisation happens, I won’t achieve it without the collaborative efforts of many.
I had to backtrack, spend time on reading the cultural signals/rituals and cultivate relationships with all key stakeholders. In my work, socialisation has played a big role. Through this it has become easier for me to ask for help from those who might know how to solve the problem/gain access to key people/resources. What didn’t work for me was short-cutting on building relationships and not maintaining a network inside and outside my organisation. As mentioned in other contributions, sharing stories has also been one of the most useful tools for me.
This isn’t a story as such. Getting management buy-in is a continual process. I preface these remarks by saying that I have worked mostly in law firms. Law firms are owned by the partners in the firm and it is usually therefore necessary to get buy in from a majority of partners, and sometimes an absolute majority or even 100% consensus. I take every opportunity I can to promote the benefits of KM to the decision makers in my organisation (partners and senior manager colleagues). I use anecdotes, stories, research papers and occasionally even gossip about what our competitors are doing or what our clients are saying, to get my point across. I don’t drown people in information - I judiciously distribute materials to people according to their interests. So, for instance, if a decision maker has a pet project that I know would benefit from a particular KM technique, I will contextualise information about that technique for that decision maker. If I see a KM success story reported somewhere that has obvious and direct relevance to something my organisation is currently doing, I draw it to the attention of the relevant decision makers. This is labour intensive and requires a good understanding of the business (which in itself is a good way of getting buy in), but is essential in the kind of organisation that I work in. I cross promote the work of my team. I use KM techniques to leverage the work of my team so that we can demonstrate that we, as a team, are producing more without increasing resources. It’s a very incremental process.
KM with a difference! In 2004, I was appointed as a Learnership Manager in our Region, ie Kwazulu Natal, South Africa. My role was to facilitate Skills Development KM within the Contact Centre Industry and to manage the process of Learnerships (structured program of knowledge training and workbased experiential learning). Our Learners were mostly unemployed matriculants and some graduates with a degree but no work experience. About 6 months into this role, it was fascinating to discover that companies, both large (corporate) and small had mostly ignored KM, although knowledge and company information were accessible, the information had not been documented, nor had anyone taken the time to set up a task group to document procedures, policies and/or operational information to an extensive and detailed extent. One of the requirements of a Learnership is to collect company specific information pertinent to the unit standards and subsequent assessment criteria in the Qualification and place the evidence into a POE. (Portfolio of Evidence). After a 12 month period, the Learner and his/her POE undergoes a series of stringent assessments and evaluations to determine their competency against the Qualification which has been run as a Learnership (funded by the government). So, if all the levels within a company are not consistently communicating their operational mehtodologies with each other to benefit the growth of the people and achieve it’s company targets, then the company won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. Yet it is amazing how KM is simply not part of many companies’ strategic goals to achieve profitability, solid growth levels, and a competitive edge. What the Learnerships have done is to educate companies, both big and small, to manage their KM in such a way that every staff member, regardless of position, actively contributes to updating their specific company knowledge and information on a regular basis. Further, many companies who specifically participated in Learnerships, and many who still do, have set up task groups to mine the information within their environment and to document the information in such a way that is visible to its staff, management and its customers/clients and consumers. There will always be changes in any environments and structures, but if there is a solid and enduring manner of managing information, and ensuring its visibility and accessibility, then those companies will be the “good to great” companies in the future. KM I believe can become a competitive edge only if awareness, commitment and a call to action exists. Perhaps to conclude that Skills Development in SA has enabled and empowered the Strategic KM Consulting industry to flourish much faster than was previously imagined or intended, as well as growing our Contact Centre Industry exponentially.
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An engineering firm I worked for had a number of management-initiated communities of practice that were languishing and I was trying to secure funding for travel that would enable establishment of relationships to build the sense of ‘community’ needed for the groups to develop. This required a business case which I worked on for several months: it didn’t’ convince either management or me of the ‘value’ of either the groups or the required travel.
Changing tack, I started seeking out and testing stories where the communities had benefited the company or its clients. I would bump into the Managing Director in the hall and test the stories: “Hi Pete, did you hear…..”. His eyes would reveal the impact, so I kept trying till his eyes lit up and he said “I need this story put in my weekly newsletter, this is exactly the sort of example of delighting the client we need”.
The written version of the story went like this:
“Late in the afternoon of Monday 4 Nov 04, [name] was asked by his client if he knew what was happening regarding risk management software within the client’s [very large] organisation. [name] posted a question to the Project Management domain (a community of practice) – ‘Does anyone know what will replace the client’s current RM software?’.
• Replies from three senior staff were received within 10 minutes concluding that there while there was no formal decision to replace the current software, it was likely that the [new software] application would be introduced at sometime in the future. By the following morning, [name] could update his client on the latest available information. He was also able to advise the client that our firm had already conducted a review of the [new software] application.
• [name]’s client was delighted at the accuracy of the information and [name]’s responsiveness. A business opportunity had also been created.
• To follow-up, on 11 Jan 05 another domain member posted a link that strongly indicated [new software] being phased in over the next 24 months. Ten minutes later, yet another domain member posted a message that he had just come from a meeting that had confirmed that [new software] was to become the client’s standard tool.
This example demonstrates that the firm has the ability to comprehend many details of the client’s business and to quickly extract and share that knowledge. All members of the domain now know something about the client business that most in the client’s organisation do not. Combined with the firm’s experience in conducting an evaluation of [new software] for the client, this provides us with a significant competitive advantage. We knew more about the client’s business than the client did.”
So, while I would love to say that the MD immediately approved the business case for travel for the domain teams, this wasn’t the outcome. But there was a major change in the MD’s attitude towards the domains. It went from ‘tolerating their existence’ to seeing clearly how they could and were adding value to the business. I then continued to look for and test other stories…
Posted on June 21, 2006 at 11:51 AM | Contribution permalink