thoughtglue

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In case you don’t subscribe to actKM, here’s some great thoughts posted there in recent days by Cory Banks. He gave them to a non-KM person as his top 10 tips for KM strategy in an organisation. I think they’re incredibly useful generally for KM and any activity that’s likely to require cultural and organisational change.

1. Manage the Change - Undertake any of these activities from a change management perspective, even IT related ones. Don’t just manage the change around the initiatives.
2. People before Technology - Spend money on travel and socialising before technology.
3. Behavioural Change - People have to be open to supporting new/different practices. They need to adapt to change. They need to see the value to them/others.
4. Organisational Culture - Depending on what the corporate and people culture is like will depend on whether KM efforts will survive. Examples could be that reward structures are personally focused and support a competitive environment so people may not be inclined to share.
5. Strategic Alignment - Activities need to support the direction and priorities of the organisation. This also assists in getting things approved/endorsed.
6. KM in the wild - Find out where knowledge creation and sharing is already happening in the organisation and study it. Learn why it has been successful (don’t just copy it) to help design other activities.
7. Technology is an enabler - Design the process/system and then look for technologies that enable this, e.g. Don’t install a wiki and then look for what you can use it for. Work out what you want to do and then see what tools are suitable to support it.
8. Adopt KM Principles - Don’t introduce separate KM processes. Modify your business processes to adopt KM principles.
9. Don’t stop at the first solution - Consider different options, methods, frameworks and see what works. Experiment.
10. Motivation - It’s not necessarily about reward and recognition. You need to find out how to motivate people to play the game.

Do you think there are any more? What do you think of Cory’s ideas?