CARLA SAPSFORD NEWMAN
CAPTURING CRITICAL KNOWLEDGE
IN ORGANISATIONS
KM Survival Skills for Practitioners
FAILURE IS GOOD…
…to learn from
•Failure is just as important to discuss and share as success.
Yet it is often the one area that companies wish to avoid.
•Culturally, failure is seen as negative. If your company really
wishes to be a learning organisation, it needs to embrace
failure as much as success.
•Failure doesn’t always have to be written down, but it does
have to be acknowledged and communicated in a culturally
relevant way.
•If focus on serious KM falls down or goes away, it is often AS
IF IT NEVER EXISTED. Leave a legacy that lasts.
KM SURVIVAL SKILLS:
The Basics
1. Assign value to KM
2. Find champions and create
committed stakeholders
3. Undertake a knowledge audit
– you MUST prioritise
knowledge
4. Paint a negative future – the
more dire the better
5. Develop and evangelise a
long-term sustainable plan
SURVIVAL SKILL #1:
Assigning Real Value to KM
• You have to learn how to speak the language of your
management – numbers, value, profits, ROI
• What is the cost of knowledge loss – use a consistent and
relevant set of metrics
• What is the price of hiring in new talent/knowledge
• Calculating time to autonomy and assigning value
• Calculating what doesn’t happen – accidents etc.
SURVIVAL SKILL #2:
Creating Internal Stakeholders
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It’s like a survival movie: you can’t go it alone
Capture the critical knowledge of key people
who can be crusaders for the cause
Enlist the help of HR and IT good eggs who
can help you create the tools and incentives to
institutionalise KM
Spend one day a week generating ‘new
business’ or demand for KM
Spend at least 10% of your time generating
your own lessons learnt
Find people you respect to bounce ideas off of
Train up your successor(s)/partners
Use KM to help plan for major transitions (and
in times of economic crisis, there will be many)
Have a mission others can buy into, by
describing KM in practical terms
KM SURVIVAL SKILL #3:
Thou shalt set priorities
• Undertake a knowledge audit – you MUST prioritise
knowledge
• Start small and select key KM targets
• You must be clear on how KM fits into the overall mission
and vision – otherwise it’s all just window dressing
• If YOU don’t believe in what you are doing and it’s value,
who will?
KM SURVIVAL SKILL #4:
Paint a Negative Future
• Fear is a fantastic motivator – fear of losing money, fear
of looking bad, fear of fatalities, fear of slipping in the
rankings, fear of not having a hot project, etc.
• Never let a crisis go to waste
• Find relevant examples of what happens when KM or
critical knowledge capture DOES NOT happen
• Illustrate what the stakes are, graphically, anecdotally
and numerically
• Know what your key stakeholders are most afraid of and
use this knowledge to make your case
KM SURVIVAL SKILL #5:
Keep the Long-Term in Mind
• Develop a long-term and sustainable KM plan, but build in
quick wins in the short and medium terms
• Benchmark your results against similar organisations
doing top quartile work – a selling point and a reality check
• Figure out where the leadership sees the organisation in
five to ten years and steer KM towards that goal
• You know the leadership will come and go…but they don’t!
• Stay the course and slowly build up your core group of KM
evangelists
KM Survival Skill #6:
Become Buddies with HR and IT
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Identify the knowledge that is the most
valuable/critical to your organisation.
Make it a contractual requirement or
build into your HR practices a guided or
structured knowledge transfer.
If people aren’t required to do it,
chances are they won’t bother.
Must build in incentives for behaviour
which benefits not only the
organisation, but the employee.
HR can help flag key people or
moments in a the project cycle which
will set off a KM intervention.
Communities of Practice leadership
often has to be initially delegated and
put into the KPIs of subject matter
experts, etc.
IT can help you build or adapt tools –
but they CANNOT solve your KM
problem.
THANK YOU!
CARLA SAPSFORD NEWMAN
Carla.Y.Newman@gmail.com
carla@strategicknowledge.org