Enterprise Knowledge CEO Zach Wahl will be serving as a keynote speaker at the upcoming Knowledge Summit Dublin, to be held June 10-11 at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. This is the first year for the conference, designed as a ‘flipped’ conference to prioritize the exchange of tacit knowledge and participant engagement. The conference is curated by practitioners, for practitioners and represents a “who’s who” of leading KM leaders and practitioners.

Wahl will present a talk titled, “Fueling Artificial Intelligence: How Tacit Knowledge Capture and KM Fundamentals Lay the Foundation for Successful AI,” which will connect key knowledge management topics including taxonomy design, ontology design, governance, knowledge capture and transfer, and content type design to today’s biggest topics around AI, knowledge graphs, and semantic layers.

In addition to the presentation, EK will serve as a sponsor for the event. As Wahl noted, “EK has always been committed to supporting thought leadership and the KM community as a whole. Knowledge Summit Dublin fills a notable gap in the world of knowledge management, and I’m happy to be an early and active supporter of the event.”

Supplementing the thought leadership and knowledge exchange, Knowledge Summit Dublin will present several unique opportunities to experience Dublin alongside other conference participants, including the opportunity to stay at Trinity College and receive a private tour of the Trinity Old Library and the new 4D Book of Kells interactive digital experience.

To register for the event, ensure the limited opportunity to stay at Trinity College, and learn more about the events and speakers, visit the conference site at: https://www.knowledgesummitdublin.com/

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Align KM With Your Organization’s Strategic Goals

At Enterprise Knowledge (EK), we make the distinction between KM Objectives and Business Objectives. Too often, when developing a case for an investment in KM, managers focus on outcomes that prove that KM strategies were effective in connecting people to the knowledge and information they needed to complete a task or make a decision, such as, improved findability, reuse, and retention of content. Although this approach can be useful in demonstrating the success of a KM effort, it is not sufficient nor as impactful as tying those goals to the overall strategic business objectives of the organization. Business cases for KM that make the connection between KM goals and specific business goals, such as increased productivity, market share, innovation, and revenue help to pique C-suite level interest in your ideas for leveraging KM as a means to achieving the objectives that matter most to the organization.

Whether on an annual basis or every three to five years, organizations typically identify the top initiatives that will not only help them survive in a rapidly changing economy, but ideally, gain the competitive advantage they need to stay on top. As these initiatives are being formulated, take note of what initiatives are gaining momentum and make connections with the individuals in your organization who are beginning to socialize them. It’s important to make KM a part of what will eventually become the organization’s priorities over the next few years. Whether it is an initiative focused on digital transformation, innovation that leads to new products and services, operational excellence, or a focus on developing human capital, help your organization’s influencers to see how KM can set the necessary foundation or even fast track the initiatives that will ultimately become the organization’s most critical investments. 

Present Costs and Opportunity Cost

In many cases, KM has the ability to sell itself because of the clear value it adds to any organization. The greater question is how to ensure an appropriate budget is allocated to the necessary efforts to mature an organization’s KM capabilities. KM involves an investment in the internal resources who will need to direct their efforts towards the development of a strategy, design, and/or implementation plan. These efforts could be a stand-alone, targeted KM solution, such as an enterprise taxonomy or search tool, or a more comprehensive and holistic set of KM solutions that complement one another. In addition to internal resources, you’ll want to consider how much it costs to invest in getting outside expertise from consultants who specialize in these niche fields, as well as the technology enhancements or additions necessary to help enable your KM solution(s). Having a realistic estimate of the capital and operational budget you’ll need to achieve your KM goals will help you to request the appropriate amounts so that you don’t fall short of following through on the promises you’ve made to your executive team. Make sure to get guidance from those who have either funded or led similar KM efforts.

In terms of opportunity costs, don’t forget to consider the benefits you are not gaining from failing to act more quickly in addressing your organization’s KM needs. My colleague, Lulit Tesfaye, shares critical insight into The Cost of Doing Nothing when it comes to KM. For every day that goes by that you do not begin designing and implementing KM solutions, you are wasting time and money resulting from people spending far too much time looking for information or duplicating content that already exists. Without proper KM programs, institutional knowledge easily slips out of the organization when someone leaves for another job or when they retire, which results in an inordinate amount of resources spent on training and upskilling new team members. The longer an organization waits to invest in KM efforts, the more time and resources it takes to resolve and correct the issues that have now become commonplace in your organization. Decision makers should understand that your sense of urgency is directly tied to how a lack of KM is affecting the organization’s bottom line. When presenting your business case, be sure to incorporate the opportunity cost of not taking action quickly when you present the Return on Investment (ROI) for the KM efforts you are proposing. 

Provide Expected Outcomes and Benefits

In Measuring the Success of KM Digital Transformation, I share various ways to measure the success of KM efforts. A common misstep people can make is confusing the solution itself with the outcome. Be sure to make that distinction clear. For example, successfully launching a centralized Knowledge Base is a milestone worth celebrating, but the Knowledge Base is the solution. Make sure to explore what that Knowledge Base is allowing you to do that you weren’t able to do prior to its implementation. In this example, the questions you should be asking include:

• Will people no longer need to go to multiple repositories to find the resources they need? 
• Will they be able to more quickly make decisions and provide internal and external  customers with the information they need to resolve issues and take action?
• Will they spend less time looking for information and more time being productive?

By clearly outlining what people will be able to do differently as a result of your solutions, you will be able to help shed light on why KM is worth the investment. Be prepared to discuss the specific stakeholder groups in and outside of your organization and have clear explanations of what’s in it for them. Perhaps, the business development department will have better access to past proposals to help close deals faster or your customer service team will be able to increase satisfaction ratings and decrease the time it takes to close tickets. Not only does articulating the benefits of KM help you to gain buy-in for your proposed solution(s), it also helps to define the ways in which you will measure whether or not you achieved your expected outcomes.

Define How You’ll Measure Benefits Over Time

Beyond knowing what to measure, you should also think about how you will measure success. Most KM technology, including content repositories, search engines, and collaboration tools make it easy to natively track user analytics, but you’ll want to design your proposed KM Analytics Plan to produce the necessary outputs you need to report out on your progress. Oftentimes a dashboard that centralizes analytics pulled from various sources can help to tell a compelling story of how your KM efforts are moving the needle in terms of helping your organization achieve its goals. A few things to consider:

• What will you measure?
• How often will you measure?
• Are there ways to automate analytics capture and consolidation?
• What information do you want to present in your dashboard?
• Who will be responsible for ensuring that the inputs are accurate and reliable? Who will be responsible for designing and maintaining your KM Analytics dashboard?

To supplement quantitative results, also consider measuring qualitative feedback using employee surveys conducted either electronically or via interviews and focus groups. This will give you a full picture of the impact your KM efforts are having on the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that matter to your organization.

Support Your Case With Strategies for Success 

It’s not enough to articulate what your proposed KM solutions are and how they will benefit the organization. You’ll want to strengthen your business case by explaining the methodologies you’ll be applying in order to increase adoption of the new KM technology or ways of working. In my Agile, Design Thinking, and Change Management course, we explore tools, methods, and techniques for avoiding the common mistakes that cause KM projects to fail. These strategies include:

• Taking an Agile approach so that you’re delivering value to the organization within weeks and months rather than years.
• Using Design Thinking principles to prioritize the challenges you focus on and design your solutions in an innovative way that takes into account the experience of those who will ultimately benefit from them.
• Implementing an Integrated Change Management Plan to decrease resistance to change and increase the likelihood that people adjust to the changes you’re introducing.

What these disciplines have in common is that they take into account input and feedback from  the various individuals who should be involved throughout the process of planning, implementing, and maintaining your KM solutions. Incorporating these methodologies for success in your business case will help you to gain the trust and confidence you need from decision makers.

Present Investment Options 

Given that there is no silver bullet for KM, it can often be quite an investment to implement the foundational elements of KM along with all of the KM solutions that build on top of them to further mature your KM capabilities. Keep in mind that there is no one technology or solution that fixes all of the challenges that can be solved with KM, so your decision makers may experience sticker shock when they see how much KM costs over time. The key point to remember is that KM doesn’t necessarily require one large investment. You can offer various options for investing in KM that allow for smaller investments over time as you begin to reap the benefits of your initial investment. For example, rather than investing in a multi-year, multi-million dollar KM initiative, you can provide options for pilot projects that introduce Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) or Proofs of Concepts (PoCs) of the various KM solutions you’re proposing. It’s always good to present options to try or sample before you buy. Alternatively, you want to take into consideration the economies of scale that can be gained from taking a holistic approach to KM and investing in comprehensive effort. Be sure to lay out all of these options and share the pros and cons of choosing one over the other.

Provide Case Studies and Benchmarks

Lastly, KM sounds great in theory, but without roots in practical applications of KM principles, methods, and tools, KM projects can fail because they are too abstract or conceptual in nature. By connecting with organizations who have had similar experiences and successes with KM projects and presenting those stories to your senior managers and executives, you are able to strengthen your case for investing in something that has been proven to work in a similar organization.  If you need some starting points, check out the Case Studies and Success Stories we have on our site. Keep in mind, however, that although there are organizations that are more successful in reaping the benefits of KM, there is no single organization that is the benchmark for all things KM-related. Be specific in presenting case studies in a targeted way so that you do not set unrealistic expectations regarding your KM solutions. Take the time to speak to KM practitioners regarding their lessons learned because more often than not, the road to these successes were paved with obstacles and unexpected circumstances that were overcome. 

Conclusion

Knowledge Management is not a trend, buzz word, or fad. Although, in its history, it may have been associated with failed attempts at harnessing institutional knowledge, it is and always will be a critical element to any organization’s success. Whether you call it “KM” or not, your organization needs a strategy and plan for connecting people to the knowledge and information they need to do their job and it’s up to you to develop a case for why. If you need help developing your business case, Contact Us at Enterprise Knowledge. We’re ready to help!

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You may have picked up a few new hobbies or pursuits during the COVID-19 pandemic, but have you done anything to nurture your existing professional interests and areas of expertise? A community of practice (CoP) provides an excellent opportunity to cultivate these interests while engaging with coworkers whom you probably haven’t had a chance to interact with very much over the last several months. This method of knowledge building is even more valuable while we’re isolated in our homes, craving social interaction. If you’re not familiar with the term, a community of practice is an organized group of people with a common professional interest who meet regularly to learn from each other through sharing ideas, experiences, and best practices. Unlike a “community of learning” which is focused on helping people learn new concepts, communities of practice help people develop proficiencies in fields in which they are already familiar.

Communities of practice are a great way to build morale and generate excitement around shared competencies, but it can be difficult to facilitate remote CoPs in a world where many of us are on our computers all day and experiencing very real video call fatigue. In this blog post, I will demonstrate the importance of CoPs in the context of KM and provide some tips on how you can cultivate and maintain communities of practice within your organization to motivate your colleagues to take a proactive approach to professional development and innovation in a time when employee engagement, skill building, and social interaction can be challenging.

Why Communities of Practice are Important for Knowledge Management

Communities of practice go hand-in-hand with good knowledge management. Given that internal knowledge is a company’s competitive advantage, CoPs are effective mechanisms for capturing and sharing information across the organization. They provide employees with opportunities to collaborate, capture, and share knowledge that can improve performance and efficiency at an organizational level while also reducing duplication of work. As a result, employees will feel empowered to be more innovative, promote best practices, and find greater satisfaction in their jobs. The more CoPs are used, the more they aid in tacit knowledge capture. As employees participate in communities of practice through various communication technologies, they are essentially transferring their tacit knowledge into a digital form where it can be leveraged by current and future employees. This ability to capture and share the experience and expertise of an organization’s individuals is a key element of KM maturity.

How to Create Sustainable Communities of Practice

If you are contemplating starting a new CoP within your organization, it’s important to keep the following in mind to ensure that you are creating something that will be beneficial to your community. Here are some suggestions for structuring a new CoP to set it up for success.

• Create value: People join communities of practice because they are passionate about a particular technical area or business domain. They are typically already fairly knowledgeable in this subject area so it is important to provide in-depth information or unique perspectives and methodology that will help individuals do their jobs better and distinguish themselves in the field.
• Identify and incorporate your organization’s most recognized experts: Include individuals within your organization known for their expertise in the early stages of CoP development and pre-populate great knowledge and discussions before launch. We often refer to this as seeding content within CoPs. This will evoke interest and drive adoption by demonstrating to participants how CoPs might benefit their professional development.
• Define roles and objectives: If you want the CoP to be a sustainable entity, create a guiding strategy and get clear on how the group will be managed. Consider what roles you need and who will serve in them, and what principles will guide decision-making around content that is shared. Also, set up a schedule with regular meetings and create a calendar of events for participants. Set clear expectations for participation and discuss what success as a community looks like for the group.
• Establish trust and transparency: Don’t make it all about business! Provide participants with the opportunity to converse casually. If the group consists of mostly new faces, find ways to make connections amongst members on a more personal level. Allow for unstructured time on the agenda and create an environment where people feel comfortable asking questions, being vulnerable, and taking risks. Consider keeping the CoP closed from management to foster an environment where employees can openly speak about problems and knowledge gaps.
• Make it easy for people to communicate with each other: Create a centralized, digital location to access and share information (if one doesn’t already exist), while making it easy for community members to engage. It is especially important to facilitate connections across boundaries, given that people are geographically dispersed due to the pandemic. As EK’s CEO, Zach Wahl, has previously mentioned, it is important to leverage frequently used communication channels. As it becomes easier to share information, levels of participation and engagement will increase. Ensure that technology supports the community but that it does not define the community. In other words, the digital platform is one part but there should also be face-to-face conversations (when feasible), virtual meetings, and other synchronous activities and gatherings. Stick to whatever platform your company uses for meetings, but find other ways to create engaging content through breakout rooms or complementary tools.

How to Maintain Communities of Practice

Once you have an established structure in place that provides a safe space where people feel comfortable sharing experiences and ideas, you must continue to provide value to keep members engaged. By inviting unique perspectives to contribute to the discussion and soliciting feedback from participants, members will have actionable ways to contribute, become invested in the continued success of the CoP, and remain active in the community. Below are a few examples of ways that you can keep your members engaged and provide enduring professional enrichment.

• Incorporate new, diverse perspectives: Deliver compelling content that will continue to draw people back. Because CoPs are comprised of experts and experienced professionals, if you’re not providing new and thought-provoking ideas, your members will become bored and eventually drop off. This can be done by discussing controversial topics, encouraging vulnerability, and sharing stories of failure from which to reflect and grow.
• Continue to adapt and refine: If you’re noticing a decline in participation, speak with members of the group and find out ways to improve or pivot in order to bring people back and draw in new members. Aim to cover topics that meet at least 80% of your members’ needs to ensure that content is relevant to your CoP. Even if your audience participation is great, try to figure out what is drawing people in and continue to replicate and refine those aspects.
• Make it fun!: Make meetings and events interactive and dynamic. One of the best virtual meetings I’ve attended was a mix of presentations and a few “breaks” where we had the chance to chat for 10 minutes with other attendees one-on-one. It split up what could have been a rather boring presentation and allowed participants to network and socialize.
• Stay engaged in-between meetings. Use social media and online forums to your advantage. Have a closed channel dedicated to sharing articles and educational resources amongst the CoP to maintain a safe space but also share ideas with a wider audience via Twitter and LinkedIn to gain outside perspectives and grow your network.

As you consider how to structure and grow communities of practice within your organization, these tips will provide guidance to facilitate effective and sustainable knowledge transfer. CoPs can be an incredibly powerful tool to promote collaborative learning while enriching knowledge management across your organization. 

Looking to incorporate communities of practice into your organization? Contact us at Enterprise Knowledge for support!

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1. Are people viewing your content?

This is the most logical place to start. The number of page visits tells you how many people are actually landing on each page of your site. This can indicate the relative popularity of each page and can reveal whether there are pages on your site that no one has ever visited.

Make sure to distinguish total views vs. unique views to get a good picture of how many individuals are actually visiting. If you want to get a bit more sophisticated, see how those visits breakdown by demographics, location, source, and/or device. The insights you gain from analyzing this information should inform the changes you make to your content.

Keep in mind though that page visits is only the tip of the iceberg. In fact, site traffic may only indicate the effectiveness of your marketing or campaign efforts, rather than your content itself. A site visit means that someone got wind that your content existed, say on social media for example, and they found the headline or image associated with your content intriguing enough to check it out.

To determine how many visitors are actually sticking around, you’ll want check your number of page visits against each page’s bounce rate, or the number of times someone landed on a page, then hit the back button on their browser. This will tell you that these people did not find what they were looking for.

2. Are people reading through your content and to other related content?

Let’s say you’ve successfully attracted your target audience and now they are reading through the content on the page. Another key indicator is the time spent on each page. Are they only on the page for a few seconds? Then, maybe they quickly got frustrated at your content’s lack of clarity or relevance. If you find that on average, your readers are spending 3-5 minutes on each page, then you know that there is enough on that page to keep their attention.

Even further, if your site has a feature to suggest relevant content, you can evaluate a reader’s journey, or page path, through your site. If their journey indicates breadth and depth of visits across and through your site, this is an indication that people are not only finding your content, reading through it, but they’re also interested in other information you have to offer.

3. Are people interacting with your content?

The next level of engagement is interaction with your content. Often times, you may choose to disable features such as likes, comments, ratings, etc. if you don’t have the bandwidth to patrol it, but they can be quite insightful into what people like or don’t like about your content. You can then use this information to serve up more of what they like and less of what they don’t like.

4. Are people sharing your content?

Beyond interaction with your content, social shares indicate an even higher level of engagement from your target audience. When people share your content via email and/or social media, this means that not only do they find it interesting and/or helpful, but they also think that people in their network would appreciate it as well. Social shares bring increased traffic to your site and is often the most effective (and free) way to get the word out there about what you have to offer.

5. Are people taking action on your content?

Lastly, and most importantly, you want to track conversions. All of your content should have the intention of getting your readers to actually do something. Whether it’s downloading information, purchasing a product or service, or even just capturing email addresses for leads, you want to track what percentage of your site traffic is doing what you ultimately want them to do.

When developing your analytics strategy, you will want to measure only what’s relevant to your organization or the specific campaign you’re working on. Your most significant Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) may be conversions for an e-commerce site or interactions for an employee portal. There are so many things you could measure, but what’s important is that you measure what aligns with your objectives and what you’re willing to act on. If you’re overwhelmed by all of numbers and graphs on your Google Analytics dashboard, native social media analytics tools, CRM or CMS analytics tools, and/or whatever you use, then these top 5 indicators are a great place to start.

Need help making sure your content is performing for you? Contact us at info@enterprise-knowledge.com.

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You can register for the event by visiting the KMA meetup site.

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I’m a big fan of workshops for several reasons:

Value

They provide maximum impact at minimal cost to the client. I’m the first to recognize that not every organization needs, or can afford, a lengthy engagement where a team of consultants are embedded on a client site.

Impact

They provide a direct impact opportunity to point an organization in the right direction and align goals. Many of the organizations with whom we work possess the expert, conscientious, “doers” in house, and only need a limited engagement workshop to ensure they’re leveraging our experience and best practices.

Alignment

They ensure an aligned understanding and vision for goals, actions, and potential returns. The core act of getting the right people in the room is incredibly powerful. Having all voices heard and creating a shared roadmap to success powers the overall initiative and allows everyone to know each other more directly, which in turn leads to greater collaboration.

Regardless of the subject matter around which we’re running a workshop, from Agile Strategy, to Taxonomy Design, to Action Oriented Search, to KM Roadmapping we focus our workshops around providing the utmost value, impact, and alignment.

To that end, we focus our workshops to have the following characteristics:

Balanced Participation

As superhero facilitators, our mission is to ensure that all voices are heard, and that we respectfully inject our own experience and recommendations into the culture of the organization. Though we may be flying in to save the day, that doesn’t mean we’re talking more or louder than anyone else. Our role is to empower and guide the discussion.

Practical Best Practices

Our role is not to “vanquish the villain,” but to empower the organization with the approach and best practices to own that task. To that end, providing real world stories of success and failure from the hundreds of organizations with whom we’ve worked provides the practical context necessary to think workshop in real terms.

Actionable Results

One of the most critical keys to a successful workshop is ensuring that, at its conclusion, there are clear deliverables and next steps. There are many who can complete a workshop and leave people feeling good. That’s not enough. A truly impactful workshop will have clear actions, deadlines, and an accompanying view to the future (or roadmap) as a product.

Ownership

Along with those actions and deadlines, each workshop should help to identify the internal heroes and protagonists of the organization who can help to progress the roadmap.

Fun and Energy

At times I think our greatest superpower of all is infusing an organization with the excitement and energy to make real progress to address their challenges. This is possible because we truly believe in what we do and love helping organizations understand and internalize the value that could be realized if they align to address their challenges and goals.

Are you looking up in the sky for your Agile KM Superhero? Send a signal to info@enterprise-knowledge.com and we’ll answer the call.

Workshop Brochures

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Ark Group Australia is presenting ‘The Wheels of Knowledge Management,’ featuring EK’ Zach Wahl and Working Knowledge^CSP’s Bill Kaplan.  Together, Zach and Bill will cover the breadth of KM Process, Culture, People, and Technology from concept to implementation.  

Working Knowledge^CSP Founder and Principal Bill Kaplan noted, “An organization must have an idea, a concept, about where it wants to go with knowledge management, how it’s going to get there, and what it’s going to do to implement KM in a consistent, sustainable and measurable way to achieve better operational or business performance…that is the promise of knowledge management.”  

Zach Wahl, CEO of EK added, “Having teamed with Bill on a number of successful KM initiatives, I know we combine to provide a diverse, yet synergistic combination of expertise and experiences.  I’m excited to team with Working Knowledge^CSP in order to deliver this program.”

To learn more about the event and to register, please visit the Ark Group Australia site.

About Bill Kaplan and Working Knowledge^CSP

Bill has developed the Concept | Strategy | Practice (CSP) Model for developing a sustainable KM Strategy and Implementing Framework. In addition, he co-developed KMAgile, an agile based approach to rapidly develop a sustainable knowledge transfer capability for organizations who desire to invest significant resources up front while also developing and delivering a long term KM Strategy and Implementation Framework. A recipient of the 2016 Knowledge Management Leadership Award, Bill was recognized as one of the world’s 50 most influential Knowledge Management professionals at the 2016 Global Knowledge Management Congress and Awards in Mumbai, India.

Working Knowledge^CSP is a knowledge management consulting company.  We operate internationally, within the public and private sectors, to help organizations “Create Value from their Knowledge.”  Through our client co-delivery model, we provide practical, experience based knowledge management solutions and training from the simple to the complex.

About Zach Wahl and Enterprise Knowledge

Zach was recognized as one of the World’s 50 Most influential Knowledge Management professionals at the 2016 Global Knowledge Management Congress and Awards. Zach has served on the board of the Washington DC Knowledge Management Institute and as the Chairman of the Institute for International Research (IIR) Enterprise Web, Portals, and Collaborative Technologies conference. He also serves as faculty for the Knowledge Management Institute, providing training and consulting on taxonomy design and development.

Enterprise Knowledge (EK) is a services firm that integrates Knowledge Management, Information Management, Information Technology, and Agile Approaches to deliver comprehensive solutions.  Our mission is to form true partnerships with our clients, listening and collaborating to create tailored, practical, and results-oriented solutions that enable them to thrive and adapt to changing needs.

EK has been recognized by KMWorld as one of the 50 Companies that Matter in Knowledge Management and by CIO Review as one of the 20 Most Promising KM Solution Providers. Our core services include strategy, design, and development of Knowledge and Information Management systems, with proven approaches for Taxonomy Design, Project Strategy and Road Mapping, Brand and Content Strategy, Change Management and Communication, and Agile Transformation and Facilitation.  

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Being agile requires a dramatically different leadership style than what you would typically encounter with traditional project management. When I was first introduced to agile projects, I found that not only did my environment change, but my approach towards leadership did as well. I went from wanting to be in charge and in control, to seeking to empower my team to be creative and have the confidence to move forward using their own good sense of what should be done.

Through the years, I’ve picked up many effective project management tools for staying organized and moving forward, but approaching each phase of the project lifecycle with an agile mindset has allowed me to move forward, faster and further, with the help of others. As a Project Management Professional (PMP) who’s also a Certified Scrum Master (CSM) and Product Owner (CSPO), here are the decisions that I struggled with as I shifted my leadership paradigm, along with the lessons that came out of each:

1. Initiating / Planning

“I can create a project schedule on my own, or we can work together as team to create one.”

Creating a detailed project schedule can be time consuming, especially for larger-scale projects. When you finally share all of the tasks, deadlines, and dependencies with the team, their eyes glaze over. After spending hours crafting an elaborate plan, it can be a little disappointing to have the team disregard it because it was too much to consume all at once. Creating an overly detailed plan for a lengthy time period also means you’ll likely have to change it constantly because of factors of which you weren’t aware.

An alternative approach is to work with your team to develop the plan. On a recent project, we faced the challenge of having to launch three different websites in the same month with a small team of developers. I brought the team together in front of a large white board with the launch dates for each site. Each of them communicated to me what needed to be done, in what order it needed to be done, and what risks were associated with each product. Because they were part of the planning process, everyone understood the commitments each team member made to ensure a successful launch for each site. In the end, all three sites successfully launched as planned. As an added benefit, the team gained a sense of accountability and ownership they wouldn’t have otherwise had if they weren’t as involved in the planning process.

2. Execution

“I can tell developers what the requirements are, or we can work together to define them.”

There is immense value in getting developer feedback throughout the story writing process. There’s no doubt that the business side and technical side of a project or organization speak different languages. Coming together to talk about business needs and technical solutions is a much more fruitful conversation when it’s two-ways, involving those who want something and those who are able to deliver it.

As many of you know, EK recently launched its redesigned website. We had very specific requirements for how we wanted the site to look and feel, but we benefited greatly from the expertise of the person actually doing the front-end development. Our solutioning sessions around the site’s responsiveness led to a really clean and beautiful site that looks great on all devices.  

3. Monitoring and Controlling

“I can keep tabs on people to make sure they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing, or we can trust each other to deliver on our commitments.”

During a daily stand-up, whenever a Scrum Master asks a developer when something is going to be done, I’ve seen the response almost always be hesitance with a tinge of annoyance. “It’ll be done by the end of the sprint,” they usually reply. When facilitated incorrectly, daily stand-ups can feel as if everyone is reporting out to a manager on what each person is doing. Facilitated correctly, there’s a free flow of information between the team members. The end result is that they are able to help each other make progress as a team rather than focusing on what each individual should be producing.

There’s no longer a need for micromanagement when you’re agile, because at the beginning of a sprint, the team commits to the work they will accomplish. Then, at the end, they demonstrate their work. The team works together to meet their commitments without the need for someone looking over their shoulder to make sure they are completing each task.

4. Closing

“I can be the only person the major stakeholders see and get all the credit, or we could shine as a team and be proud of the work we accomplished together.

A colleague and I joked recently when a Twitter post went out about the “A-Team” we worked closely with for the past year. Our names didn’t make the tweet, but the team shined. We reminded ourselves that a good servant leader is less in the spotlight and more like the invisible hand guiding the team. We reflected on our long hours of coordinating efforts, responding to fires, and keeping up-to-date with the latest issues and feature releases. Our role involved protecting the team from all distractions, responding to their needs, and making sure to keep the lines of communication flowing. This allowed them to focus on doing good work.

In the end, we just felt proud to have been a part of the team who built a cutting-edge product.

Conclusion

Agile projects and teams have taught me that it’s less about me and more about we. I can be extremely productive, but will never be as impactful alone as I would be as a part of a talented, motivated, and engaged team of thinkers and doers.

Taking an agile approach to leadership is more in alignment with what motivates humans to perform in comparison to the traditional command-and-control style that reigns in hierarchical, machine-like organizational structures. At EK, we see teams and organizations as more of a living organism rather than a set of interconnected cogs in a wheel. We value the benefits of technology, but we also understand the importance of a committed team working together towards the same end-goal. This is rooted in our belief that our colleagues and clients share a need to be appreciated, cared for, and seen for the qualities and talent we each bring to the table.

Interested in learning more ways to improve your leadership style and be more agile? Check out EK’s Agile Transformation and Coaching solutions.

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Like many organizations with whom we work, we found that our site organization, performance, and interface were becoming impediments to the deep and rich content we were sharing on our site. To that end, we brought our own team together to redesign our site in a way that would serve as a case study. Our new site bridges the gap between Content and Knowledge Management. It offers “traditional” website content and functionality, but also incorporates a knowledge base of EK’s experience and expertise.

We’re proud of what we’ve designed, not least of which because it demonstrates that we also practice the very same recommendations and guidance we offer to our clients. This site shows who EK is, what we do, and why we do it. It is also a key tool to help us realize one of our guiding principles, to be thought leaders, sharing our knowledge and expertise with the industry as a whole.

The following are the best practices for website and knowledge base design that resulted in the site you’re currently experiencing.

Go Agile, Really

One of EK’s core services is Agile Transformation & Facilitation, so it’s no surprise we begin here. Though Agile concepts are most commonly associated with software development, they are equally, if not more applicable and valuable in regards to knowledge management and information management design. Projects such as these require maximum touch points between the design and development team, the business users, and the end users.

As consultants, we’ve often heard some version of the phrase, “I don’t know what I want, but I’ll know when I see it.” Our Agile approach to design enables this concept. Without it, you run the risk of straying toward the dreaded “big bang” deployment that results in missed expectations, missed deadlines, and unhappy stakeholders.

We ran our entire initiative, from initial goal setting and understanding of our users, through testing and content population, leveraging the same true Agile approach we apply to our customers. As a result, we were able to engage our end users, react to surprises, and adjust to the changing views that are inherent in such an effort.

Content is Still King 

You’d think that after a couple decades with the “Content is King” phrase beaten to death, organizations would recognize that content is, in fact, pretty important. For our own initiative, we decided at the outset that every hour dedicated to the design or development of the site should be matched with two hours dedicated to the creation, curation, and enhancement of content within it.

In advance of our new site, we focused on 1) Enhancing existing content, 2) Creating new content, 3) Maximizing our social media engagement to drive new traffic. Of these three components, by far the most important was enhancing the existing content. Any time a site goes through a migration or upgrade, there will be some level of chaos. We always recommend harnessing that chaos and piggybacking on top of it, in order to ensure the existing content is the best it can be.

This content enhancement included a copy edit of all existing content, a thorough weeding of that which wasn’t up to our standards, and a review of existing naming, placement, tagging, and imagery. For the imagery, we took advantage of the effort to dial up and standardize the style and quality of our graphics. We also assessed all of our content tagging to ensure consistency and findability (more on that below).

Coupled with this effort, we developed a new web style guide for our site so that voicing, capitalization, and other similar efforts (oxford comma, spaces after periods, etc.) would be consistent moving forward.

Taxonomy, Faceting, and Overall Findability 

One of the first features we knew we wanted to include in our site was a faceted browse/search feature for our knowledge base. Having worked with hundreds of organizations to arrive at highly impactful taxonomy design, we wanted to ensure we had our own “demonstration” of this increasingly critical site feature.

As we would’ve done for any customer, we ran internal taxonomy design workshops to identify and prioritize our most important metadata fields and then define values for each. We settled on Topic, Document Type, and Author as EK’s three key fields, and supplemented this with a broader set of defined keywords to be applied as metadata for search engine optimization and increased categorization and search efficacy.

User Interface Doesn’t Just Mean Flash 

We leveraged our standard design methodology in order to progress the look and feel and navigational elements of the site. We defined user personas, prioritized them, created user journeys, and then user stories for each. Months before development began, we ran team workshops to progress our site design from rough concepts to high fidelity wireframes. We wanted a site that was visually compelling, for sure, but more importantly we wanted a site that would allow our users to complete their missions, while experiencing EK’s unique “personality.”

One of the most important elements of us, for this, was to ensure the site was rich with photos of the team, our space, and our work products. Together with our rich content, this tells the story of EK.

We also focused designing a site that would work across a range of devices. Though our design was “desktop first,” the mobile interface, leveraging a completely responsive design, provides all the same functionality and feel in easy to digest components.

Open Source, in the Cloud 

Though we do an equal amount of work leveraging commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) products, we made an early decision to leverage Open Source Content Management for our solution. We progressed this decision leveraging our standard process, selecting and prioritizing system functionality and features at a high level, then iterating in increasing detail until we had a clear set of functional stories of what we needed to be able to do with the site.

Just as we do with our clients, we evaluated a range of potential options, including Drupal, Alfresco, and WordPress. We settled on WordPress for the site as it provided all the necessary capabilities with the lowest administrative burden.

Our site is deployed in the cloud. After all, EK does a lot, but we’re not a hosting shop and we don’t want to dilute our focus by trying to be one.

The product of our efforts is our new website. We accompanied its creation with the development of a content governance plan and fresh editorial calendar, focused on ensuring the site and its contents evolve toward the better moving forward. We hope you visit often, as we’re committed to continuing our thought leadership and keeping the content fresh. If you’re thinking about a site redesign or refresh of your own, we’re here to help.

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