If you are embarking on a Knowledge Management journey then it is important to set it up for success from the beginning. Here are my 7 key components for a successful Knowledge Management strategy. 

Vision / Scope / Strategic principles

Defining the organisation's vision for Knowledge Management is an essential first step. Make sure it is linked to the organisation's strategy and helps tell the story of where it wants to head with Knowledge Management. A clear scope and boundaries regarding what is in/out of the KM Strategy are also vital. It's also essential to agree on KM Strategic principles or guidelines that the KM program team and stakeholders will adhere to from the outset. 

• Where - Vision helps set the KM destination,
• What - Scope determines what will be achieved. 
• How - Principles are the rules to follow to get there successfully.

For a successful strategy, you will need to define the current state, the ideal future state (based on the vision) and the tasks involved to get to that future state for the six components below.

Content

Content will likely be the most time-consuming component and critical to the success of any KM strategy. You'll often hear "Content is King" in many Knowledge Management industry forums, and from what i have seen on all my KM deployments, I agree - Content is indeed King. 

Content will need to be Identified, Analysed, and Prioritised. Editorial standards will need to be defined and agreed. Taxonomy approach defined. Then comes the task of creating and curating content in a way that works for the frontline users and customers and managing it successfully on an ongoing basis.

People 

It's crucial to identify all the critical stakeholders in a successful KM strategy and be clear about the roles and responsibilities of each and how they influence the overall strategy. Here are some examples: -

• Customers and Customer-Facing users
• Senior Stakeholders and Decision Makers
• Knowledge Champions
• KM Manager and Team
• Knowledge Architect
• Approvers (Legal, Compliance, Regulators, Product owners, Process owners etc.)
• Key content collaborators and SMEs
• External Vendors
• Technology teams (IT, Digital, Developers, UX designers)
• Relevant business stakeholders (HR, Training, Back office, Finance etc.)

It's also essential to map the current organisational structure for these stakeholders and highlight opportunities to improve in line with the broader KM strategy

Technology

Knowledge Management initiatives are often seen as IT or Technology implementations, which they are not. Technology is an enabler for the other components of KM to be successful. Technology can be a headache, so it is essential to take a step back and define requirements as to what it is you want from technology to help you achieve your vision. Assess your organisation's existing technology against your needs to highlight any opportunities. For example, what already exists in the organisation to support the end users accessing knowledge? What exists to support the curation, creation, and lifecycle management of knowledge?

Engage your relevant technical stakeholders in this process to ensure buy-in to the strategy and ensure the KM strategy aligns with the internal IT strategy.

If necessary, engage with the relevant vendors (existing and new) to talk through your requirements and see what they can offer.

Its always useful to attend industry events and participate in Knowledge Management forums to keep up to date. 

Process

Analyse existing processes to identify what's working well and what needs improvement. When going through this process, it is often easier to build KM practices into existing processes rather than creating new methods from scratch. Some process examples could be: -

• How is the end-to-end content lifecycle managed? 
• Where does content originate? 
• How is it captured? 
• How is it reviewed and validated? 
• How does it get published to the end user?
• Is there an end-user feedback loop?
• How are end users trained on using knowledge?
• How are users notified of knowledge updates?
• How is knowledge circulated and shared?
• What is the continuous improvement process to review, improve or remove content?
• What are the ongoing Engagement and adoption activities?
• How is the KM team trained and coached in their roles?  
• How do you onboard new starters (identified in the people section) on the KM culture?

Governance

Governance is needed to ensure that the KM strategy is on track and delivered as planned. For example, there could be a steering committee of various stakeholders to make critical decisions (in line with the strategic principles) to ensure the strategy is delivering value. Ongoing Senior stakeholder engagement and buy-in are crucial to the continuing success of KM, and the overall Governance structure must make sure this happens.

Consider creating a KM centre of excellence within the organisation, focussed on sharing best practice and keeping up to date with the latest KM industry trends around Content, Technology and Business process.

Metrics and Benefits

Metrics and benefits often get overlooked, but very important to keep on track against the broader KM Strategy and show the value it is delivering. Define the key metrics for your KM implementation and how you can measure against them. This may combine initial benefits against a business case and ongoing BAU KM metrics.

Culture 

Culture is far less tangible than the other KM Strategy components. However, it is vital to assess the existing Culture within an organisation. For example, are people motivated to share knowledge and participate in knowledge exchange sessions? Do people feel like they can freely challenge and give feedback on knowledge? Is there a problem with knowledge hoarding amongst more experienced employees? Ultimately you want the organisation to move to an open knowledge-sharing and knowledge-management evangelist culture. 

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A comprehensive knowledge management system can unlock new levels in your business. If you’re unfamiliar with knowledge management, it’s a system that helps you collect, store, organize, and share knowledge and information across your company.

That information includes human resources (HR) data. Collecting information about your employees and their lifecycle within your company can do wonders for maximizing productivity and engagement.

The way you create work schedules, in particular, can be much more effective with the help of a knowledge management platform.

Why Knowledge Management Is Critical for Creating Schedules

Flexible work schedules are growing in popularity. In fact, “when people have the chance to work flexibly, 87 percent of them take it,” according to Mckinsey & Company.

But it’s much more complex to create flexible schedules than most realize, especially if the information you have about your employees is bare or inaccurate. A knowledge management platform helps you collect and organize the data you need to create flexible schedules more efficiently.

For example, long commutes can be harmful to an employee’s health. The unpredictability of commuting can be incredibly stressful and anxiety-provoking, resulting in unhealthy behaviors like grabbing fast food for breakfast to beat traffic or negative self-talk all the way to work.

You can document how long each employee’s commute is with knowledge management. And then, use this information to determine which employees should work from home or which can come in a little later to avoid long, stressful commutes.

Or, let’s say a few of your employees do their best work in the morning while others do their best work late at night. Making notes about this in your knowledge management system enables you to create schedules accommodating both types of employees.

With access to the most relevant employee information, you can make better-informed decisions about work schedules and inspire optimal productivity.

Data to Collect to Design Work Schedules for Optimal Productivity

To design work schedules for maximum productivity, you must use the information in your knowledge management system properly.

But first, it’s essential to collect accurate data about your employees that will help you understand each of their unique needs, strengths, and preferences. Start with the data below.

When your employees do their best work

Employees love flexible schedules because they can design them to fit according to their preferences and their lifestyle. Instead of forcing your employees to adhere to a schedule that doesn’t inspire their best work, you can design one that does. 

For example, let’s say one of your employees has insomnia and catches up on sleep during the day. Expecting them to come to work at 7 am with their best foot forward isn’t realistic. They’ll likely experience brain fog that disrupts their concentration, focus, and ability to perform.

If you ask them when they do their best work and their preferred hours, you’ll find out that they prefer to work at night and can do their best work then. Armed with that information, you can design a schedule that helps them avoid brain fog and produce high-quality work.

So, ask each employee their preferred work hours and when they think they do their best work and record it in your knowledge management platform.

Family obligations and outside responsibilities

Even though a good work-life balance has been proven to inspire engagement, enthusiasm, and dedication in one’s job, many employers neglect to ensure their employees can take advantage of it.

Optimal productivity is on the other side of ensuring your employees have a full life outside of work. Designing a schedule that accommodates this need is integral. You can do this by collecting information about your employee’s family obligations and outside responsibilities.

Makes notes about the following for each employee and consider them when creating schedules:

●      If an employee is married

●      If they go to school or have a second job

●      If they’re caring for a sick or disabled loved one

●      What are their outside interests and passions are

●      Whether an employee is pregnant or has children

You can collect this information in a variety of ways, but if your main focus is convenience, you can gather this information through knowledge management software.

Work duties

As much as you may want to offer your employees flexible scheduling options, it may not be possible after considering their position, accompanying responsibilities, and company needs.

Collect and continuously update information about each employee’s role and responsibilities in your knowledge management system. Also, make notes about organizational needs and what you need from an employee schedule-wise to accommodate them. The more information you collect, the more comprehensive you can be in your optimal working conditions plan.

How To Bring it All Together

How can you use the data above to design the best work schedules for your employees? Well, first, review everything that you’ve learned about your employees. Lay it out so that you can see how each person’s preferred schedule could potentially work together.

After that, start plugging in hours on your scheduling software. Make sure that all the hours you need to be covered are covered. Account for the tasks and responsibilities that need to be done that week as well.

Get a second pair of eyes on the schedule to ensure everything looks good. You could even run it by your employees to get their feedback. Then, finalize the schedule when you’re comfortable.

It’s also essential to ensure everyone understands the ground rules of their flexible schedules. For example, are they expected to come into the office on specific days? Do they need to be available during specific hours? How are they to record their hours? What’s the plan to ensure they’re getting their tasks done to the highest quality?

Lastly, if you can’t accommodate someone’s preferred schedule, sit down with them, explain why, and work with them to develop a suitable alternative.

Conclusion

Work schedules have an undeniable impact on how well your employees perform. A knowledge management platform can help you design flexible work schedules that fit each employee and capitalize on their strengths. Collect the data above in your knowledge management solution and bring it all together to design work schedules that prompt maximum productivity.

Knowledge Management practices can be highly improved through supporting work culture advance minority communities.

Have you been in a team meeting where the leader expects everyone to come on time and has rolled out the agenda before the meeting to ensure he is understood? We all want to be heard. As the meeting starts the leader sets up his slides and begins the session pointing at each slide in the line of sight with his joystick hoping that he has the viewers’ attention. Its break time and during this time he connects with a few individuals seeking feedback about the session and connecting it to their day as they smell the coffee. As the session begins there are breakout rooms and slowly it is time for activities. This is when the audience really gets a taste of what they have grasped as there is one person who clearly comes out a leader. Soon it's time for the day to end and the leader asks the team 'So what did you like?' and rolls out the feedback forms with the hope that his knowledge truly connected and touched a chord that wants the audience to say 'I learned more than I expected.'
So, was the training truly effective?

Knowledge Management is a touchy topic - some want it to progress because they want to be heard and recognized, and others want it in-sight so their teams can create & share valuable information that can be traced. However, when teams see individuals walk out the door and get a feel (touch) of their own culture of not creating a safe workplace where knowledge can be shared freely, is where the real problem lies. We need to ensure that we serve KM according to the taste of our customers, partners, teams, and most important have a taste for it ourselves when building an inclusive culture.

Everyone is talking about workplace diversity and it is important for driving business. However, few understand the right techniques.  Let me explore below:

1. know-what (accessibility v/s inclusive design): Persons with disabilities are experts in adapting to their surroundings. Ever imagine the HR orientation and introducing a person with visual impairment to his surroundings? Most of the time we provide accessibility by giving a larger system or software. Truly however, we are called to apply instructive design principles, then we can ensure we 'solve for one and extend to many'. Recognizing exclusion is more important than accepting inclusion, and recognizing our own biases helps us seek out new ideas to truly create a diverse workplace.

2. know-when (inclusive best practices within KM teams): Many times we know that inclusive workplaces are the key to ensuring we bring these diverse ideas to the workplace. We want teams to start engaging in creative thinking and engage to create new work practices. However, we fail to integrate these best practices into designing our workplace policies and in-time training practices remain the same. It is important we recognize that having diversity in the KM team can also encourage sustenance, as quite often these individuals themselves would evolve as leaders and recognize the need.

3. know-how (it all starts with inclusion hires doing KM): There are so many levers we use to ensure our users are adopting KM practices; knowledge is flowing through the organization, and is helpful to those who need it at the right time and the right place. However, can we guarantee it is helping the right person all the time? Organizations that invest in diversity work practices like having team leads with hearing impairment, pair up with interpreter's and conduct technical courses to the larger team help them develop empathy. This ensures we are open to learning from people with a broad range of perspectives that help us create products designed for the larger user community, including people with hearing, visual, and other kinds of impairment.

4. know-why: Once KM impacts innovation and is acknowledged and sustained, it becomes a lever for business change. Leaders start measuring it and investing in sharing a narrative of how it has impacted business. However, culture is contrary to inclusion as it involves changing mindsets, having those tough conversations with leaders who do not want to practice hiring persons with disabilities, coaching team members who truly bring diverse viewpoints and growing them as leaders. It is important we identify leaders who can be a part of the boardroom and have these conversations to truly ensure we are advancing our community as a diverse workforce.

5. care-why: Having built a truly inclusive knowledge management ecosystem as leaders, we want to define the right metrics and measure the business value. Many times this extends to our customers, and we need to solicit truly how our workplace practices impacted through KM is making their products, culture and practices incrementally improve.

In-Summary: If we ‘care-why’ to create long term value for our clients but do not recognize that inclusion starts with seeking out new ideas to truly create a diverse workplace, we are missing true business value. We need to align our workplace and recognize through the right KM practices that we can advance our workforce to develop empathy, ideas, and build products that are aligned to inclusive design. In time the incremental value we create for our customers alike would help us gain market share of a larger community that would improve our own work practice culture.

In today’s world, many of us cannot get away from digital devices. We rely on computers for work, mobile phones for social connection, and all kinds of other screens for entertainment and relaxation. For workers immersed in this digital environment, the threat of digital overload is all too real.

Digital overload is an unpleasant and unproductive experience that business leaders should strive to overcome. Fortunately, knowledge management plays a unique role in mitigating factors that lead to overload. To better protect your workforce, a strong knowledge management system is one of your greatest assets.

However, using knowledge management to protect employees from digital overload first requires understanding. Learn how to recognize digital overload, then apply knowledge management in the following ways.

What is Digital Overload?

Let’s start with a clearer definition of digital overload. This is closely related to information overload; however, digital overload is a bit more on the nose considering modern working conditions. When too much information crowds a person, they tend to enter into a state of limited functionality—even a sort of paralysis—in which it becomes difficult to make winning business decisions. Some refer to this state as “infoxication.”

With digital overload, this state is caused by the number of messages, notifications, channels, tabs, devices, monitors, instruments, and whatever other digital tech you happen to work with. Information overload has become increasingly digital due to the convenience and efficiency of digital workflows. These are information systems and management dashboards designed for productivity and oversight and resultantly come with a lot of notifications.

That’s where knowledge management can help. These systems can make information complete, organizable, and searchable across an organization. From there managing digital overload can be as simple as setting filters and customizing dashboards.

The Role of Knowledge Management in Preventing Overload

Knowledge management tools play a significant role in preventing digital overload. That’s because with these knowledge bases come a safe place for employees to turn to when they feel most overwhelmed.

Primarily, the role of these systems in protecting employee health and well-being is to provide resources and information in an organized and coherent fashion, best fitted to the user. In this case, users are employees seeking out solutions to a cluttered digital landscape. The right management tools make it easy to find these solutions.

Routing Resources

First and foremost, a knowledge management system functions to connect employees to resources. This can mean training, reference guides, templates, and much more. In the modern era of comprehensive management platforms, workers are even managing workflows entirely within these systems. This allows for convenient routing to schedules complete with necessary breaks.

A knowledge system can even link employees to resources that help them mitigate symptoms of digital overload such as computer fatigue. Paired with tech advancements like artificial intelligence, these platforms can recommend strategies like stepping away from the computer and going for a walk for employees struggling with overload.

Organizing Info

Additionally, knowledge management systems lend themselves to the kind of digital organization that can improve the employee experience. After an interruption in—perhaps out of a need to seek out additional information—workers require time to get back on task. Well-organized information makes that easy.

That’s because this information comes with all kinds of benefits that combat digital overload. These benefits include:

• Increased worker productivity
• Reduced stress levels
• Enhanced efficiency

Workers struggling to catch up with an overwhelming digital environment need a knowledge management system organized to fit their needs. Fortunately, many of these tools offer customizability and flexibility across devices and networks that can accommodate your business model.

Tips for Using Knowledge to Protect Employees

However, finding and utilizing the right knowledge management platform to suit your digital workflow isn’t always simple. For success, you’ll have to define the specific needs of your employees as well as assess their digital workflow for risks and usability challenges.

As you explore the uses of knowledge management systems in protecting employees’ digital health, consider the following tips:

Prioritize user experience. UX is the basis of a quality knowledge system. In this case, the users are employees. Their ability to navigate a system will make or break its effectiveness.

Provide employee education and resources. A great knowledge management platform is relatively self-explanatory. Still, employees need the resources to learn and utilize them well to avoid being overwhelmed by another digital tool.

Invite feedback in an inclusive environment. Build your knowledge management approach with employees’ digital overload concerns directly in mind by engaging them in the choice and implementation of these tools. This requires an inclusive working environment in which workers feel heard.

Knowledge management can be your most important tool in combating the mental fatigue that comes with too much technology. As workforces rely more on remote employees tied to these systems, it's in everyone’s best interest to choose and manage the right knowledge systems. Use these tips to aid in the process.

Supporting Employee Success

Knowledge management, by nature of its role in employee success, is a crucial part of protecting employees from digital overload. This brain power-sapping condition hamstrings workforces. Fortunately, having the resources you need where you need them is an important aspect of knowledge management that can cut down your time shifting through digital systems.

Find what you need in a complete and helpful picture with the right approach to knowledge management.

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"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages." - William Shakespeare

Ever wondered who the actors of a PLAY are when you are deploying a successful KM strategy? If you thought that it is only the Leaders who are the producers and who own the budget, then think again!

Today, there are the three categories we can put these ACTORS into:

1) Decision Makers : These are the stakeholders who are accountable and own the change at an enterprise , department, or team level. For example, the Leadership Team and their regional or geographic teams if KM is distributed model.

2) Influencers : These are key experts whose span of influence ensures the KM strategy is aligned to the culture of the firm. They are consulted with and at times responsible for coaching / mentoring the team implementing the change. For example, the HR collaborating with the Users who are early adopters of KM.

3) Implementers : These are the key to executing the change and are custodians of driving the outcomes and always ensuring that they advance those unclear on their KM needs to become believers. For example, the Champions working with the core KM team AND in-turn KM tram working with IT teams.

Past studies would tell you that Knowledge Management is an organizational need and yet it is inherent that most organizations discount how their KM strategy is aligned to the business strategy. One reason that comes to mind is how do we combine the culture + systemic design + user needs and equate it to designing KM systems around our business outcomes.

"The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions."
- Leonardo da Vinci

In the beginning of this article, we bucketed our actors into three categories. If you look at the above graphic, what does it call-out? We can further group the characteristics into the below. It tells you that before you build a KM system what becomes vital is to ensure you have agreed on a set-rule based policy of advancing KM within your organization; that encourages only certain behaviours that ensure knowledge is created - shared - used and harvested. It tells you that we also need to ensure we imbibe practices that encourage us to move from our Fixed Mindset to truly contributing to advancing information that is actionable and helpful to those in need of it, which is Knowledge.

Behaviours

• We ensure at an individual level we are clear on the user's unmet needs and ensure our KM team and Champions are working together to even challenge their own 'Fixed Mindset'. We need to provide them with the right budget approvals, empowerment to be decision makers in this journey as entrepreneurs and ensure they are rewarded for the softer aspects that lead to creation & sharing of intellectual capital.
• As leaders, we combine our own ‘Believer's Mindset’ and ensure through sharing of our own failures of adopting KM we encourage exploratory learning within our teams. We define how we want Knowledge Management to truly differentiate us.
• Ensure our teams have a 'Founders mindset' (social construct is not missing) to coach their teams and top-down we ensure workplace collaboration rather than advancing secret mission evangelists who are stand-alone heroes.

Practices

• It is important that workplace policies are aligned, and the HR manage knowledge gain-loss throughout the employee life cycle, including ensuring every event includes knowledge sharing to begin, which slowly encourages other leaders to come forward and avoid high-performance distance within their teams.
• Core KM team has a mix of diversity for ensuring there is no brokerage mindset within the champions and other influencers who are driving KM based on only how they are rewarded.

Knowledge

• Our systems need to be designed around epistemology of practice ensuring the IT team is not only considering the 'New Ways of Working' but ensuring that the right touchpoints are catered to codify the knowledge as it flows through the organization.
• Ensure ICT is at the core so we can ensure that everyone in the organization experience contributes to building an intuitive driven performance management system that advances how knowledge is truly an intangible asset that is a key differentiator.

In summary, we need to ensure we go beyond and ensure all our metrics are based around measuring employee engagement and employee effectiveness where the employee is not necessarily only the end-user consuming the knowledge.

So, let us all sign the petition to ensure we are clear on the critical KM touch points and partner with HR / and others based on the role they are playing for increasing adoption.