The specific activities and priorities of a knowledge manager may vary depending on the size, industry, and unique needs of an organization. However, the primary objective of a knowledge manager is always to establish a suitable framework for gathering and organizing company knowledge, followed by its appropriate placement fr easy accessibility by others as well as taking relevant measures to drive awareness and adoption through various collaboration channels.

It is imperative to ensure that the knowledge is readily available to all stakeholders, thereby enhancing productivity and efficiency.

Here are some key focus areas for any knowledge manager to successfully establish and implement a KM framework that does not burn out in the long run but actually becomes a part of the organizational culture and day-to-day working of all the employees.

Leading an organization through a significant cultural change will be much easier if you’ve got a team of champions or SPOCs to drive awareness and adoption. That’s why one of the first things you should do as a knowledge manager is finding the employees in your organization who are equally on board with the idea of knowledge management and its perks and are ready to work with you to drive the KM change within their teams.

1. Creating a Knowledge Army

Ideally, you want a team of knowledge champions or SPOCs from different, teams, service lines, offerings, and regions.  Look for people who can influence others to prioritize knowledge management. Sure, technology is important, but it’s the right people who will create the culture change you need and build a knowledge-sharing and collaborative culture. So, focus on finding those rockstar team members and you’ll be well on your way to success!

2. Getting Top Leadership Buy-In and Support

Bringing the senior leadership on board is the first step as well as can prove to be the biggest challenge if your KM plan does not align with the strategic goals and business priorities and clearly highlights the tangible benefits, KM can offer to the organization.

You do not only require their buy-in but also support to drive KM adoption top-down by aligning it with organization culture, and employee growth roadmap. With their backing, the knowledge manager can focus on identifying and implementing strategies that yield immediate results. These quick wins serve as a catalyst for change and help build momentum toward a more comprehensive knowledge management system.

3. Keep Uour Focus on Cultural-level Change

It is a common challenge for workers to resist change, and this is especially true when it comes to knowledge management initiatives. This resistance is not due to a lack of understanding of the value of such initiatives, but rather because workers are already overwhelmed with their existing workload. Collaborating with stakeholders across the organization is essential for implementing a culture of knowledge management successfully. Sharing a vision and establishing a shared mission is crucial to this collaboration defining the value of knowledge management practices for each team. By doing so, workers will understand how knowledge management can ease their workload and provide opportunities for skill development, visibility, and career growth.

When workers understand the importance of supporting knowledge management, and leaders are committed to making it happen, the organization can make the necessary changes to the value system of knowledge workers. This shift in mindset can drive greater collaboration and ultimately lead to a more successful and efficient organization.

Today, clients want to "Capture" great ideas, and that is why Project Teams are called to ensure each Idea is tracked and showcased. In enabling Innovation Day as a KMer I have partnered with Six Sigma and other Agile Experts and created Systemic processes around 100's of ideas that were showcased during Innovation Day. The real challenge is if the client likes the idea and asks, "what is the Next Thing that is putting this into Action?"

An Idea Portal is a Centre Stage Tool that enables everyone to Collaborate and Share their Information. The rules are simple:

Step 1: Collect and Track Each Idea.
Step 2: Estimate the Costs and Benefits of Each Idea.
Step 3: Measure the Implementation of Each Idea.
Step 4: Calculate the Added Value of Each Idea.
Step 5: Determine the Innovation Rate Across the Organization

The ideal situation is to ensure the Knowledge Base has a Tracking
tool that everyone uses. It rarely happens as Team Leaders, Project Managers, Project Lead and their teams are busy with many actions during their work week. So, for achieving Step-1 we used a Visual Board and made sure through a Daily Huddle everyone Shared their learnings.

During the Sharing, it was the responsibility of the Scrum Master to evaluate the Novelty of the Lessons Learned and guide the team to engage in a Discussion, aligning some of those Learnings translate into possibilities for Improved processes aligned to Better Ways of Working.  So, the Top Improvement Areas are aligned to the Visual Dashboard and have Process Owners assigned who could take Ownership for the Insight.

As the daily huddle continues, these Process Owners are taught through Coaching with their Team Leads, to align the Idea to one area of Client Delivery Themes that could be automated; improved through lean / six sigma or better new process defined that called for rationale investment. Here is where Creative KM helps...

During the client visits, the Team Leads presented the best Improvements to the Client Sponsor, and it is their responsibility to Select those who can truly be taken for a Nomination to the Portfolio Client Leaders.

On Innovation Day the Best Awarded Ideas are represented with a clear Action Plan and Ownership assigned from both sides for a Proof of Concept and then measured for Business Value. Some of these translate into newly automated processes that save X amount of time, some save cost and other quality.

It is important for these rewarded Ideas to go back into the Knowledge Base and be looked at as Best Practices and those SMEs who aided in the creation - evaluation - presentation / defense and implementation be seen as one Expert Team.

Now we can see how an Idea Portal that starts as a tracking mechanism becomes a Collaborative Portal where both Clients and Service Providers aid in Innovation Management. It involves elevating existing ways of working and investing in celebrating Sharing of Insights into Innovative Ideas. The ultimate goal is to ensure the Expert Network is elevating Individual Learning into Team Experts, who are available to Coach others and Knowledge Build for ensuring the Organizational is winning through some of these becoming Client IPs and patents. 

It is important that such 'in-time Idea' Portals lead to Measuring Continuous Improvements and hence Organizational KPIs around Innovation are important as below.

• Number of new ideas proposed
• Proportion of ideas selected for implementation
• Revenue generated from new ideas
• Percentage of sales from new products
• Customer satisfaction with new products
• Speed to market
• Lessons learned

Source:  https://ideadrop.co/innovation-management/how-to-measure-innovation/

So, have you implemented your Idea Portal and are measuring the ROI around Business Strategy? 

In-Summary

Innovation Management is not new to Knowledge Management Professionals. It is how we enable our teams and support them through planning the Innovation Day or other forums that truly gets Community to come forward and Ideate.

It is important that we drive Engagement through participation where everyone feels they are being rewarded and a Visual Dashboard is a great start.  It is important that through practices like a Daily Huddle we engage Experts like a Scrum Master and continue to Capture Ideas in an idea Portal. The highest contribution is enabling those sharing these Ideas to apply their minds as Process Owners and defend their Solutioning Mindset; and for this we need Team Leads trained in Six Sigma, Lean etc to align their random theories to Structured Thinking that are seen as Measured ways of Implementing an idea.

Our role today as Knowledge Management Professionals is to be an artist. We are called to all be Consultants and engage in many Creative KM Practices that can create a KM Culture enabling Expert Networks that drive Innovation.  Through numerous KM Events and the Champion Networks we aid in sustaining these Creative workspaces and doing lot more leading to impacting Organizational Standards It is important that CXOs see KM as a game-changer and invest in truly creation of a KM Culture that supports Continuous Improvements aligned to Innovation Management.

As a knowledge manager, I often struggle to convey the importance of my role to those outside of the KM community. For most, you can be a content writer or a technical writer, but if you explain that you manage all this knowledge and make it accessible to everyone in the organization, they draw blank.

So here is a simple definition to explain what it is and its purpose in the organization. Hope it helps when next time you have to explain how critical is your role for your organization.

Our role is to ensure that valuable information is not only captured but also made accessible to everyone within the company with the right metadata and tagging to ensure that the right knowledge is delivered when looking for specific topics. This means that we are responsible for creating systems and processes that allow for seamless knowledge sharing and collaboration.

By collecting and organizing data, we can ensure that everyone has access to the knowledge they need to make informed decisions and drive innovation.

But that's not all - knowledge management also involves collaboration and the creation of new ideas. By working together, we can generate fresh insights and push the boundaries of what's possible for the growth of employees and the organization as a whole.

In today's fast-paced business world, having access to the right information at the right time can mean the difference between success and failure. That's why knowledge management is critical to any organization's success.

So the next time someone asks you what you do as a knowledge manager, don't be afraid to share this exciting and important role with them. After all, knowledge is power, and we are the gatekeepers of that power! So KM is much more than storing and sharing knowledge and it's all about managing possibilities to help your employees grow, learn, share and innovate and deliver the best outcomes to clients and customers.
 

Given how competitive contemporary markets are, your organization cannot afford to overlook the importance of gathering insights directly from customers. Knowledge management plays a crucial role in facilitating the collection and utilization of customer feedback. As a specialist in the field, you are central to your company’s efforts to harness the power of insights in ways that drive innovation and boost customer engagement.

While knowledge management is widely recognized for its ability to enhance internal operations and knowledge sharing, its potential as a tool to broaden the scope of customer feedback is often overlooked. By leveraging knowledge management systems and practices, you can empower your company to actively engage with a wider audience and expand the channels through which they receive feedback.

Achieving and Utilizing Seamless Customer Journeys

As a knowledge management professional, you understand that one of the most important uses of consumer insights is creating meaningful customer journeys. Nevertheless, it’s also vital to recognize that a great experience can provide important insights. By effectively utilizing knowledge management practices, you can create a more mutually beneficial consumer journey that helps you tap into authentic feedback from a broader audience.

Some effective approaches to this include:

Tailor your strategy

Design a feedback collection strategy that aligns with your knowledge management goals. Identify the most important touchpoints related to these goals where customers interact with your organization throughout their journey. Wherever possible, incorporate feedback mechanisms into these areas, like satisfaction surveys, feedback forms, and user comments to capture their experiences. By collecting more targeted feedback, you can refine your knowledge management processes to improve consumer journeys.

Foster active collaboration

Gaining truly authentic customer journey insights should involve making consumers active participants in the process. Invite a broader range of consumers to get involved in product testing. Even having customers film their reactions when unboxing a product can be impactful. In essence, you’re getting immediate and unfiltered feedback that you wouldn’t necessarily gain from surveys. By nurturing these knowledge-sharing collaborations, you create a valuable feedback loop that enhances the customer experience and improves the range and efficacy of your organization's knowledge assets.

Leaning into Web Accessibility

Part of the knowledge management specialist’s role is ensuring the information-gathering process is as effective as possible. This is also crucial for making certain you can gain data from the broadest audience. Among the most powerful ways to enable this is to boost the accessibility of your business’ online resources.

Some impactful ways of utilizing web accessibility for gaining knowledge include:

Designing for accessibility

It’s not enough to simply tack superficial accessibility traits on top of your existing website. You need to direct your company’s web designers to create your online knowledge platforms with inclusivity at their core. Begin with steps that meet the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) web accessibility compliance guidelines. Optimize navigation for use with keyboards as well as a mouse. Provide alternative text for images and captions for videos. Make sure these efforts extend to the methods customers can provide feedback online.

Providing accessibility training

While your role as a knowledge management specialist means you drive company-wide efforts, you’re also reliant on other professionals to implement your initiatives. It is, therefore, vital to ensure that all relevant staff receive comprehensive web accessibility training. This helps to ensure workers have a practical understanding of the basic principles of online inclusivity and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). As a result, you can be certain that everyone involved with creating knowledge assets and influencing consumer engagement prioritizes reaching the widest possible audience.

Leveraging Knowledge Management Tech

The rise of the digital landscape has been great for knowledge management specialists. You have the opportunity to leverage technological tools that expand your ability to gather feedback from a broader audience. It’s worth taking the time to understand what platforms specifically geared toward and powered by knowledge management you can adopt into your strategies.

Some of the tools you can use to reach broader audiences include:

Interactive feedback widgets

Feedback widgets have become more practical knowledge management tools over the last decade or so. These specialized tools allow users to provide feedback on individual website components or content sections, so they can rate the helpfulness of the asset and suggest improvements. By incorporating these widgets effectively, you encourage users to actively engage with your knowledge resources and provide specific feedback. As this tends to be a more user-friendly and convenient approach to feedback, you may find it garners a broader range of respondents.

Sentiment analysis and text mining tools

Sometimes the issue is not that you haven’t received a broad range of feedback, but that you don’t have tools to fully analyze the widest possible insights from the data you’ve gained. Sentiment analysis and text mining tools employ natural language processing (NLP) algorithms to extract meaningful insights from qualitative feedback assets, such as customer comments or even support tickets and assess them efficiently. Indeed, the text mining elements can categorize feedback based on topics, keywords, or themes, allowing you to gain deeper insights from large volumes of customer responses.

Conclusion

Knowledge management is a powerful tool for businesses to gather and utilize customer feedback effectively, driving innovation and improving decision-making. By tailoring feedback collection strategies and fostering active collaboration with customers, your company can gain a wider range of relevant insights. It’s also vital to prioritize web accessibility and leveraging knowledge management technology to connect meaningfully with diverse audiences. This creates a positive cycle of engagement and improvement, enabling your business to refine its knowledge management processes, enhance customer journeys, and gain valuable insights for the continuous enhancement of products and services.

As you develop your knowledge management strategies, it’s worth also thinking beyond direct insights from customers. Establish channels and tools to maximize the potential of customer service staff. By fostering an environment where employees are encouraged to provide suggestions and insights based on their interactions with consumers, you can tap into additional sources of knowledge, further broadening your feedback channels.

As a project manager, you’re in charge of a lot of people and a lot of data. You’ve got to ensure that everyone on your team can gather the information they need as quickly as possible. It can be a complex task that used to be easier when everyone was in the office. The employees could walk over to an associate to ask questions and get a quick response. However, since the COVID-19 pandemic, many project teams are now working remotely from home, so the idea of sharing information has become more of a challenge than it was in the past.

The solution is to implement knowledge management techniques and make a database of information your team can use and contribute to from wherever they’re currently operating. Let’s look at how knowledge management can improve your remote team.

Knowledge Management And Remote Work

Knowledge management allows anyone in your team to collect, organize, and share any information they need about anything, from HR policies to product roadmaps to holiday calendars, with very little fuss. This information can be stored anywhere, from a server at corporate to the cloud. Basically, it’s where anyone can get to it quickly.

When you think about it, a knowledge management information database is perfect for a remote project team because they can still work to their full potential without sitting in the physical office. On top of that, when the information they need is at their fingertips, your employees can get what they need without stopping their current tasks to seek out the information. Studies show that it can take 25 minutes to get back on task after a distraction, which can be devastating when you’re on a tight deadline. After all, it’s easy enough to get distracted by noise and family when working from home as it is.

Many remote employees, especially those who work as part of a project management team, may try to work varied schedules, which could be early in the morning or sometimes at night. Online knowledge management allows team members to access the information they require whenever needed, which provides maximum flexibility. Employees can often be more creative when they work on their own schedule. So, this tech can allow them to reach their full potential for the good of the team.

Why Knowledge Management Is Ideal for Remote Teams

A good knowledge management system is excellent for any company, including those in brick-and-mortar stores. However, these types of databases are ideal for remote teams because it helps to meditate on some of the challenges of this type of work environment.

In addition to the lack of face-to-face contact with co-workers, working remotely has other surprising health risks, including those that have to do with mental well-being. A common side effect of working from home is an increased risk of burnout, which can occur when employees are unable to properly manage stress at work.

One potential cause of workplace stress is if an employee needs information that they cannot find. If this occurs continuously, and the employee is not able to receive the help they need from managers or co-workers, burnout symptoms can ensue. You can avoid this potential issue by building a knowledge management database that is easily accessible to employees and promoting its use.

The other great benefit is that knowledge management creates an even playing field where everyone on the team has the same access, and they don’t feel left out. Sometimes, team members may believe that asking for information they should already have can look like incompetence. The ability to drop in and easily find the necessary information can prevent that scenario.

Getting Started With Knowledge Management

Now that you’ve started a database, it’s time to get the employees in on the act so they can provide their own valuable information. Ask your associates to document key experiences and compile materials that will help other project team members and add them to the database. Since this task is so essential, instead of just making a request, make it a part of the employee’s job description so they understand the importance of what they’re doing.

With the knowledge management database created, the project manager should remind their teams of its existence when an employee asks for a particular piece of information. If they don’t use the database often, it can be easily forgotten and defeat the purpose.

Since the ability to find data quickly is so important, it’s wise to ensure that each member has a strong Wi-Fi connection and access to quality internet. If possible, consider using 5G Ultra Wideband or something similar. A strong connection will allow employees to web-conference and easily use tools like Office 365 to compile their information so they can share it with the team. As a remote team, fast internet, with no lost connections is key for delivering quality work and saving their sanity.

In summary, it’s ideal for every project management team to have a knowledge database that can be accessed immediately, especially if they work remotely. Consider the perks and tips provided here and give your team the power to manage their work seamlessly from the comfort of their homes.