Organizations are growing quickly. mergers, acquisitions and attrition are just some of the challenges to overcome when trying to maintain a knowledgeable workforce.

Companies battle everyday to maximize the capture of tacit and explicit knowledge from their employees and have come up with a number of ways to do so. Collaboration tools, knowledge maps , communities of practice, content management tools, after-action reviews and lessons learned sessions are just some of the methods organizations have devised to counter knowledge attrition.

No single approach however is enough to ensure that knowledge is retained, a mix and match of approaches is required. Though the bottom line is this, unless an organization’s culture is geared towards sharing knowledge, creating systems and processes to enable the sharing of knowledge is a moot point.

These approaches can be followed within the a project as well and become essential tools you , as a project manager, can use to your advantage in running a successful project.

The After-Action review : This is a strategy that has been adopted from the military. Often after an engagement the team will sit down together and go over what occurred, analyzing strengths and weakness. This is an excellent feedback mechanism to promote learning within the team. On a large scale, trends and patterns can be observed by comparing multiple groups, allowing best practices and lessons learned to be replicated across teams.

Communities of Practice: Is one of the simplest ways of connecting people who need knowledge with the groups that have it. Communities of practice are an excellent way to collect and disseminate information to a large audience. In order to maximize the use of a CoP a careful balance of leadership and freedom needs to be given to the community to promote sharing of ideas and knowledge, as a lack of leadership or direction could seriously damage the usefulness of the CoP in the long run.

Expert Directories : Another great way to tap into the tacit knowledge that exists in the organization - the expert directories is a method by which people can interact directly with people considered Subject Matter Experts ( SME’s ) . This however requires voluntary participation by the experts as it requires them to devote time from their busy schedules to address questions that do not benefit them directly.

Information Repositories : The simplest method of extracting and storing explicit information is the information repository. In its most basic form is a large folder with information stored in some sort of a structure. Advanced information repositories or content management systems use meta-tags and taxonomy structures to organize information for the end user in such a way as to provide the maximum value. By creating processes around the system, organization can ensure that all explicit information find’s a place somewhere in the application. It also acts as a medium for the transition of tacit knowledge to explicit.

These are just some of the methods that you could use to promote knowledge sharing and transfer in your organization or project. Keep in mind however that true knowledge retention is a daunting task and unless you have a clear approach mapped out it could lead to some serious complications.

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In her latest examination of knowledge management best practices, KM thought leader Carla O’Dell reveals the new competitive advantage—a special class of communities of practice known as networks.An expansion of traditional communities of practice, networks are organization-wide forums for knowledge sharing among functional practitioners. These networks are integrated into the workflow and produce bottom-line results in industries demanding exceptional speed and accuracy.

Your organization can benefit from what others have learned. Using case examples from Air Products and Chemicals, BHP Billiton, Buckman Laboratories International, Chevron, Fluor, and Halliburton, O’Dell explains how best-practice organizations leverage networks to maintain their industry-leading status and examines the cultural and technological enablers of thriving networks.

Share the knowledge. Download this insightful report for you and your organization today.

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It’s that time of the week where i feature another KM blog, this time around its “The Knowledge Management Blog” by Luis Suarez.

What elsua is….

“Welcome to elsua, where you’ll find blog posts from the world of Knowledge Management, Collaboration, Communities of Practice, Social Networking, and Web 2.0. Specific topics will include remote collaboration in distributed/virtual teams, ways to foster and boost KM techniques, personal knowledge management, and many more.”

An extract from one of his newer posts…

Emergency 2.0 and Social Software - Making Enterprise 2.0 Really Matter

” A couple of the folks that I get to read on a regular basis have been commenting in the last couple of days on a news item, originally from PCWorld, titled LA Fire Department all ‘aTwitter’ over Web 2.0, where throughout the article itself you would be able to read further how the L.A. Fire Department is starting to make use of social software tools like Twitter in order to be able to handle whatever emergencies and crises in a much more efficient and effective way by spreading information around much faster than through traditional tools. Quite an interesting read, to say the least, and a real business case for Twitter, nevertheless.

This particular topic is something that I have been thinking about myself quite a bit lately, specially after the recent fires in Gran Canaria and Tenerife, amongst other Canary Islands, and which I feel that Rob Paterson has put together quite nicely over at the FASTForward Blog in Social Media Adoption - Maybe a Crisis Will Help? Mike Gotta has made also an excellent point about how much we may be underestimating social software tools when handling crises of whatever the magnitude, just because most people may be using some of those tools for fun.”

Hope you enjoy this blog, shall have another one the same time next week….

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Continuing with a once a week post on the various blogs i read, its time for me to focus attention on APQC’s Knowledge Management Blog. Another one of the KM blogs that I’ve been reading for a while now.

Written by Jim Lee, this blog has been around for a while now.

Here is an extract from one of his newer posts.

Knowledge Sharing driven by IT? IT can be done…

“Having just recently attended the Air Force Knowledge Now Users’ Conference, I’m impressed by how they’ve implemented their knowledge sharing program, particularly since it appears that they’ve successfully navigated the “build it and they will (not) come” conundrum. The knowledge sharing program, led by Randy Adkins and his KM team, has thousands of communities of practice—all enabled by collaborative webspaces. Their content, activity, presence, and “location” are virtual. They’ve developed their community this way so effectively that it almost seems ironic to come face-to-face with the actual members”

In the coming weeks i shall be featuring many such KM blogs, so that you the reader can get to know what other KM bloggers think about the subject of Knowledge Management.

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Getting Started

“Over the past few posts we’ve talked about a variety of subjects, Strategies to implement KM , How to run communities of practice, the effect of blogs on KM and so on. The most common question however is not how to implement KM but when. I thought i’d put together a few thought on when you should start think of looking at a Knowledge Management initiative for your organization.”

Your KM Strategy

“When do you know its time to move into the second phase of your Knowledge Management Road map?

• If, you have successful initiatives already been conducted at the grassroots level.
• If, An executive sponsor decides to support KM initiatives.
• If, You have identified pilots to showcase the benefits of KM.
• If, A KM steering committee has been put in place.”

Launching your KM initiative

“You’ve already spent a lot of time identifying where your company is placed in terms of launching an initiative like this as well as chalking out a strategy to deploy KM. Now comes the really difficult part, launching the initiative.

The first step is to identify whether its time to transition to this phase of KM. There are certain key indicators you can look for.”

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It’s all about the Blog

“Blogs have caused quite a stir since their inception. Now the average Joe has the power to reach audiences across the globe, and the best part about it? it doesn’t cost a cent!! Even mainstream media is recognizing it’s unprecedented growth and the effect on society at large.

Corporates have slowly started waking up to the huge opportunities of this vast means of communication. The main attraction? well, for most companies interacting with their customers, building relationships and getting vital feedback. Not to mention growing their existing business.”

Communities of Practice

“We’ve all heard the term, but what exactly is it? and how does it benefit us more importantly. In simple terms a CoP is “A channel for knowledge to flow and a means to strengthen the social fabric in an organization.

A lot of people, corporates included, are under the illusion that creating a large repository of information would automatically result in people gravitating to this information base on a regular basis. Nothing could be further from the truth, and having received my dose of this let me tell you its a sure way to take the wind out of your sails.”

The Knowledge Management RoadMap

” Every journey has a start point and a destination, making sure you get to the right destination is the job of a road map. To ensure you get to the destination on time, within budget and without accidents you need to make sure you have a damn good roadmap and a plan.”

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YouTube a KM Platform?? Are you out of your mind? thats probably the first reaction you had when you read the title of this post. Honestly? i dont blame you , i was having the same thoughts a week ago , but then as you know when an idea takes hold it takes a while to shake off.

So I asked myself this very simple question, What makes a good KM platform? and then started listing the points down one by one. This is what i’ve come up with so far ( this is a very basic list, so bear with me) .

1. Communities of Practice
2. Expertise Map
3. Great Search feature
4. Collaboration
5. Information Repositories

The whole idea behind institutionalizing KM anywhere is to for people to get to the right information at the right time. While there are hundreds of applications out there ( open source and otherwise ) the fundamental success factor for any KM initiative is to establish a self sustaining knowledge sharing culture that uses the platform to facilitate collaboration. Something YouTube has excelled at, now whether this fits your corporates definition of a KM tool is question that we shall tackle on another day.

Right, back to the question at hand. Analyzing what YouTube has to offer gives us a pretty good insight on how the knowledge ( headbanging teens and American idol wannabes ) is stored and structured. Here you can get to any information using a category tab, a great way to structure your information. Tags are another huge feature here which makes structuring and subsequently locating information a lot simpler.

Channels allow you to subscribe to your favourite information sources and receive a steady stream of information without searching for it. Finally and most importantly a Community section which gets people of similar interest together to discuss about information / interests that they have in common.

As with any self respecting KM tool the option to rate information is a must, YouTube accomplishes that with aplomb. Users are allowed to rate videos, post comments and so on enabling the “weeding” out of less desirable content.

Information like which are the most viewed videos, favourited videos and such add as a bonus to the information seeker as it gives him/ her the opportunity to feel the pulse ( so to speak ) of the community.

Statistics on how many videos were viewed /submitted by individual users can be pulled up very easily enabling ( further down the line ) a creation of an “expertise map”.

There you have it, while YouTube is not what one would call an ideal KM tool it addresses one of the most difficult issues KM practitioners face, getting people to share information. Filling the other functional gaps shouldn’t be too difficult. Now if only we can get our corporates to start shooting embarrassing videos of themselves.

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Over the past few posts we’ve talked about a variety of subjects, Strategies to implement KM , How to run communities of practice, the effect of blogs on KM and so on. The most common question however is not how to implement KM but when. I thought I’d put together a few thought on when you should start think of looking at a Knowledge Management initiative for your organization.

So when is your company ready to start a KM initiative? If any of the following statements are true then its probably time for just that.

• A number of people have already started exploring the benefits of implementing KM in your organization.
• Someone has a personal stake in developing KM.
• KM has emerged as a topic of interest in your organization.
• The organization has a high-level vision of pursuing and implementing KM.

Right, now you’ve figured out that its time to implement KM in your organization, but how do you go about doing it?

The only way an initiative like this is going to gain traction is if people see a clear benefit to what they are already trying to accomplish. The main aim of any Knowledge Management initiative should be to make a person’s job easier, not more difficult.

The first step is to de-mystify KM, do not use complicated terms and strategies to define what it is, rather use simple definitions and examples that provide a clear, tangible picture of what its all about.

The second step involved finding people who are really interested in pursuing KM activities. Launching an initiative amongst this group of people will most definitely ensure a much higher success rate. Recruiting well respected and influential people in your company is a very smart way to promote the value of the initiative to the rest of your organization.

The third step involved looking for opportunities to implement KM. Use groups you feel can benefit with an KM initiative. Target low hanging fruit, market any win you have with the initiative however small , as it can be used as a platform to promote other initiatives as well.

The last step involves creating a technology framework that can support the initiative. While KM is not just about technology it does form a large part of it, without the technology infrastructure it might be difficult to sustain many initiatives.

The biggest road block to any KM initiative is culture, ignoring it is the single biggest mistake many people commit while rolling out KM initiatives. Most importantly - Do NOT sell an enterprise level KM solution without the evidences to back up your initiatives.

While these are just some of the thoughts on how you get started, you will find dozens of smaller ways to improve on it once you get started. Remember, start small and work your way up.

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