Knowledge Management has failed. At least that’s a widely held perception. At a recent Butler Group briefing on collaboration strategy, speaker after speaker referred to KM’s failure. When challenged, they collectively decided that it was the implementation methods that had failed rather than the idea of KM itself. Their views were probably shaped by the fact that knowledge itself cannot actually be managed because it is between people’s ears. Only once it hits the outside world does it become that most manageable of entities, information.

Many software suppliers proudly boast of their KM capabilities when, in fact, they are really talking about the capture, encoding and retrieval of information. They help create an environment in which the application of knowledge can be maximised. By delivering the right information at the right time to the knowledge worker, that person is then able to apply their own know-how and intelligence to it in order to add value.

When KM was first mooted as a discipline, organisations thought that if they could capture knowledge in explicit form, then they would become less dependent on the possessors of that knowledge. KM appeared to offer a way to slash staff costs by retaining knowledge within the organisation as personnel were fired, resigned or retired. This was a Utopian dream. For a start, people can be neither forced nor bribed to give up their knowledge. And, even if they wanted to, they would find it next to impossible to articulate it properly. So much knowledge loses its meaning away from its original context. And skill or ‘know-how’ knowledge is impossible to write in a way that is helpful to others. Try writing instructions for riding a bicycle, for example.

Today, successful knowledge managers work intimately with HR and IT in order to create a knowledge-sharing culture and provide the underpinning technology tools to facilitate information access and employee collaboration. Where real knowledge work is concerned, a management which trusts its knowledge workers is going to get better results than one which insists on command and control. It is, after all, impossible to plan in advance for the full complexity of human interaction.

A stealthy approach to the introduction of KM is infinitely preferable to the announcement of any kind of change initiative. If possible, an enhancement to existing systems which makes people’s lives easier and more productive will create goodwill and be less threatening than wholesale change.

Knowledge versus Information

Dave Snowden is one of the world’s foremost thinkers on the subject of knowledge management. He was formerly a director in IBM’s Institute for Knowledge Management and now runs the Cynefin Centre which, in short, applies complexity theory to management science. He defined three widely-accepted heuristics for knowledge: "Knowledge can only be volunteered, it cannot be conscripted"; "We can always know more than we can tell, and we will always tell more than we can write down"; "We only know what we know when we need to know it."

The first means that we cannot force knowledge into the open. The second means that, even if we do, we will only get a fraction of what’s in the contributor’s mind. And the third means that what is brought to mind depends on the context and the stimulus. Different aspects of our knowledge on any given subject will surface at different times.

Other authorities will express different views and may complicate the issue by talking of tacit and explicit knowledge, or all manner of finer gradations, but the fact remains that it is either inside the head or outside. Once formally recorded, it is limited by the context in which it was provided and it is probably safest to view it as information and manage it accordingly.

This is not to demean information in any way. It actually represents a vital resource for all knowledge workers. It’s just that they internalise it, whether spoken by another person or delivered by an information management system (including blogs or the web, for example) and adjust their existing knowledge or create new knowledge as a result.

The secret of knowledge management is to create an environment in which this can happen and, most importantly, enable knowledge workers to add value to the goods and services provided by their organisation.

Creating a KM culture

All companies that want to maximise the application of knowledge possessed by their staff face the challenge of creating an appropriate culture. Michael Earl, professor of Information Management and Dean of Templeton College, Oxford, studied more than 40 companies and, from this, identified seven ‘schools’ of knowledge management. Writing in the Financial Times earlier this year (Tantalised by the promise of wisdom), he advocates that, "selecting the ‘school’ or initiative that fits the way managers and employees already behave is more likely to work that trying to change the culture around a knowledge management initiative.’

This theme is taken up by many others including Martin Butler, head of IT analyst company Butler Group. Talking about collaboration, which is central to successful knowledge management, he says "The less fuss made over collaboration, the more likely it is to work. Embed it into existing applications and tools."

Kevin Miles, Head of Knowledge Management at the Transport Research Laboratory, argues that Human Resources processes, "should be designed to create a complementary relationship between the needs of the employee for personal growth and development through sharing information and knowledge, and the needs of the organisation for its growth and development." This view evolved from observations made in Human Resource Management Journal (Vol 13 No 2) by Juani Swart and Nicholas Kinnie from the University of Bath. In the same article they also noted that, "the approaches to managing people and managing knowledge are mirror images of one another and share common assumptions."

In Miles’ case the knowledge management initiative is supported by the board, backed by HR and is being implemented throughout his organisation. He refers to the work of Liz Orna, an authority on organisational information policy. (Her first book, "Practical Information Policies", was published in 1990. Her latest book, "Making Knowledge Visible", will be published next spring.) Drawing from her work in the nineties, Miles cites three questions which have underpinned his work at TRL: "What does the organisation need to know to succeed in its aims?"; "What information does it need to support the knowledge?"; and, "How do people need to interact in using both knowledge and information?"

At TRL, the work has happened in two stages: a comprehensive overhaul of the information management system has greatly improved the effectiveness of the knowledge workers and has helped to create the culture in which a knowledge management initiative will thrive. He says, "The wonderful thing about ‘doing’ information management first is that even the interim staging posts deliver business and personal benefits in terms of accessing, using and re-using information." He adds, "Sadly, too many think this degree of IM is KM, and that it is the end of the journey. For me, IM is simply the foundation on which to build."

Notice that he barely mentions technology, despite it being a fundamental underpinning of the knowledge and information management programmes. Part of the reason that KM acquired a bad name is that it was too often driven by IT people offering a technical fix rather than people who understood the business requirements and the real nature of knowledge, its value and its management.

KM Implementation

The toughest part of implementing a KM programme is getting the culture right. If people see the value of sharing and receive benefits from it, then the battle is largely won. Miles insists that staff understand the corporate benefit and comply with information provision requirements, even if there is no immediate payoff for the individual. He also makes individual managers responsible for the information and knowledge management for their parts of the business. Professor Earl noted that many Chief Knowledge Officers "planned for a limited tenure", as the managers themselves took responsibility for knowledge. Miles does not agree with this attitude because, although he is devolving responsibility to the managers in the business, he says "Financial accounting is never finished, managing HR is never finished, managing facilities is never finished - they all have to continually adapt their output and the organisation to changing market conditions. Why should managing information and knowledge be any different?"

IT clearly has a role in supporting information management. Records management, enterprise content management systems, blogs and portals are examples of how information can be stored and delivered to those who need it. Miles believes strongly in delivering superb online content and search facilities. Snowden believes in providing as many electronic tools as possible and letting the knowledge workers select the subset that works best for them.

Examples include: Groove Networks products which enable people to work together in virtual offices, regardless of geography, connectivity or time zone; Skype - free internet telephony; Instant Messaging; broadband; and so on. The aim, always, is to maximise people’s connectedness because it is through connections that people form valuable informal networks. These could coalesce into communities of practice, in which specialists in any given area come together. An organisation would provide an environment in which these can happen but the networks form voluntarily.

Part of Snowden’s current work is to compress the time it takes for such valuable networks to form. Another part is to capture some of the knowledge of experts in the form of narrative which is recorded and tagged with keywords by the speaker. Quite frequently the stories will be negative - stories about things going wrong. He asserts that given the choice of digging out reference material or talking to an expert, we’d choose the expert every time. This narrative approach involves the expert once, for a few minutes, on any given topic and makes his or her wisdom available to anyone in the community who’s facing a related problem.

This devolution of responsibility to the communities themselves makes some company managers uneasy. Pressure from them to insert "probes" of various kinds needs to be resisted. Within communities, participants need to feel free to discuss whatever subjects they feel are appropriate without the fear that management is looking over their shoulders. They need to know that their emails, chat rooms, instant messaging etc are not being examined. Martin Butler cited an example of a CEO of a services company which extracted information from emails. He said, "Hundreds of angry users were being asked for input on projects in which they had absolutely no interest." Another example is the management which snooped through the blogs to see how their employees were thinking.

If you’re a manager, you might be thinking "what’s wrong with that?" The fact is that unless these knowledge workers feel they have autonomy, their natural enthusiasm for sharing and collaborating to achieve the best results will simply wither and die. At best, they will revert to the slower, less effective, analogue ways of doing things.

The pay-off

Organisations don’t want knowledge management. They want things like improved customer relations, better productivity, higher profits or reduced costs. KM and its associated activities exist to support whatever the organisation deems most important. This is why the responsibility for any initiative lies at board level.

Martin Butler claims that "two thirds of corporate value is created because people share." Mike Davis, also of Butler Group, claims that 42 percent of the information and knowledge within an organisation is tacit. Dave Snowden says that only 20 to 25 percent of knowledge can be written - that leaves 75 to 80 percent inside peoples’ heads. In February 2002 IDC claimed that "poorly managed knowledge costs the Fortune 500 about $12bn per annum", citing substandard performance, intellectual rework and lack of available KM resources as the contributory factors.

Whether provable or not, all these statistics point in one direction. Organisations that tackle knowledge management in an enlightened way stand to make gains out of all proportion to the cost of doing so.