For any initiative to succeed and be accepted across an organization it requires some level of leadership buy-in, Knowledge Management is no different.

There are certain things that leaders can do to promote the sharing of knowledge in the organization.

• Tie your initiatives to your vision:
• Create and publish an integrated mission, vision, and values statement that endorses and sustains learning and transfer. It’s very important to showcase success stories at each executive meeting. Unless there is a clear indication of progress the executive backing for an initiative like this will quickly die out.
• There has to be an emphasis on re-enforcing management commitment to identifying new ideas and removing barriers to progress.
• This has to be built on top of a robust rewards and recognition program, and most importantly, make sure you have the right people working on this.
• The management as a rule is always looked up to for direction, and its the same with knowledge management, lead by example and show commitment to learning through action. Tell employee groups that the most important thing is to share and use best practices.

Once this has been accomplished start rolling out these initiatives across the rest of the organization.

Aggressive Marketing, Rewards and Recognition programs are but the first steps to spreading awareness on KM. However if are in the business of Knowledge Management for the long haul, culture changes need to be made as executive backing can only take you so far.

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The Story doing the rounds on the web right now is the fact that MySpace knocked off 90,000 registered sex offenders recently.

North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper spearheaded an initiative along with the Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal to make social networking websites safer for young people.

These numbers do not come as a surprise to a lot of people given large volumes of predators out there. Social networking sites like MySpace have becoming a stomping ground for predators as it connects them with a much larger base of people.

These Websites have started taking a very active interest in protecting their members and this latest crackdown in a result of this.

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In the last month or so the number of hits on this blog has increased tremendously ( thanks in part to an steadily increasing rank on Technorati ( Favourite it! )). I have also witnessed an increase in the number of people subscribing to the feeds on this blog.

For those of you who have just stumbled onto GridLock…. What do we discuss here?

Knowledge Management :

“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 road map and a plan.”

Technology :

“A large percentage of my posts so far have touched upon technology in the KM sphere. Now, while a portion of you practicing KM out there might feel that technology has no place in KM i still feel that in this day and age creating a robust technology platform that can support a KM initiative is one of the most important milestones you can set for your company.”

Tech News :

“With the recent partnership of Microsoft and Facebook, Google has decided to speed up its plans to deploy a new social network that it hopes will be a one-stop-shop for software developers thereby making it easier to share video’s, music and so on.The reason for this frenzy is the development of “widgets” for sites like face book, that has propelled its reach to a much larger audience.”

Social Networking

“MySpace - A household name that’s recognized by almost anyone who has spent a little time on the internet. Founded in August 2003 by the then publicly traded company eUniverse .

Currently boasting over 200 million user accounts its one of the largest( and most influential ) social networking sites on the internet.”

You can go through the complete set of articles by Category or date in my articles section.

If you do like what you read here do spread the word…. and Thank you!!

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Choosing the RIGHT Technology for KM

“This is a question that a lot of you might have battled with at some point in time and if i’m not mistaken continue to do so. Before we get into the “meat” of this post let me sum it up for you , there is NO right technology for KM.

While we all agree KM is more of a cultural initiative, there is no doubting that without a solid technology backbone chances are you’re heading down a dark road.

I’ve reviewed a large number of applications that claim to provide the perfect KM solution, and guess what? they don’t. No surprise there for those of you who’ve spent time trying to find an application that suites your needs. Please feel free to disagree with me, and if you’ve stumbled upon that “Perfect” KM tool do leave a comment. I’m sure the rest of my readers would love to get their hands on that information, as would I.”

Rewards OR Recognition

“One of the biggest challenges in Knowledge Management these days is getting people involved in the process. Unlike other initiatives which use a mix of the carrot and stick approach, KM can only be promoted using the carrot.

Now the challenge is, what motivates the average users to contribute towards the system? Is it the rewards or the recognition? From what i’ve seen its a balance between both.”

Is the Term KM misleading?

“The term “Knowledge Management” can be misleading at times. When i first got into this field a couple of years ago i was a little wary of what i was supposed to accomplish. The very idea of Managing Knowledge was something i just couldn’t wrap my head around.

Today, after having practiced KM in the real world and studied it, i’ve come to understand that true KM is more environment management than actual managing of knowledge.”

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“Money makes the world go round” - a saying most of us are familiar with. Financial wellness is a key driving force behind our professional lives. So it goes without saying most people feel that monetary benefits at work are one of the strongest motivators to increased performance ( note : i said “one of ” ).

Knowledge Management has always been something that is culture driven, if your people see the benefit of sharing knowledge they will. Now, whether this mean financial benefit or something else is a question for another day.

From what I’ve seen first hand, the easiest way to get a bunch of people to start sharing knowledge is through a contest platform. The energy levels are much higher as there is a serious level of competition. It also brings a level of pride with achieving results, not to mention the recognition from superiors and peers.

While these results are short lived they are vital to creating an atmosphere of awareness around your Knowledge Management initiatives.

This form of motivation is useful when there is a clear business benefit to it. Otherwise you are sinking money into a initiative that has no tangible benefits.

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As with most of my thoughts this one started after a conversation i had with a colleague.

A number of us are so caught up in meeting deadlines, creating drivers that ensure our existing KM initiatives don’t fall flat. We don’t stop to think “Why KM?”, atleast thats what i’ve found after talking to a number of people. Sure there were indicators that lead to the decision of implementing KM, however no clear cut goals were established right at the beginning.

I see this trend continuing with companies that have started to adopt KM within their ranks. They often seem uncertain of benefits that KM can bring to the table, while they may know the answer to the “What” they don’t know the “How”.

In today’s world, with attrition levels being where they are there are often instances where initiatives lose direction and focus after key personnel leave the organization. For the true success of any KM initiative the agenda and focus should be independent of any single person. The vision should be at an organization level for it to have any chance of long term success.

So while i had a quiet moment i asked myself the question once again. Why do we need KM? We seem to be working just fine without it. Sure we aren’t as efficient as we’d like to be, but still. What has caused this sudden rush for the implementation of KM? I will leave this open ended to allow you the reader to help me answer this question.

For those of your reading this, do leave a comment as to why you think KM is important?

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It is a widely known fact that a large number of organizations do very little towards implementing a comprehensive idea management solution. Though a lot of them do follow the “email your suggestions” approach, very few stop to consider the detrimental impact of an approach like this. Listed below are a few points on the benefits and disadvantages of using a email based Idea Management Solution.

Benefits:

Wide audience : Since everyone in the company is listed on a central mail server, getting the message across is the simplest thing in the world.

Ease of use: E-mail is used on a daily basis by everyone, so using it as a platform to send and recieve ideas would be a straightforward exercise requiring very little effort.

Low cost : Almost every organization has their email systems already set-up, so the added advantage of rolling out a “zero-cost” initiative to most is too juicy an opportunity to pass up.

Drawbacks:

Unstructured : Since most emails can be sent in any format, creating a template doesnt do very much good as a lot of people will just bypass it ( as there isn’t a system in place to enforce these rules ).

Disorganized : Most ideas end up becoming large chain mails in the organization and the actual idea gets lost in the jumble of text. Tracking and Feedback : Its is extremely difficult to implement a tracking system to check the progress of an idea if it is in the form of an email. With hundreds of ideas being submitted , its impossible to organize them efficiently and thereby provide feedback to the submitters.

Evaluating : The biggest challenge of using a email based system to evaluate ideas is that evaluators aren’t given a platform that can help them rate and comment on the ideas they recieve and retrieve them in an orderly or structured fashion.

Unfortunately, while the points made above do have merit, the overal negative impact of an email based system far outweigh the benefits. A dedicated standalone system is required to manage ideas, provide feedback and rankings and most importantly allow collaboration amongst your employees. The fastest way to cripple an initiative like this would be establishing a system that could not provide feedback to an employee on the ideas he’s submitted, allow him to take a look at other ideas, and most importantly establishing a ranking methodology where he/she is rewarded for the ideas.

More on Idea Management Systems to follow…….

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Why is Knowledge sharing so different in the corporate world?

“Users spend over a hundred hours every month on collaborative sites like Wikipedia. While it seems cruel to call this Knowledge “Management”, it does describe the very foundation of KM. Get people to share their knowledge.

More importantly, this cultural phenomenon has shown long term sustainability of such initiatives without traditional drivers like Rewards and Recognition. ( Read Here ). Which addresses the basic question this post raises : Why is Knowledge Sharing so different in the corporate world? For a lot of you the answer might seem obvious, but with the trend of KM adoption in corporates rising there is a serious need to understand what can be done about this.”

Rewards OR Recognition?

“One of the biggest challenges in Knowledge Management these days is getting people involved in the process. Unlike other initiatives which use a mix of the carrot and stick approach, KM can only be promoted using the carrot.

Now the challenge is, what motivates the average users to contribute towards the system? Is it the rewards or the recognition? From what i’ve seen its a balance between both.

However, for the long term sustainability of any KM initiative there has to a be focused move from a rewards based system to one of recognition. For one, its cheaper , second and more importantly, studies done in corporates have shown that the single largest motivator amongst employees is recognition by their peers and superiors.”

Metrics and Knowledge Management

“For the longest time ( well, since a couple of weeks ago ) , i’ve been trying to come to grips with how Knowledge Management in theory differs so much from actual practice in corporates.

My previous posts on corporate KM and ROI on KM are an indication of my thoughts on this subject. As those of you who practice KM in the corporate world know, the success of any initiative is determined by its ROI.

The problem of addressing ROI is one which we face on a daily basis. The question they all ask “How do you determine , in numbers , the effect of a KM program?”.”

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