. . . and an essential driver of Business Transformation!

I had the great opportunity to sit down with two CxOs from a European police organization a couple of weeks ago. The topic for discussion was to share experiences and discuss the common challenges and opportunities, that the business transformation of moving into a Mobile-first, Cloud-first world creates.

This was a 2.5-hour discussion, in a casual setting, with no slideware. My favourite kind of meeting, as there is no technology to hide behind or slides that create unnecessary barriers, for a free-flowing conversation and open dialogue.

So what can a Professional Services organization have in common with a police force, you may ask? Quite a lot actually, as it turned out. I am sharing some of the topics and questions we discussed below, as it builds upon a previous blog post, by adding more perspective and detail to those initial high-level points.

We had agreed on the following talking points beforehand:

• Business Transformation to a Mobile-first, Cloud-first world
• Project Management, processes & methodologies
• Change Management, progress tracking and success metrics

The world is transforming rapidly & we need to transform with it! As touched upon in my last blog, most companies and corporations are facing an environment and market pressures, where productivity gains and cost reduction (hard savings/gains) by streamlining the organization, no longer does the trick. We need to find other ways to improve productivity and maintain/grow margins and actively driving Knowledge Management (‘KM’) is one area, where many organisations (unknowingly?) are sitting on large unrealized potential gains.

The rate at which the business is currently changing, means we need to shorten Time To Decision and Time To Execution/Release, substantially. The traditional waterfall-approach no longer scales and the search for the holy grail that is perfection, is starting to undermine ROI and consume margins faster and faster. So we need to work smarter as working faster isn’t a realistic option in most cases.

Here are some things to consider, when trying to help your work-force work smarter:

1. Agile methodologies There are great advantages in running agile projects but there are also challenges as with any approach as one size never fits all.

• Simplicity and flexibility – as you run short development sprints, test, release and adjust, you can better incorporate user experiences from an early stage. It allows you to start simple and add complexity as needs arise and business requirements are identified.
• Incremental documentation – not necessarily less documentation, which many think is the case, but it is different from the traditional approach where documentation is created up front. There is a risk that development starts going in circles, unless requirements and decisions, including business reason for making them, are well documented and structured.
• Better user experience and easier adoption – assuming that users are involved from early on, as it enables you to ‘start small’ (or keep it simple) and add functionality as needed rather than design the entire solution before test/release.

2. Project Structures   Not only how a project is structured and scoped is essential but so is how it is governed. For larger project initiatives it may be much better to break projects up in smaller chunks and coordinate through a Program Office or PMO. Orientation should be by business owner/area and aligned with all up company strategy. This puts additional pressure on governance and best practice is to have each Business (process) Owner/Business Decision Maker represented in a formal Steering Group, with the objective to make business-based decisions and prioritisations between projects as applicable.

This applies to waterfall, as well as agile projects but the traditional multi-year waterfall projects should be avoided, as the changes in the business environment/market are so many and so fast, that in most cases running 2-3 year long projects doesn’t work. Neither do monolithic-style SW implementations, where development goes on for years before anything is actually released to the end users by the way…

3. Business & Solution Requirements  Teams need to be able to quickly and effectively connect, and easily collaborate on documentation and other content, to keep up the pace. By re-using knowledge and content, quality can also be maintained/improved, in spite of the faster pace, and avoid endless review cycles and revisions. 

Another area which is absolutely critical is to capture and manage business requirements, as most users are becoming much smarter, hence pickier, by the week. At the same time documentation of requirements need to be balanced with the shorter lifecycles and shorter Time To Release, so the traditional 120 pages long Vision Scope, may not be ideal, although a high-level scope and shared vision is critical.

Technology is transforming even faster – “I can’t keep up….!”  But it is not only the speed of change that is adding pressures on our organisations. It is also the growing complexity of the environments and eco-systems we operate in (I will intentionally exclude financial- and market pressures for sake of simplicity and focus on topic). Everyone can no longer be an expert in everything, so we need better ways to connect people and information, as to leverage the experts in our organisations wherever they may be located.

You may think this is where the sales pitch comes, pushing Office 365 and SharePoint Online for effective collaboration? But it is not. I am focusing this piece solely on the people and process dimensions of KM as a vehicle for Business Transformation; not the Tools aspect. Implementing a KM solution, is our own experience 80% about People and Process and a mere 20% about Technology/Tools.

Shifting your organization to a true Knowledge organization, is a cultural change effort – not an IT project, or even a process implementation. It’s a cultural shift which requires every single individual in the organization to adopt some new mind-sets and leave some old behaviours behind. Here are a few:

1. Knowledge is no longer power – knowledge is a commodity and information hoarding no longer puts anyone at an advantage. Collaboration and knowledge sharing however, does.

2. Perfect is the enemy of good  - A common mind-set is that any document or artefact (solution) has to be absolutely perfect, before it is put in front of the intended audience/end user. Wrong! Users bandwidth is shrinking as fast as our bandwidth and most would rather get something fast that is continuously improved, than get nothing for 6 months. The more people who can review and provide structured input, throughout the process, the better the outcome and quality of end product but it is key to organise all input well as to avoid chaos

3. User centric approach - This is an absolute must in a day and age where, at least in the US, the Millennial portion of the population has now exceeded the Baby Boomers. The requirements on speed and ease of accessibility across any device or platform, is therefore becoming more and more critical, as user behaviours start shifting towards Mobility and Cloud as primary choices.

It is hard managing this type of intangible changes – like mind-sets and principles – that a cultural shift requires. And it is even harder to track progress and measure business impact as data is correlative, as opposed to causal, at best. Hence the need for many of us, as well as our Business Decision Makers, to start acknowledging and accepting that perhaps not everything can be tracked by hard numbers?

Thoughts? Comments? Questions? Your comments are as always very welcome!

PLEASE NOTE: The views and opinions expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

First generation KM, nicknamed the tool era, was crawling with technology solutions.  Many years later we are still looking hard at technology and we seem to be heading towards a new generation nicknamed the Sharepoint era.

It seems clear that the future is likely to involve more technology, not less. The temptation therefore is to engage more with it and, in terms of KM, we are now presented with an array of tools which have taken up center stage in the development of the strategy. Careful consideration is now given to the social component which was missing from 1st generation KM. Developing KM meant spending money on intranets which finally ended up being used as information repositories. Today that drab outfit has been replaced by social platforms which actively engage users and are looking to become authentic knowledge creation and transfer stations.

What cannot be overlooked, however, is that technology is not the core solution. KM effectiveness won´t be measured for the quality of the platform; it will be measured by how much it has impacted in the organization´s results. You need to design the KM strategy, carried to the point of identifying and developing the organization´s critical and strategic knowledge. This goal requires creativity, deals with complex issues and requires coordination among many functions in the organization. Also, avoiding culture carries some severe penalties.

Once we have connected the dots and developed the strategy we can start to look at technology. What has changed from 1st generation Knowledge Management is that “social” technology has being integrated into the fabric of people and we didn’t have this before.  Workspace collaboration is changing as we speak and we can´t turn a blind eye to Gen Y and Millennials social behavior.

So if you’re looking to start your KM journey don’t get carried away and start off with technology. Yes we live in new and exciting times, but technology is powerless unless you have a clear strategy. Don’t get hooked to the “Sharepoint Era”.

Knowledge Management is becoming more important as organizations continue to grow and face numerous challenges. As Wiig stated, “Competitiveness in the new world is directly dependent not only on the value and sophistication of the knowledge assets but also on how well they are renewed and utilized to conduct competent work” (Wiig 1999). Recently, the board of directors of the African Development Bank Group (ADBG) approved their Knowledge Management strategy, declaring that “knowledge and innovation have emerged as crucial features of development strategies in many parts of the world”.

Knowledge management does not only allow organizations to become smarter and in turn generate higher levels of competency, but it also reduces the cost of losing critical knowledge when talent walks out the door. According to Zenworkplace.com, companies can spend as much as $250,000 per 12 employees that leave the company. The costs are associated with training, lowered productivity, recruitment, but above all things, replacing critical knowledge. “It’s not just about putting numbers in a spreadsheet, writing code, or selling a product. It’s about knowing the people, the traditions, the location of relevant information, what the boss likes and a million other things that come from working for a company for a long period of time. All that goes away when someone quits.” (Lucas, S. 2014).

(credits:  dilbert.com) 

The key element in knowledge management is critical knowledge. This knowledge is derived from analyzing a series of elements related to the organization´s strategy such as its value preposition, market segments, new product development, balanced scorecard and any other relevant information which the organization applies in order to steer forward it´s strategy. This statement is also supported by Wharton management professor Martin Ihrig: “When you look at knowledge management [historically], there was a tendency to try to capture all the knowledge in an organization. First of all, this is not possible. It’s really hard to capture all the tacit experience and put it into a computer system. But even if it were possible, you’d suffer cognitive overload because it’s just too much. So what we propose is [to] really focus on the knowledge assets that are critical for success and underpin performance. Those critical knowledge assets should be mapped so that the management can decide how to further develop [them] to create growth and competitive advantage”

From the above we can declare that knowledge management deals with the identification and development of critical knowledge. This entails nurturing a knowledge driven culture as people are at the center of the strategy.  Although technology is becoming more relevant in terms of connectivy, co-creation and collaboration (also known as the three C´s thrusting forward the new generation of knowledge management), we need to bear in mind that technology is not the core solution. As I mentioned in a recent post (Knowledge Management and the Sharepoint Era),  Knowledge management effectiveness won´t be measured for the quality of the platform; it will be measured by how much it has impacted in the organization´s results. You need to design the strategy, carried to the point of identifying and developing the organization´s critical and strategic knowledge. This goal requires creativity, deals with complex issues and requires coordination among many functions in the organization.

© Jose Carlos Tenorio Favero

    Guest Blog by Zach Wahl of Enterprise Knowledge LLC

If you’re like many, at this time of year, you’re tossing the last of the fruit cake, sweeping the pine needles, and shelving the holiday decorations for  Of course, it’s also that time of year to begin making resolutions for the year to come.  At Enterprise Knowledge, we’re proud to have helped many organizations achieve their Knowledge and Information Management (KIM) project goals over the last year.  As your organization is making its own New Year’s resolutions for the year to come, keep these common New Year’s Resolutions and KM success stories in mind.

• Meet Someone New – As KM concepts have matured, we’ve gone from simply capturing, managing, and sharing knowledge and have added the additional facet of human expertise and interaction into the equation.  Well-designed knowledge and information management systems allow people to quickly and intuitively share and find the information they need; they can also allow people to discover and connect with experts.  For instance, in 2014 for a global manufacturing firm we designed a knowledge base that housed a range of content as well as profiles of identified experts within the organization.  Users of the system are able to employ faceted navigation to find both the content as well experts within the organization based on topics, types, regions, and functional area.  Moreover, users are able to “traverse” content in order to find the owners/creators of the content they found the most valuable.  As a result, connections are being made and this global organization is making better use of their collective expertise around the world.

• Get Organized – At EK, one of our areas of focus is taxonomy design.  Taxonomy design is all about organizing and categorizing information in order that it is easier to find and manage.  In 2014 alone we helped over two dozen organizations through our Taxonomy Design Workshops and proven methodology.  A well-designed and well-implemented taxonomy will help organizations better use and reuse their information, and will also help users discover information they didn’t know existed that will be able to benefit them and save time.  As a result, organizations and their users are more efficient, more successful, and more connected.

• Lose Weight – As KIM technologies have proliferated, it is unfortunately common, especially in larger organizations, for multiple overlapping systems and technologies to weigh down the organization with administrative burden, license costs, and confused or distracted end users.  SharePoint is a common example in many organizations, where lack of system and content governance has resulted in runaway sites that duplicate effort and compete for users.  We also see completely separate systems that effectively do the same thing competing within a single enterprise.  For instance, in 2014, EK worked with a large Federal agency to conduct an enterprise analysis of their content and document management processes and technologies.  We found that different parts of the organization were running eight distinct but similar document management technologies.  We developed the business case to justify the consolidation of design, content, processes, and technology into a single system.  The return on investment (ROI) for this effort is in the millions of dollars.

• Learn Something New – Any successful KIM initiative will help you and your end users learn something new.  We’ve already established the myriad ways KIM projects and systems can support the improved findability, use, and reuse of information, the sharing and capture of knowledge, and the identification and connection to experts.  In our experience though, the journey itself is part of the learning process.  Well-run KIM initiatives will not only yield the desired end product, they will yield an improved understanding of the organization as a whole, and a view towards additional ways the organization can improve their knowledge and information management practices and standards.  Our discovery and design workshop methodologies are all about helping organizations better understand their processes, their people, and their technologies.

• Clear the Clutter – One of the common challenges many organizations face within their knowledge systems is information bloat.  When we perform content reviews and analyses on existing information systems, we find a mass of information that is out-of-date, inaccurate, duplicate, or just plain useless.  For instance, for one recent services organization we were asked to help them clean up and migrate their content from their legacy systems to the new system we’d helped them design.  We leveraged both manual and semi-automated means of analyzing the content.  Of the roughly 650,000 documents held within their legacy systems, we found that 20% was duplicative, 20% was outdated, and 30% hadn’t been accessed by anyone over the last two years.  We focused on migrating the remaining 200,000 or so documents and ensuring they were properly tagged and managed over the long-term.  This “cleansing” alone vastly improved user satisfaction and trust within the system.  It also vastly improved the overall findability of the information within the system.

Whatever your organization’s New Year’s resolutions might be, we wish you the best in the year to come.  And, of course, if you need a little help achieving those resolutions, we look forward to hearing from you.