How to implement a KM program is probably the most difficult topic. It is driven by the "why" and "what" discussed earlier, but also by your organization’s size, geographic footprint, culture, history, and level of sponsorship. First, lay the groundwork for an approach you will propose to stakeholders.  Some of the groundwork step below could be worked iteratively with the "what" steps discussed earlier. Next, Engage stakeholders with an approach for implementing KM that is thought through from start to finish (what does done look like?).  Once stakeholders are on board, execute the project as with any typical project (execution team, resources, schedule, communications, reporting, adjusting, and completing).  Each of the three key areas are identified below along with suggested steps for each:

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• Laying Groundwork

• Engaging Stakeholders 

• Executing 

 

Lay Groundwork: Laying the groundwork, or a foundation, is key to success with anything. Paint on your house doesn’t stick long unless you scrape, sand, and prime the wood first.  And any company-wide program or initiative won’t stick unless you have a good stable base on which to place it.  A stable base comes from a business case, strategy tied to business outcomes, realistic project plan, and general agreement by key stakeholders and budget holders. Groundwork can be laid by yourself with a few trusted advisors/sponsors.   

 

STEPS:

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1. Benchmark. Research what peer companies, your competitors, and your aspirational companies are doing for KM. Compile quantitative data on their programs to include their company name, revenues, employee headcount, KM program start date, number of heads in their KM program, organizational approach, degree of employee participation, and claimed financial benefits. If possible, gather qualitative information from them directly – what’s worked, what didn’t, why they organized as they did, and cultural aspects that helped or hindered progress. The American Productivity and Quality Center is a great place to start - they have significant history with KM and benchmark data as well as business contacts and in-house expertise. Include how other companies protect their proprietary information also (levels of value, security approaches, and employee training).
    

2. Develop a business case.  We inherently know that sharing and leveraging the company’s knowledge base will benefit business. But how much benefit? And will increased sharing raise the risk of unintentionally losing valuable proprietary information? Expect this risk to surface and be prepared to deal with it (Step 3 below). Characterize the benefits five different ways:
    

   • Quarterly Earnings Report Write Downs. Listen to several of the quarterly earnings calls by your CEO/CFO where write downs were announced. Note the sources of the reported losses. Run down the root causes and see which may be attributable to lack of KM: finding an expert sooner, repeating a lesson learned, using a best practice from another division that would have helped, loss of critical expertise. This information will usually be with the management team (head of engineering or operations or finance) of the business/division/program reporting the write down. Characterize the benefit of KM as avoiding just 25% of these quarterly losses and then annualize it. You may get a fairly large benefit.  
      

   • Income Statement and Share Price. Collect several compelling business success examples that have occurred previously – big reductions in cycle time fixing a problem or money saved by using someone else’s knowledge rather than reinvesting. Ideally use commonly occurring business situations. Discount the savings to just 10% of their value. Who would argue with that? Then look up company revenue spend on salaries in the last annual report, and your company’s five year LRBP revenue forecast. Scale five years of salary growth commensurate with forecasted revenue growth. Characterize KM value as avoiding 10% of that salary growth by having these success examples occur more often, in more places, systemically across the company. This will be a large number that would translate to the income statement. Then calculate the NPV for such an indefinite annual savings, and divide it by the number of outstanding shares to get an equivalent share price increase. This will also be large. Even assuming half or a quarter of these already discounted calculations should be ample justification for KM.
      

   • Image. This is intangible and may apply more to large corporations grown through M&A, or those with many disparate divisions. But any investor would expect such a company to manage its scattered knowledge, so should have a reasonable KM program. Use the table of companies with KM programs generated through benchmarking, and lay your company against them in the table. You’ll see what’s missing and can scale the average people, organization, and benefits to your company as a rough way to appropriately size your KM program.  
      

   • Employee Productivity. Professionals spend 15%-30% of their time looking for information (supporting citations can be found such as a McKinsey study on “How companies are benefiting from Web 2.0”).  Companies using internal “web 2.0” technologies (e.g., KM) report a 30% improvement in this percentage of time spent looking for information. That is, they see a savings of 4.5% to 9% of employee’s time looking for information. Applying this percentage to your company’s salary cost is a huge number, which if cut in half, is usually still a fine justification for KM investment. NPV can be calculated for this as well. Note how people learn how-to from youtube at home – similar benefits can be had at work.
      

   • Knowledge Replacement.  The business cost of losing an employee is estimated at 1 to 4 times their salary, depending on the nature of work. Look at attrition rates (steady and retirement waves) as well as planned work movements. Estimate the number of employees lost annually and apply a factor – I suggest 3 for professionals - and average salary to this number. This will be a very large number. Discount it by half, and it’s still a large number. Then argue that a deliberate KM program could improve the time to competency of replacement workers by 30% (support this with survey data and anecdotal evidence within your company). This is still a large number to justify a KM program.
      

These five methods will yield very different numbers, but all relate to KM benefits, all will be significantly larger than the cost of a KM team, and all can be supported by actual business examples. Therefore pick the average, or lower 25th percentile of these five values, and cut that in half again. It will still be a larger number than the cost of implementing a KM program in your company. This will help leadership support KM.

NOTE: Regarding ROI. A traditional return on investment percentage requires the total investment as the denominator. Total investment for collaboration includes many shared costs beyond KM, so cannot typically be reasonably estimated (e.g., e-mail is used for so many purposes, so it’s not practical to carve out the portion used for “KM”).  The exception may be a KM approach that is separate from the normal workflow of the company, which is not recommended here. If forced to estimate and ROI, it can be roughed out by making assumptions on the scope of the investment.

 

3. Understand your company’s information protection approach. Inevitably someone will point out that greater access to information by greater numbers of people means greater risk of losing it. You need a way to manage that risk. Research your company’s current approach for protecting proprietary information and the difference between what is required by law or contract, and what is elective based on perceived business risk. Later you’ll find a way to dovetail KM with this. But laying the groundwork requires a general understanding of your company’s intellectual property management approach. You’ll want to know if there will be “immune system reactions” by the organization to your proposal so that you formulate an antidote. Other than compliance with law or a contract, business is free to trade the benefits of knowledge sharing against the risk of inadvertent loss, or the wrong people seeing it (e.g., with export controlled information). Benchmarking can help, but you’ll want to understand your own company and have specific business examples of escapes and how KM would effect future escapes.

 

Engage Stakeholders: I have found it helpful to have an approach mostly thought out before engaging stakeholders or building a project team. This is because KM is very amorphous and there are many legitimate ways to approach it. However, if you think through your approach first, and anticipate your stakeholder’s desires and fears before engaging them, you can better gain their confidence and keep the conversation centered on your approach - the “why” for the business and the wishes of your primary sponsor. Certainly you should adjust the approach to fit stakeholder needs and garner support, but you also have to direct the conversation.   

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STEPS:

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1. Decide scope. Use the results of the “what” exercise discussed earlier (what capabilities are needed and why they are needed).  Decide on scope - which capabilities should be fielded company-wide, and which may be best implemented locally, and why. Most of the supporting infrastructure should be company-wide, or at least as wide as your full scope. Organize capabilities into planks or groupings that make sense.  Examples might be Foster a Culture of Knowledge Sharing (which could include a recognition capability), Facilitate Knowledge Sharing, Enable Knowledge Management, Leverage Lessons Learned, Rapid Knowledge Application (which could include a designated expertise capability), or Remove Roadblocks to Knowledge Sharing.  These planks or groupings serve as ways to succinctly communicate what you’re trying to accomplish.

 

2. Fashion an architectures. Consider a system architecture that shows how these capabilities, culture, and supporting infrastructure relate to each other.  The comprehensive thinking diagram on the KM page of this website is an example.  Ensure linkage to the “why” for doing KM like is shown on the left side.  Ensure linkage to result shown on the right side.

 

3. Know your stakeholders.  These as different than the sponsors who are guiding you. It may help to think of stakeholders in two flavors: 

“Implementers”, who should actively help you implement KM because they’ll readily see benefit in terms of furthering their own business goals.  Examples may include engineering, profit and loss programs, supplier management, manufacturing, and R&D.

“Gatekeepers”, from whom you will need cooperation, or permission, because they manage the knowledge sharing infrastructure or policies under which you’ll succeed or fail.  Examples may include the Law dept, Intellectual Property Management, Contracts, IT security, and HR.

 

These “implementer” and “gatekeeper” stakeholders are collectively responsible for business.  Identify the parts of their organizational RAAs that intersect with your KM approach. Some may be positive, like a new product development program that wants rapid access to engineering expertise across all programs in order to quickly solve problems using existing company know-how. Some may be negative, like an IT security organization tasked with preventing valuable know-how from spilling outside the company and therefore implements access controls that keep know-how hidden in silos. Think through how these intersections can be managed to move your project forward, considering the “why” and relevant portions of the groundwork mentioned above, particularly the part about understanding your company’s information protection approach.

 

4. Build a presentation. Pull together a “working presentation” that organizes the materials you have now (why, business case, what you want to do, system architecture for implementing it, stakeholders, and benchmark data). Note the elements of benchmarking that support what you want, especially if it’s from a company your company admires.  Include a proposed scope (relative to the company, suppliers, international or not), schedule (quarterly granularity), list of activities planned, resources needed (people and budget), project team, stakeholders (active/passive roles), key activities and heading checks, and how you’ll report progress.

 

5. Gain critical buy-in. Socialize your working presentation with the top 1-2 “implementer” stakeholders. Top meaning they have the most to gain, are influential, and operate across the scope of your proposed effort. Offer to share everything you have and solicit their feedback on how you’ve characterized the business benefit, approach, stakeholders, timeline, resources, etc. Explain you took a “green field” approach and now want their inputs regarding what is realistically achievable. Be prepared to drop 25% to 50% of your approach, depending how “green” your initial field was. It’s better to succeed with less and then grow, than to fail with something too grandiose and impractical. Seek advice on dealing with “gatekeeper” stakeholders. Seek their thoughts on approving the approach within the company.  You want them to see themselves in the approach, and begin to take ownership with you and your primary sponsor. 

 

6. Work general guy-in. Continue socializing with other implementer and gatekeeper stakeholders, adjusting the approach along the way as needed, but less so. Always keep the top 1-2 stakeholders from the prior step in the loop.  It’s OK not to cover all stakeholders, but you want enough influential organizations, and any “gatekeepers” that could put the kibosh on you for “compliance reasons” before going for official approval.

 

7. Gain company approval. Have your sponsors tee up the approach for company approval at the highest level they can achieve. Aim for a management meeting chaired by your sponsor’s boss, where your sponsor tees it up in front of his/her peers, has you do the presentation, and then asks the boss and peers to bless the approach.  Keep it a simple presentation of the basic concept. With your sponsor, his/her boss’ approval, and, ostensibly, the support from your sponsor’s peers, you can move the project forward using this high level organizational endorsement.

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Execute the Work: Executing the work is similar to executing work on any project. Some general steps are listed below with more treatment in areas that might be of greater interest with a KM project – often likely less defined than a project stemming from a customer statement of work or contract. These steps would overlap in some cases, as well as be iterative with the stakeholder engagement steps. The Project Management Institute is a great resource for additional information.   

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STEPS:

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1. Form a project team. Introduce the project to the team members that were identified while laying the groundwork. Use the leadership briefing you and your sponsor used to obtain company approval. Meeting minutes that document the approval would be helpful too.  Engage via in-person, phone, or email depending on the size of the company / team. Eventually document engagement via email, copying management. Explain a kick off meeting will be held to discuss the project, roles, and to solicit their input.  Refresh the “working presentation” used with stakeholder engagement (goals, approach, list of activities, schedule, stakeholders, etc.) and use it in a kick off meeting at the earliest opportunity following company approval.

 

2.  Refresh the plan. Update the kickoff materials with stakeholder feedback from the kick off meeting, and call this new version of the “working presentation” your project plan. Establish a presence in the company WebSphere for project information, and communicate all this to stakeholders and the project team.  

 

3. Execute the work. Depending on size of the company, use a steering team, or small group of key stakeholders, with your project team, to help set pace and assign activities to team members. Building a steering team using the “implementer” stakeholders is recommended, as well as a key “gatekeeper” stakeholder. You want the “gatekeeper” to actively participate, but not derail progress. You might use a RAM (responsibility allocation matrix) to help with capturing who does what. Seek early success stories in partnership with implementer stakeholders and recite these stories in communications. Develop the team members to be as autonomous as possible, especially those who may double as a representative within an arm of the company where your project needs traction. The manner in which work is executed varies from company to company based on size, culture, and where the project reports to leadership, so there are just some basic notions.

 

Note: As you move forward, include ways to address the known issues that surfaced while laying the groundwork. You can have a "risk list" of such issues and ways to mitigate them. For example HR may point out that the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (May 25th, 2018) restricts international data sharing to the point a US based Global company is precluded from accessing the expertise of its EU based employees. So, do a little research and find what can be shared and propose an IT filter, or pop ups, or employee training on what must not be shared, to  mitigate risk while still enabling business relevant access to expertise. It’s a matter balance of compliance risk against business reward and sometimes reasonable mitigation measures can be an acceptable way to move forward.

 

4. Establish a formal reporting mechanism. The need to provide periodic status to a top management forum can be a good way to influence stakeholders and move the project forward. What gets measured is often what gets done. Top management forums could be the leadership team you and your sponsor used initially to gain approval. Commit to semi-annual or annual status updates. However, ideally, plug your project into an on-going business reporting forum at the company.  This could be a corporate risk forum in which case your “why” for KM could be cast as a business execution risk to the company (for example, losing key knowledge needed to execute existing business and win new business). And your KM effort could be a risk mitigation for which progress must be reported just like any other risk (supply chain capacity/quality, workforce unionization, a competitor, network security, or new disruptive regulations). Work with your sponsor to cast your KM project as a mitigation to a business execution risk. Using examples, argue that it is as real as the business risks currently reviewed by company leadership.  Then link your KM approach, activities, and stakeholder commitments to mitigating this risk. This can make it real to the business and serve as a lever to get work done.

 

5. Communicate. Depending on the size of your company and scope of your project, you may have communications for several groups, each with its own focus. Here are some examples and things to focus on:

• Your sponsor – focus on big picture strategic progress and any roadblocks needing their intervention, but try to operate independently. Quarterly, but also event driven. Very brief and to the point.

• Stakeholders – general progress to all equally (implementers and gatekeepers) with an eye toward surfacing good stories that align to the company objectives driving the project. Keep it 3rd person if possible with neutral attribution for successes or challenges to connote a sense that we all sink or swim together.  Quarterly, but also event driven.

• Employees – progress and capabilities under development, positive stories, and resolution of feedback you may have received earlier. Usually employees have to embrace the work if the project to be useful to the company. Monthly if able.  

• Project team – activities, assignments, status, help needed, issues to work, weekly. 

In all cases, use positive news for broadly distributed communications, and save the criticism for private engagements. Always seek feedback at the end to create a sense of collaboration and to surface underlying objections early so they can be addressed.

 

6. Monitor. As with most projects, keep track of resources used, budget remaining, scope changes, goal changes, and stay tied closely with the sponsors and key implementer stakeholders. Validating the business objectives and scope annually is important because it’s easy to lose track of changing leadership objectives and find yourself without top level support anymore. Earned value and schedule performance indices are probably too granular a measure for KM projects.

 

7. Deliver results. Partner with the implementer stakeholders to agree on tangible results that tie to the business bottom line.  Activity based results may be ok in terms of establishing the project and supporting capabilities. But business results or outcomes in terms of critical knowledge capture/transfer, or cycle time reduction and problems solved through rapid access to knowledge is what you want. These move the business forward, and lead to overhead budget reductions, or improved business customer’s satisfaction, all of which hit the bottom line financials.

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