The human element is the make-or-break of knowledge management
A pervasive trend that I have observed while working on Knowledge Management initiatives at various organizations: tools are chosen or systems are created without taking users into account. These initiatives often fail because of lack of adoption and engagement.
To avoid this costly error, user research must be conducted to answer questions like,
What are the pain points of various user groups?
Who will benefit from a customer knowledge ecosystem?
What concerns do people have about knowledge sharing?
Strategic “culture work” is the next step - bringing people together to share ideas and concerns. What does this look like?
The UX org at a large company needed a research repository. An enterprising researcher (with technical chops) quickly created one, thinking “There - problem solved!” But only a handful of his colleagues knew about it, and in the end, only 30% of researchers used the repository. It quickly became obsolete.
A few months later, I came into the company to help stand up a repository. The need was still there, but now a number of people were indifferent or even resistant to the idea. Why? Because “we did this a few months ago and it didn’t work.”
I rolled up my sleeves and got ready to “research the researchers.”
I talked to researchers on each team, asking what they thought about a repository - including the enterprising researcher who had created the repository months ago. I introduced myself in team meetings, explaining what I was there to do. I then drew up and distributed a survey, asking questions like, “What value would a research repository bring to your organization?”
That was just the beginning of the process of “culture work” - bringing people together on a topic they all cared about, while establishing trust and assurance that this initiative would succeed.
Is this easy work? No. There are a lot of difficult conversations around knowledge sharing that have to happen. And it certainly helps to have executive-level support if the way teams are working needs to change. But without a healthy knowledge sharing culture, knowledge management initiatives will not get off the ground.
Not sure how to navigate the human element of your KM initiative? Get in touch with me!
