The "what" is driven by the “why” naturally, but also by the existing conditions in the company – culture, policies, existing collaboration infrastructure, and related efforts (complementary or conflicting). How KM is accomplished includes typical project management techniques, but also depends on company leadership supports and potential implementation partners.

 

What needs to be done is summarized here, and laid out in more detailed steps below.  First, take a systematic look at what’s desired, and the current conditions on the ground in your organization.  Sketch out the capabilities needed to accomplish KM objectives – the “why” of the comprehensive thinking model.  This should be a “green field” exercise, and should result in a list of desired capabilities.  This becomes your "what capabilities are needed" list.  

 

Then understand existing conditions in your organization that support (or conflict with) this list of capabilities.  You may find several organizations that already support such capabilities (or should, given their RAA), as well as infrastructure elements that could support KM capabilities.  You may also find organizations, company policies, infrastructure or security rules, or cultural biases that conflict with these capabilities.  List them all.  This is your what-we-have-to-work-with list.    

 

Looking at these two lists should reveal a gap between what you need and what you have.  Then figure out what’s needed to fill this gap – usually by augmenting or modifying existing organizational RAAs, policy, or infrastructure, or, by adding something new. (Take care here because you want these KM capabilities baked into standard work as much as possible, not something “extra” that employees will have to do).

 

STEPS:

 

1.  Brainstorm a list of capabilities needed to accomplish the “why.”  The list below is offered as a starter. Tailor it for your own needs, culture, terminology.  Keep the business objectives from your “why” in mind because ultimately all capabilities must trace back to business objectives. Don’t be limited in this initial brainstorm.  Just list all the capabilities you want. Think about what goes wrong in your business and what might fix it. For example, oftentimes it's the intersections between work flows where troubles occur (e.g., between engineering and manufacturing when manufacturability feedback doesn't reach the next engineering release). Think about capabilities that enhance cross-organizational knowledge sharing, and pierce the silos that sometimes divide a company and slow the pace of business. Include how you might measure effectiveness of the capability. Benchmarking is a good source of ideas as discussed in the opening steps of "how" on this website, and can be done iteratively with the "what" steps below.

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A) A “Facebook-like” internal capability for employees to display their contact information and expertise, as well as share questions and answers.  Fed from authoritative HR data systems, export compliant, with authentication and other security features (consider including supply chain).  

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Activity metrics:  Employee participation (include management), completeness of expertise.  

Results metrics:   Business successes.

 

B) A communities capability focused on improving networking, collaboration and employee development.  Some can be sanctioned by the company in key knowledge areas to encourage cross-divisional collaboration.  

 

Activity metrics: Employee participation (business areas, demographics), critical knowledge areas covered.  

Results metrics: Business successes, employee survey improvement in collaboration.

 

C) A mentoring capability, both informal as well as deliberate around at-risk knowledge areas.  

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Activity metrics: Knowledge areas, cross business and cross generational demographics.  

Results metrics:  Pre-post deliberate mentoring KSA testing.

 

D) A guide for leadership behaviors and enablers that drive a culture of KM.  

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Activity metrics: Existence of such a guide.  

Results metrics:  Employee survey around collaboration or KM

 

E) A capability that allows for rapid access to company designated expertise in knowledge areas needed most for business.  Identified and vetted in a company-wide consistent fashion (e.g., by each function like supplier mgmt. or finance or engineering), with authority to speak on behalf of the designating organization, in that knowledge area.  

Activity metrics: Participation by business areas, knowledge areas covered, quantities.  

Results metrics: Survey on utilization and effectiveness.

 

F) An authoritative journal central to your company’s business to capture key knowledge. Should be peer reviewed to gain authority, company-wide, and where possible, done with Jr. and Sr. co-authors for knowledge transfer.

 

Activity metrics: Pipeline of authors and topics, cross business, cross generational demographics, released papers.

Results metrics: Downloaded papers (usage), any business successes, and released papers where deliberate Jr./Sr. author pairing was done around an at-risk knowledge area.

 

G) An enterprise-wide search capability at the worker’s desktop to improving access to and ability to find the aforementioned expertise and knowledge across the company.  

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Activity metrics: Search utilization.

Results metrics:  Search satisfaction survey at point of use.

 

H) An awards and recognition capability that provides high level management recognition of desired KM behaviors that help the business. High level management being VP level or above. Nominations may serve as a source of KM success stories to use in communications also.

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Activity metrics: Participation, awards issue by leadership area.

Results metrics: Employee survey on collaboration.

 

I) A capability for company-wide sharing of employee generated videos for knowledge capture and sharing.  

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Activity metrics: Key knowledge areas covered, posts, views.

Results metrics: Employee survey on collaboration, business successes.

 

J) Company-wide library collections whereby service or support organizations can place commonly used informational resources needed for business, or can place generally static reference materials critical to business continuity.

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Activity metrics: Collections, alignment to critical business knowledge areas.

Results metrics:  Utilization, business successes.

 

K) Knowledge transfer workshop capability to help P&L business areas set up KM capabilities tailored to their organization.  Could be as an on-going practice, or in response to rapid staffing/de-staffing/relocation needs.

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Activity metrics: Utilization of the service.

Results metrics:  KT survey for those using the tracking capability.

 

L) A capability to manage and track knowledge transfer activities and associated metrics. Should reflect the company organization, track actions, completions, and produce metrics aligned to the business. 

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Activity metrics: Utilization, number of plans, alignment to at risk knowledge.

Results metrics:  Red/Yellow/Green plan status, completions, and survey results.

 

M) A centralized lessons learned capability that serves new and existing business areas. Ideally people based, combined with a repository, sliceable by business area, function, and other company recognized work domains. 

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Activity metrics: Utilization by contributors and access by potential users.

Results metrics:  Implementation business success stories.

 

N) A capability for capturing advice from Sr. Leaders, late in their careers, as they prepare to retire. Video and written should be supported.

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Activity metrics: Utilization.

Results metrics:  Feedback from users.

 

O) Company policy that clearly supports collaboration and knowledge sharing for the furtherance of business. It should balance against protecting information.  

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Activity metrics: Participation by requirement organizations in issuing policy.

Results metrics:  Reference in required training and other employee development actions that address similar policies.

 

P) A KM presence in the internal company web sphere that provides centralized access to all KM resources – as part of employee desktops or on a separate website.  This centralized resource may provide access to capabilities in parallel with the embedded access in the business, and may be connected as in a single source of data, regardless of whether accessed from distributed or centralized locations. (also a HOW)

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Activity metrics: Utilization, links to KM on Sr. Leader home pages.

Results metrics:  Employee survey.

 

Q) Guidelines for tying desirable KM behaviors to employee performance, typically in HR’s performance management criteria, or system.  (also a HOW)

 

Activity metrics: Establishment of criteria, incorporation of scoring.

Results metrics:  Improvement in average scores.

 

R) A capability for tying progress of your KM effort to your company’s business process – ideally something like corporate risk reporting or business performance reporting. Includes a tie to leaders embedded in the businesses and functions.  (also a HOW)

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Activity metrics: Submission of scorecards or reporting metrics.

Results metrics:  Improvement in score, reduction of risk.

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Note: take care in adding new capabilities vs. leveraging existing capabilities/organizations because KM capabilities should be baked into standard work as much as possible. This means leveraging existing capabilities/organizations may help. You don't want KM to be something “extra” employees have to do.

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2. Map each of the capabilities to the “why.”  A simple excel sheet will do. It doesn’t matter how many times a “why” is used for a capability. The point is merely to show a tie between a capability and “why” as a means of justification.

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3. Determine the existing conditions in your organization that support, or conflict with, this list of capabilities.  You may find similar capabilities already in place, and organizations that already support such capabilities (or should, given their RAA).  You may also find infrastructure elements that could support KM capabilities.  You may also find organizations, company policies, security rules, or cultural biases that conflict with your desired KM capabilities.  List them all.  This is your what-we-have-to-work-with list.

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4. Align your what-we-have-to-work-with list to the KM capabilities you desire from step 1. Decide what capabilities from step 1 are realistically achievable given existing conditions.  Consider your sponsors and your company culture and resources. Keep the capabilities that may be realistically achievable, and put the others on the back burner. You'll pare this list further to what is practically achievable in the "how" section when engaging stakeholders.

 

5. For each capability that is achievable from step 4, identify the enabling infrastructure or technology or policies you need for that capability. These enablers may come from partner organizations like IT or HR or Intellectual Property Management who might need to augment their services slightly, or adjust their policy slightly in order to support these capabilities. Examples of enablers could be SharePoint or other collaboration platforms, home grown collaboration platforms, and company-wide systems such as HR’s PeopleSoft or Workday systems. 

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6. Finally, for each capability, identify the roadblocks in your company that stand in the way of realizing each capability. Look at the roadblock from the worker’s level and from management’s incentives. Examples of roadblocks may include intellectual property marking and handling rules, IT security rules, access controls, cost policies, finance charging rules, a silo culture, or contract terms and conditions associated with customers or suppliers.  

 

With a list of capabilities from step 4, necessary enablers from step 5, and roadblocks from step 6, you a list of what you need to do for your KM program at least from a capability viewpoint. You'll want to broaden your working team, start engaging more stakeholders, and begin speaking with some authority on why and how you going to do KM.  This leads to “how" to implement KM.

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