Thomas Mitrevski, Principal Consultant for Data Management at Enterprise Knowledge and Laurent Dresse, Chief Evangelist for DataGalaxy, will present a joint webinar on the topic of implementing a data catalog and garnering adoption across your organization.

Within the webinar, Mitrevski and Dresse will cover how to:

• Deploy data catalogs for maximum impact;
• Overcome adoption challenges and boost user engagement; and
• Drive global data governance and foster a data-driven culture.

This interactive one-hour session will include real-world examples from Enterprise Knowledge demonstrating how to evaluate your current catalog maturity, develop actionable use cases, and identify where crucial information resides within your organization to best support your catalog use cases. 

The webinar will take place Thursday, October 31, at 11:00 a.m. EDT. The event is free, but registration is required.

Register for the webinar here!

The post EK / DataGalaxy Joint Webinar appeared first on Enterprise Knowledge.

“Building for the Knowledge Management Archetypes at Your Company’ debuted at APQC’s 2023 Conference & In-Person Training in April 2023. The presentation introduced common types of personalities that are often present when building a KM program and supported attendees in thinking through the root causes of various behaviors and the approaches for taking these into account when driving KM forward. 

Paschal and Malloy re-visited the concept at KMWorld 2023 Conference in November 2023 by presenting 8 archetypes– validated by business psychologists– and diving deep into the traits, root behaviors, personal drivers and needs relevant to KM Programs. This approach offered attendees tools to identify archetypes, describe the relationship between archetypes and organizational culture, and apply recommended KM approaches.

Register to attend the showcase in person or virtually! Access the APQC presentation here and the KMWorld presentation here (download link).

The post Taylor Paschal Nominated as 2024 Entrepreneur and Innovator by Columbia University appeared first on Enterprise Knowledge.

Laurie Gray, Principal Consultant on Enterprise Knowledge’s Strategy team, and EK client Kate Vilches, Knowledge Management Lead at Ulteig, presented on November 6, 2022 at the Taxonomy Boot Camp Conference, co-located with KMWorld, in Washington, D.C. The talk, “Taxonomy Roller Coasters: Techniques to Keep Stakeholders on the Ride,” focused on proven stakeholder management techniques during enterprise taxonomy development and launch activities. 

Gray and Vilches used their firsthand experience to relate advice, share practical tools, and provide real-life examples to ensure successful stakeholder involvement, reinforcing three key themes for attendees:

• How to select partners and build coalitions to ensure long term success;
• Overview of the steps, stages, challenges, and thrills of defining and implementing an enterprise taxonomy; and
• The importance and finesse of effective change management efforts to ensure that stakeholders begin and remain excited and involved throughout the project.

Are you ready to begin taxonomy efforts at your organization, or are you in the middle of a taxonomy effort that you need assistance with? Contact Enterprise Knowledge today!

The post Taxonomy Roller Coasters: Techniques to Keep Stakeholders on the Ride appeared first on Enterprise Knowledge.

The two-day certification course is a staple in KMI’s Certified Knowledge Specialist (CKS) offerings. The course provides a background on key concepts including Agile, Design Thinking, Change Management, and User-Centered Communications strategies, detailing how elements of each may be harnessed to address common challenges in KM efforts. This will be highly interactive, involving participants in a series of facilitated exercises, including EK’s complete “Design Thinking for KM” workshop approach.

Mary Little, EK’s Division Director of Knowledge Management Strategy & Design, will serve as the lead instructor for the course. Little is a KM expert, experienced facilitator, and frequent speaker on KM, Design Thinking, and Agile methodologies. She is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and Scrum Product Owner (CSPO). Little focuses on applying agile and design-thinking principles to user-centric solutions, and she is determined to create actual, positive change in the way people engage in the work they do.

When asked about the course, Zach Wahl, CEO of Enterprise Knowledge, said, “This certification course is a perfect application for how we approach KM. It will teach attendees how we put the end user at the center of the KM strategy and design effort, and leverage an assortment of facilitation techniques to engage them in every step of the process.”

Additional information and registration can be found on KMI’s website.

About Enterprise Knowledge

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. 

About the International Knowledge Management Institute

Based in Washington, D.C., the KM Institute is a global leader in Knowledge Management certifications and training, with thousands certified since 2001 and classes delivered in up to 15 countries annually. KMI trains and certifies KM team members in the methods and tools that enable individuals and organizations to transform (and substantially improve) human performance in the current Knowledge Age.

The post EK Teaching Upcoming Agile & Design Thinking Certification for KMI appeared first on Enterprise Knowledge.

The two-day certification course is a staple in KMI’s Certified Knowledge Specialist (CKS) offerings. The course provides a background on key concepts including Agile, Design Thinking, Change Management, and User-Centered Communications strategies, detailing how elements of each may be harnessed to address common challenges in KM efforts. The course will be highly interactive, involving participants in a series of facilitated exercises, including EK’s complete Design Thinking for KM workshop approach.

Mary Little, EK’s Knowledge Management Division Director, will serve as the lead instructor for the course. Little is a KM Expert, experienced facilitator, and frequent speaker on KM, Design Thinking, and Agile approaches. She is a Certified Project Management Professional and Certified Scrum Product Owner. Little focuses on applying agile and design-thinking principles to user-centric solutions, determined to create actual, positive change in the way people engage in the work they do. 

When asked about the course, Zach Wahl, CEO of Enterprise Knowledge, said, “This certification course is a perfect application for how we approach KM. It will teach attendees how we put the end user at the center of the KM strategy and design effort, and leverage an assortment of facilitation techniques to engage them in every step of the process.”

Additional information and registration may be found at the following link: https://www.kminstitute.org/content/cks-agile-and-design-thinking

About Enterprise Knowledge

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. 

About the International Knowledge Management Institute

Based in Washington DC, The KM Institute is the global leader in Knowledge Management Certification/Training, with many thousands certified since 2001 and classes delivered in up 15 countries annually. KMI trains and certifies KM Team Members in the methods and tools that enable individuals and organizations to transform (and substantially improve) human performance in the Knowledge Age.

The post EK Teaching Upcoming Agile & Design Thinking Certification for KMI appeared first on Enterprise Knowledge.

Similarities of KM and RM

Records Management and Knowledge Management are part of the broader family of the information profession. Organizations rely on their RM and KM teams to adequately manage important information for their business. Both RM and KM seek to capture, categorize, and preserve different types of documents and information throughout their life cycles, so that it can later be found and leveraged by members of the organization for different business purposes. However, it is these business purposes that can create seemingly opposing directions for KM and RM.

Differences

Records Management initiatives and activities are generally driven by compliance requirements. An organization needs to keep items of information to present them to regulating bodies and other authorities if requested, or in the case of litigation. Because of this, the concept of a record is well defined, and commonly accepted to be a piece of information that serves as evidence of a business transaction, process, or activity. The RM function makes sure that not only the organization keeps a copy of the records that it needs, but also that they are easy to find and, most importantly, that they only keep records for only as long as they are needed. 

The drivers behind Knowledge Management, in contrast, tend to be more diverse. KM can be driven by an organization’s need to learn from previous initiatives, to become more efficient by not repeating work that has been done in the past, by spurring innovation, or to upskill and onboard staff faster. As opposed to the definition of records, the definition of knowledge is much broader, and usually dependent on an organization’s objectives and constraints. However, knowledge tends to be more fluid and changing in nature, as opposed to the mostly static and unchanging nature of records. 

It is because of these different purposes that two main conflicts arise when preserving information:

• Not all information will be preserved as a record. Knowledge can be embedded and codified in a number of documents and information that do not necessarily qualify as records. For instance, unused drafts, templates, and working documents are valuable from a KM perspective, but from the Records Management perspective, these may not be worthy of preservation.
• Retention schedules will trigger the disposal of useful knowledge. Within records management, best practices seek to limit an organization’s liability of legal and regulatory risk by deleting records that have reached the end of their life cycle. However, some records have knowledge embedded in them that others may find useful. The most commonly cited example is usually email. In many organizations, staff use their inbox as a personal knowledge base. However, strict disposition policies mandate that email is deleted after a few months, leaving staff feeling helpless in losing an important knowledge repository.

Reconciling Differences

So, what can we do to overcome these challenges? 

• Capture knowledge from records and enhance it. As I mentioned earlier, knowledge is highly dynamic, and can be converted from one form to another. If important knowledge is embedded in records that are bound to be deleted, it can be synthesized and converted into other formats which will either not qualify as a record, or qualify as a record but with longer retention schedules. For example, knowledge in records can be extracted and synthesized into lessons learned, updated policies, enhanced training material, and new templates. 
• Open up opportunities for new knowledge creation. Often, staff capture their knowledge in formats that may not be the most appropriate for storage, preservation, and eventual dissemination because it is easy and convenient for them to do so. As knowledge managers we need to make it simple for knowledge to deliberately and systematically be embedded in the appropriate formats. We must identify the critical moments where knowledge can be collected, and make sure that it is embedded in content that is fit for its purpose.
• Integrate change management. The prior two recommendations will require individuals to adopt new behaviors and perform unfamiliar activities. You should introduce changes clearly and deliberately so that your colleagues can understand why it is important for both themselves and the larger organization to change the way knowledge is preserved.

Is your organization seeking to put in place processes, tools, and practices to preserve your institutional knowledge? We can help. Contact us at info@enterprise-knowledge.com to start a conversation.

The post Overcoming Records Management Constraints for Knowledge Continuity appeared first on Enterprise Knowledge.

The Challenge

Their Challenge:

One of the top telecommunication companies in the world is pursuing an ambitious corporate strategy that entails a digital transformation of its entire operations, expanding its service offerings, and exploiting new business opportunities to become a global reference point and leader within its industry. They sought a partnership with Enterprise Knowledge (EK) to assess the company’s current knowledge management (KM) maturity and elaborate a vision for future KM capabilities and practice that would support this corporate agenda. 

During the process of defining a KM Strategy and Roadmap to guide the company in increasing its KM maturity, EK surfaced important considerations – based on the company’s culture and staff’s experience with past changes – that would need to be addressed when implementing the KM Strategy and Roadmap and introducing the associated changes:

• Communication around past initiatives has been either too complex for staff to understand the initiative’s value or hasn’t been sufficiently targeted to specific employee groups. Staff hasn’t had a clear understanding of how a change will benefit them, resulting in reduced engagement. 
• The company hasn’t typically established two-way communication channels during a change initiative to address concerns, mitigate resistance, correct misinformation, and allow for input that can drive improvements to those overseeing a change.
• Staff primarily follow vertical lines of communication to share information from senior leadership to non-supervisory employees. As a result, important information doesn’t always trickle down to non-supervisory employees. 
• Those in middle management have not been fully “activated” – they aren’t always communicating in a way to help their employees understand the need for and impact of an organizational change, nor are they holding their staff accountable to requested changes.
• There are many concurrent activities that are requiring staff to take on new projects and responsibilities, adapt to new requirements, and adjust ways of working. Staff are experiencing varying levels of change fatigue, and express uncertainty over how these initiatives are aligned and where to focus their attention.
• There are groups within the company who are more heavily invested in how things are done today as well as those who are more responsive to change. This reality plays out in the varying degrees to which people are willing to share information with their colleagues. 

The Solution

As part of EK’s nine-month, enterprise-wide effort to assess the company’s current KM maturity and elaborate a vision for future KM capabilities and practices, EK developed an Integrated Change Management Plan to support the implementation of the KM Strategy and Roadmap. To define a bespoke set of change management recommendations and communication practices, EK engaged internal stakeholders to discuss 1) lessons learnt from their past experiences with organizational changes, 2) the critical factors that mean the difference between success and failure on a project or change initiative, and 3) how information gets distributed across the organization and top down. EK disseminated and analyzed results of a KM survey to surface staff perspectives on what motivations (e.g., incentives, rewards, and recognition) could be offered or would be desired to support KM practices. Additionally, EK led interviews and workshops that informed our understanding of the company’s organizational structure, lines of authority, information flow patterns, cultural nuances, and those who could serve as key partners in supporting the KM Strategy and Roadmap. 

The Integrated Change Management Plans includes:

• A purpose statement to generate momentum and align on what success is anticipated to look like as a result of implementing the KM Strategy and Roadmap.
• A list of success indicators and preliminary activities to guide the company’s change management strategy and track whether outcomes are being realized. 
• The people who will be impacted by and whose involvement will be necessary in the implementation of the KM Strategy and Roadmap.
• Critical messages to use and considerations to keep in mind when communicating about the KM Strategy and Roadmap.
• Recommendations for how to address risks that are unique to the company’s culture and organization and that could jeopardize success of the KM Strategy and Roadmap if left unattended. 

The EK Difference

EK engaged the company’s KM project team in helping to define what success will look like for its KM Strategy throughout the implementation of the two-year Roadmap. Through holding a Visioning workshop with the KM project team, EK was able to co-create success indicators – i.e., outcome-based statements that are specific and measurable – that would ultimately support the company in tracking whether it is realizing the outcomes it hopes to achieve with a KM Strategy. This co-creation session was critical to gaining alignment on what success will look like and identifying a “North Star” for the Strategy. By engaging the KM project team as partners in this process, EK was able to understand what meaningful success looks like and develop a process that the company can use to define: corresponding metrics for each success indicator; the critical behaviors that will need to be performed consistently by the company’s workforce to bring about success; and the ways in which the company can provide support for critical behaviors to ensure those behaviors occur at the desired consistency and rate. 

The Results

The company was appreciative of the detail and customization that were evidenced in the Integrated Change Management Plan. The company continues to work with EK to provide training to KM team members focused on strengthening their ability to manage and lead change. With the Integrated Change Management Plan, the company’s KM Leadership Team are well equipped to: 

• Give the implementation of the KM Strategy and Roadmap high relevance and visibility;
• Facilitate open communication about the Strategy’s purpose and desired outcomes;
• Educate employees on how they can expect to benefit from having more robust knowledge capture, storing, and sharing practices in place;
• Communicate the roles, responsibilities, and expectations of leadership, middle management, and non-supervisory staff in leading and supporting the rollout of the KM Roadmap; and
• Make data-driven decisions on how to pivot communication and engagement strategies as needed.

The company’s Integrated Change Management Plan provides recommendations that will support the company’s workforce in sustainably adjusting to new ways of creating, managing, storing, and sharing knowledge, information and data. With an Integrated Change Management Plan to accompany its KM Strategy and Roadmap, the company is well positioned to realize its corporate agenda and goals of enabling staff to exchange knowledge, experience, and insights in support of collaborative problem-solving, decision-making, and the development of transformative services and platforms.

Integrated Change Management Plan for Top Telecommunications CompanyDownload

The post Integrated Change Management Plan for Top Telecommunications Company appeared first on Enterprise Knowledge.

A quick online search of the question “When do we implement change management?” surfaces the age-old response of “the sooner the better.” It’s common advice that change management efforts should run in tandem with the kickoff of any initiative (or technology launch) to ensure sustainability and return on investment. But in the early stages of a knowledge management project, what does change management look like?

EK’s Integrated Change Management approach consists of three phases: Aligning, Surfacing, and Realizing. During the first phase – Aligning – we work with leadership at the project onset to understand their high-level vision for the organization, and begin to shape the tactical approach for execution. This phase is critical for setting the groundwork for the long-term adoption of the change at hand. 

There are 4 Must-Do’s that occur during the Aligning phase. Because the effect of these actions taken together is exponential rather than additive, it’s best to complete all four activities rather than selectively execute only one or two.

Must-Do 1: Establish a Crystal Clear Purpose Statement

Time after time when we ask clients “What is the purpose of this change?,” we hear things like “greater efficiency,” “improved customer experience,” and “culture-shift.” If the change is technology-related, we also hear adjectives about the user experience – phrases such as “one-stop-shop,” “easy to navigate,” “greater search functionality,” and “time-saving.” In both scenarios, while those elements are certainly a part of the change or the platform being launched, the reality is, that kind of language is not clear enough. It is still too “squishy,” and just a jumble of words. While these sentiments are important to capture, they don’t identify a North Star for the project – something every purpose statement should do in the form of a complete statement. A crystal-clear purpose statement should be simple, relevant, and repeatable to generate momentum and widespread trust in the change. It should also act as the judge and jury when the team comes to a crossroads. We should always be able to look to the purpose statement and ask ourselves: “Does this decision move us closer to that direction or further away?” Generating a succinct and easily repeatable purpose statement is a real skill. Your team will move through a few iterations before getting it “right.” Don’t worry and don’t settle. This is important. Make sure you nail it down. 

Must-Do 2: Establish a Change Team

EK’s approach to Integrated Change Management is heavily metrics-based. However, before metrics can be collected and analyzed, it is important to have ‘canaries in the coal mine.’ Every organization has its own language, strengths, and sensitive areas, and you need to manage change with those considerations in mind. We’ve had success with establishing a group of 8-10 individuals who can tell us what is percolating in the organization at the moment, how the organization has dealt with change in the past, and who can utilize their social capital to build both trust and supportive engagement for the change. Selecting the right individuals for this team is key. There needs to be a good mix of people with time to do the work, the ability to accurately convey the sentiments of their colleagues, and those who can engage in healthy conflict. It is also absolutely critical that actual business users are on this team to represent the perspectives of those who will be most impacted. This team needs to be able to challenge one another’s ideas and ensure groupthink doesn’t take over this small, but mighty team.

Must-Do 3: Define Success & ROI Metrics

Developing metrics to track the progress of your change efforts is critical to ensuring that everyone involved in the project stays both output- and outcome-driven. In order to understand the value of change though, metrics must be accompanied with context. A way to easily remember this rule is with an alliteration: numbers and narrative. It’s not enough to simply offer up a positive story about the change – your senior leaders will want to see numbers that demonstrate impact. At the same time, numbers without context are not able to convey the significance and meaning of the work that is being accomplished. At EK, we utilize a distinct methodology to capture both numbers and narrative for reporting ROI that resonates with leaders. 

Metrics and milestones are also necessary anchor points that will enable you to make more data-driven decisions and adapt your change strategy as necessary. Your Change Team will help identify transition activities to support their colleagues in adapting to new ways of working. To gauge success, there has to be a way to determine whether those transition activities are having the intended impact. Defining corresponding metrics that are tracked on an ongoing basis will position you to adjust your change strategy when it is clear something isn’t working as anticipated, and pivot to try a different approach. When developing your ROI strategy, keep your audience in mind and set yourself up to be adaptable.

Must-Do 4: Get to Know the Status Quo

For better or for worse, the phrase “every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets” holds true. When we’re helping a client make a change, we start by understanding why things are the way they are. It’s during the early stages of a project that we’re looking for answers to a lot of questions, and you should be too. We want to know, who is most heavily invested in how things are done today? What is the role of failure and learning in the organization, and what would make people feel safer when taking calculated risks at work? We want to know, quite simply, who can tell others what to do? Who do people listen to? There will be people in your organization who can influence at both a small and large scale, and it will be important to engage these groups or individuals as part of the change. We also ask about how information flows across the organization and top-down to determine what silos exist and look to understand what type of information is made available versus what is released on a need-to-know basis. There are different ways to go about collecting this data, but don’t skip out on asking these important questions. The responses will inform the development of your change strategy as you consider how best to prevent issues from arising as you’re introducing change into people’s day-to-day.

We know that change management can’t be saved for the tail end of the engagement and isn’t something an organization can just mention and hope for the best – the scaffolding has to be set up at the beginning of the initiative and that begins with Aligning. We encourage you to use these 4 Must-Do’s to set up your scaffolding and to be on the lookout for Part 3 of this series, where we’ll discuss the second phase of EK’s integrated change management approach, Surfacing.

For more information on how to start implementing Integrated Change Management early, consider EK’s One-Day ICM Workshop or contact us at info@enterprise-knowledge.com.

The post Avoiding Adoption Failure: 4 Change Management Must-Do’s appeared first on Enterprise Knowledge.

Effective change management requires the ultimate war-room strategy. You must win over the hearts and minds of the people and ensure those hearts and minds lead to hands doing things in the new way for the long run. Setting and implementing this strategy shouldn’t be squeezed into the precious few spare minutes of your day. It’s too important. I know that you know this, and likely your senior leaders do as well, but getting leaders to allocate resources, including your time, into change management can be a challenge.

This 4-part blog series will give you the language to build a compelling case that will open the door to a fruitful discussion with your senior leaders regarding the change management you need in your organization. As you read, you’ll learn:

• What change management is and is not;
• A metaphor you can reuse to describe why change management matters;
• How to remove the mystery of change management by describing the work that will take place in three distinct phases;
• How you’ll use internal data to make evidence-based decisions; and
• How you’ll calculate and report ROI.

With this knowledge in hand you will be able to concretely answer the questions that your leaders have and secure the change management support you need.

Blog 1: The Change Management You Need

Seek First to Understand

As a change management practitioner, I often need to explain what change management is. However, as Steven Covey advocates in his Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, I try and “seek first to understand, then to be understood.” Therefore, I begin this kind of conversation by aiming to understand what my client’s perceptions of change management are. Often, I’ll hear something along the lines of “that’s the thing you do to get adoption, right?” The frequency of this answer is revealing, as it has demonstrated to me that there is a lot of ambiguity and a lack of understanding of what change management is and what adoption really means.

Change management, at its core, is about changing mindsets, changing behaviors, and then reinforcing and sustaining those changes over time. Good change management, however, also needs to address the complexities of modifying behavior, impacting culture, and gaining real return on the initiative that is being invested in. At EK, our change management experts take “good” change management a step further, practicing what we refer to as Integrated Change Management (ICM).

Integrated Change Management

ICM is the act of integrating leadership support, employee engagement, messaging, processes, success-metrics, and training to ensure swift and sustained adoption of the new way. What makes ICM different from the standard, traditional approach is that we are not just sending out comms and crossing-our-fingers with the hope that people read the material, make the necessary changes, and become advocates rather than resistors. We put in the necessary work and then reap the gains. This is an approach that can be applied at the business-unit level or at the enterprise-level when multiple strategic changes are occurring at once. Additionally, our practitioners also recognize no organization is operating with unlimited time, resources, and funds, as many traditional approaches might suggest. Every organization has restraints, and ICM works within this reality to deliver the target outcomes.

Siloed Work

Many organizations have adopted siloed ways of working. Siloes were originally designed to help teams work more efficiently removing layers of the organization that might distract, detain or otherwise impede the work of a team. People become well-adapted to the processes in their silo and it can create the time-savings that organizations originally intended. Real issues crop up however, when teams need to work across silos. There aren’t tried-and-true processes in place for working across silos, but more importantly, and more often, the relationships are not in place. Relationships are an incredibly undervalued aspect of organizational productivity, the ability to manage change or knowledge transfer.

Because siloed work is incredibly common in today’s workplace, EK’s practitioners begin by getting the structure and processes in place for people across departments and divisions to work efficiently together and build the needed relationships that ‘adoption of the new’ will require. Otherwise, we all know what will happen: hastily drawn up communications plans, strategic visions lost in translation, and mid-level managers struggling to convey to their individual contributors what is expected of them, resulting in a lackluster adoption rating. These are predictable risks that can be mitigated with ICM.

One Boat One Team

To better visualize how ICM works in practice, our consultants use the metaphor of a crew team and the sport of rowing because crew is the ultimate team sport. Every rower must operate their oar in sync with their teammates, entering and coming out of the water at the same time, because every stroke, from each rower, affects the team’s success. It looks easy and effortless when it’s done right, but crew demands that individuals come together to achieve a shared objective. There is no room for individual stars or people chasing personal goals. It requires a “one boat, one team” mentality.

Like crew, committing to long-term change takes grit, stamina, discipline, focus, steadiness, and, yes, sometimes even strength – strength to stand up to possible resistance. One of my colleagues at EK, a former rower and coxswain at the University of Oxford, says of her experience on a crew team: “Despite all the preparation, if you are not in sync, it does not matter how hard you try.”

When managing change, it does not matter how strong each individual leading the change is. What matters most is that all the players are in sync. This ranges from establishing a clear and succinct purpose, to understanding what metrics most signify ROI, to operationalizing the change into the day-to-day reality of the organization. Spending the time upfront by laying the groundwork for change is where you’ll see the most return on investment of effort.

Conclusion

Change management is not simple, but it doesn’t have to be hard. There are ways to work with your organization instead of against it to set up the right structure, processes and relationships to support change at either the business-unit or enterprise-level. This scaffolding has to be set up at the beginning of the initiative, do not save change management for the tail end of the engagement. It is a lesson that too many organizations have learned the hard way. Let’s do change differently this time. Let’s do ICM.

In the upcoming blogs, learn in detail how our experts execute ICM, and set yourself up to take the right steps at the right time, guiding your organization towards success and bringing the vision state to reality.

The post Change Management: If It’s Not Integrated, It’s Not Going to Work appeared first on Enterprise Knowledge.

As I will discuss in my next blog, the best way to ensure that the “know-how” of your organization is captured and disseminated effectively is to build and sustain a culture of knowledge sharing. A knowledge sharing culture enables knowledge transfers to occur frequently and instinctively by people across an organization, avoiding the need for formalized transfers at the point when information is at risk of being lost. Having said this, if your organization is at a crisis point and needs an immediate solution to its knowledge management challenges, then the best starting point is to implement the most crucial components of a knowledge transfer. Below, I share my top five tips for a successful knowledge transfer during times of chaos, crisis, or rapid change.

TIP #1: ENCOURAGE EMPLOYEE BUY-IN AND HAVE LEADERSHIP SET THE TONE.

When a knowledge transfer effort is not delivered with the proper messaging, it is easy for employees to view the process as creating additional work, rather than creating value. This is particularly true when sharing knowledge is viewed as relinquishing one’s power or expertise within an organization, in other words, “If I am not the primary holder of this knowledge, then I will not receive recognition or rewards.” 

For this reason, it is vital that leaders of an organization provide their employees with context about a knowledge transfer and keep them feeling included in the process. This involves openly sharing the processes that will occur throughout the engagement, conveying short-term and long-term goals, identifying required resources and tools, and making it clear that leaders are also contributing to and investing in the effort. For example, EK previously worked with a client’s leadership team to develop a communications plan that outlined how they would introduce and continuously communicate the steps and level of effort involved in accomplishing their knowledge transfer goals. This involved EK facilitating a workshop for the client’s core team members that demonstrated the need and value of a knowledge transfer and concluded in the development of a consensus-driven roadmap that denoted major action items, timelines, and team involvement. Ultimately, the key is to unite the members of the organization and show their efforts and knowledge as contributing to a mutually beneficial end-goal.

Similar to how my colleague suggests employing gamification to ensure effective change management, outlining the benefits that can be earned by individuals that contribute to the knowledge transfer will also create an incentive that enables the transfer to gain momentum. This might involve offering monetary rewards, such as bonuses or cash prizes, for those that contribute to the knowledge transfer effort or ensuring that those who share information are adequately recognized and praised for doing so. By making it clear that those who are sharing and transferring knowledge will be compensated in a meaningful way, your knowledge transfer will be better prepared to receive the level of effort and engagement that it requires.

TIP #2: IDENTIFY WHO IN YOUR ORGANIZATION KNOWS WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS MOST VALUABLE.

Not all knowledge is created equal. The task of identifying what knowledge is most valuable for employees, whether it is tacit or explicit, is crucial for a knowledge transfer as it allows for knowledge to be both recognized and prioritized. For many, this task can feel daunting, particularly if your organization possesses large quantities of information and lacks well-defined repositories that make knowledge findable and discoverable for users.

The best place to begin is to discover and work with your organization’s “human search engines,” or those individuals who are frequently asked questions by fellow employees about how to best do their jobs. These are the experts of your organization who will have the best insight into what knowledge will be necessary to capture throughout the knowledge transfer. Ask them questions, such as “What are the daily needs of our knowledge consumers?” and “What is the information that an employee at a particular level or in a specific sector needs to be successful in their job?” These conversations will enable you to gain a holistic view of the organization and identify what knowledge is being utilized by particular groups of employees.

TIP #3: IDENTIFY THE APPROPRIATE KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER METHOD FOR YOUR ORGANIZATION.

There is no one-size-fits all solution for those seeking to complete a knowledge transfer. Factors like an organization’s culture, size, industry, available technology (such as collaboration platforms), knowledge repositories, and employee buy-in all play a role in determining which knowledge transfer method will best suit your organization’s needs. Some of the most common methods for undergoing a knowledge transfer include:

When selecting which method or combination of methods is best for your organization, seek to answer the following questions:

1. How quickly does this knowledge transfer need to occur? Do we have days, weeks, or months?
2. How many experts should be involved in the process? How long are these experts available/how much time can they commit to this endeavor?
3. What is the depth or complexity of the knowledge that needs to be transferred? Is the knowledge technical, difficult to understand/convey, or multi-faceted?
4. What is the ability for experts to articulate their knowledge?

By being aware of the effort level and complexity of your knowledge transfer, you will be able to best select which method(s) will be most effective for capturing, managing, and disseminating your organization’s crucial knowledge. In truth, there is often no single approach that meet an organization’s knowledge transfer needs, so at EK, we often construct a strategy that leverages a combination of these and other approaches in order to ensure that comprehensive, natural knowledge transfer is occurring.

TIP #4: RECOGNIZE WHEN TO CALL IN A THIRD PARTY OR ENLIST ADDITIONAL RESOURCES.

Recently, Enterprise Knowledge partnered with a client facing a major knowledge dilemma.Having chosen to terminate one of their primary office locations in an effort to downsize, “Client X” was confronted with the reality that they had not captured any of the knowledge possessed by employees who were planning to leave the organization. Faced with losing expert-level knowledge and experience, “Client X” attempted to engage in a speedy knowledge transfer, only to find that they lacked the resources and employee buy-in necessary to make progress. As a result, “Client X” turned to Enterprise Knowledge to help them understand how they could ensure that the knowledge that was so critical to their organization was not lost and could be leveraged by current and future employees.

If tensions are running high, resources are lacking, or there is insignificant buy-in from members of your organization, it is often best to bring in a third party to facilitate your knowledge transfer. By bringing in experts from outside of your organization, you are not only ensuring that knowledge transfer best practices are being employed but are increasing the overall legitimacy and perceived importance of the knowledge transfer.

TIP #5: USE THE INSIGHTS AND EXPERIENCE GAINED FROM THIS RAPID KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER TO LAY THE FOUNDATION FOR INCREASED, CONTINUED KNOWLEDGE SHARING WITHIN YOUR ORGANIZATION.

Don’t let a rapid knowledge transfer in a time of chaos or crisis be the end of your organization’s knowledge transfer journey. Forbes estimates that poor knowledge-sharing practices cost Fortune 500 companies $31.5 billion annually and that effective knowledge management increases company productivity by up to 40%. The best knowledge transfers aren’t those that occur at the point of crisis, but are those that are naturally ingrained in an organization. At Enterprise Knowledge, we are adept at helping organizations, both in the short- and long-term, achieve successful knowledge transfers and build a culture rooted in knowledge sharing so that their employees have access to the right information at the right time.

Interested in completing a successful knowledge transfer for your organization or beginning the process of developing a knowledge sharing culture? Contact us at info@enterprise-knowledge.com for more information.

The post Top Five Tips for A Successful Knowledge Transfer in Times of Chaos, Crisis, or Rapid Change appeared first on Enterprise Knowledge.