Why are people critical for Knowledge Management? Under a people-focused approach to Knowledge Management (KM), it is clear that people are critical in: (a) Identifying & Capturing Corporate Knowledge and (b) Knowledge Sharing & Dissemination Engaging people to offer and share their knowledge is key for an effective Knowledge Management. In this article Faye Orfanou demonstrates why.
Table of Contents
- People lie at the core of KM
- Getting People Engaged & Responsive
- Engagement to “externalize” knowledge
- A knowledge sharing culture for the “flow” of knowledge
- Responsiveness to use knowledge
- The responsibility of the corporation
- Responsive employees
*Answering the question: Why are people critical for Knowledge Management (KM)?
In this article we answer the question “why are people critical for Knowledge Management”. We set out a people-focused approach to Knowledge Management (KM), pointing out the key role of people in KM policies such as:
- Identifying & Capturing Corporate Knowledge (“Does the corporation know what it knows?”) and
- Knowledge Sharing & Dissemination (“Is corporate knowledge accessible and useable to all potential users? Does knowledge flow within the corporation?”)
Moreover, engaging people to offer and share their knowledge is key for an effective Knowledge Management. In this article we demonstrate why
1. People lie at the core of KM
Dealing with all the above Knowledge Management issues is demanding and at times complex. KM as a business operation is not simply about setting up processes and adopting technology tools. Knowledge management requires more. It certainly involves processes and technology but inevitably it involves also people management.
Knowledge starts with people and ends up at people. People:
- produce,
- adopt,
- integrate,
- use and
- share corporate knowledge.
Technology offers solutions that support knowledge storing, accessibility and knowledge sharing but technology alone cannot resolve critical KM challenges as knowledge capturing and knowledge creation.
At the same time, evidence shows that KM processes may simply set the KM framework but they are not enough to ensure effective KM, unless HR practices and in particular Learning & Development (L&D) practices are adopted.
People lie at the core of Knowledge Management and can define its quality and efficiency. Actually, the KM challenge should be: “What would be the “power mix” of processes, technology and people management in order to achieve KM quality and efficiency”?
2. Getting People Engaged & Responsive
In order to achieve KM effectiveness in all aspects of KM (knowledge identification, knowledge creation, knowledge use and knowledge sharing) you need people who are:
- Engaged (to externalize their knowledge & share it) but also
- Responsive (to using knowledge and adopting KM practices).
Engaged people are most times responsive, so engagement practices are the most significant. Still, a corporation needs to ensure their actual responsiveness by making it easy for them to respond.
(a) Engagement to “externalize” knowledge
Externalising knowledge means that employees express their views, insights and experience, “investing” their own knowledge to corporate projects and operations in order to contribute its effectiveness. Actually, externalizing knowledge is not evident, because a significant part of the knowledge available in a corporation is tacit, it lies “within the minds” of its people and is often not explicitly expressed. Very often solutions to corporate problems derive out of this tacit knowledge.
It remains a challenge for a corporation to identify and extract this available knowledge. In reality, most corporations should ask themselves: “Does your corporation know what it knows?”
Corporate knowledge involves: (a) “solid” elements (data, leads, guidelines) and (b) “fluid” elements (experience, know-how, views, insights). Such “fluid” elements may be
- (aa) explicit, i.e. explained in writing and documented (in strategy documents, articles or even corporate e-mails).
- (bb) tacit i.e. not documented, not “externalized” It lies in the experience, insights, views and projections of all people working in and for the corporation (whether as employees or as collaborators)
Clearly, a corporation cannot define its knowledge effectively, unless it “extracts” its tacit knowledge., so that it can be useable and shareable. A key to “knowledge capturing” is engaging people.
People get engaged to externalize their knowledge when:
(a) They are motivated to do so:
People are motivated when (a) they have embraced corporate objectives and share the corporate vision and mainly (b) when their contribution is acknowledged or awarded, when they take credit for it,
(b) They feel “safe” to expose themselves to seniors and peers:
People feel safe to expose themselves when the corporate culture encourages initiatives and when it nurtures communication and openness (particularly when juniors are not restricted from expressing concerns or from sharing thoughts with seniors)
(c) Engagement is made “easy”
Easy engagement requires (aa) a common corporate positive approach to engagement, instigating people to participate to corporate initiatives and integrating such instigation into corporate culture (b) easy-to-use technology solutions, which make participation to corporate initiatives easy.
(b) A knowledge sharing culture for the “flow” of knowledge
Expressing knowledge is the first step. Sharing knowledge is a further step and it also requires engagement.
Externalizing knowledge involves expressing views and insights to seniors or to 1-2 colleagues. Sharing knowledge means (a) being open to share your own knowledge or new knowledge that you have acquired, (b) being active in disseminating such knowledge so that it becomes accessible to anyone within the corporation that might need it. Sharing also requires an engagement attitude. Such an attitude can be nurtured by the corporation by developing a “sharing culture” and promoting the “flow of knowledge”.
A corporation could create a sharing culture and achieve a “flow” of knowledge:
(a) By promoting a community mindset
In communities people feel “peer” and “active”. They develop a feeling of “belonging” among “peers” while at the same time each one’s individual contribution matters. Each one is a unit belonging in a team with a common purpose.
(b) By embracing and promoting constant learning as a core corporate objective, so as to nurture a learning mindset
A learning mindset involves (aa) eagerness to acquire new knowledge & to apply such knowledge for the efficiency and/or improvement of your own work, (bb) eagerness to further develop your skills and (cc) an acknowledgement (awareness) of the value of knowledge.
The corporation could nurture a learning mindset when (aa) it offers clear specific opportunities for learning, (bb) when it rewards learning or even (cc) define learning as a key factor for appraisal and further professional development within the corporation.
(c) Responsiveness to use knowledge
Apart from engaged employees, who externalize and share knowledge, effective KM requires responsive employees, who are willing to – and know how to – use the knowledge made available by the corporation to them.
(aa) The responsibility of the corporation
Most certainly, the corporation first must make knowledge available and useable The corporation first has to “respond” successfully to the organizational requirements of knowledge availability and useability which are:
- Effective knowledge codification and storing as well as knowledge accessibility are critical.
- Efficient technology solutions are required for such storing and accessibility.
(bb) Responsive employees
Even if knowledge is made available, how do employees react? Do they actively make use of such knowledge for the efficiency of their work? Are they willing to do so? Do they respond to the available knowledge by using it? Do they know how to do it? Employee responsiveness is also a challenge for the corporation. Most certainly, responsiveness is closely connected with engagement, but it should be treated distinctly.
The 3 key principles for people responsiveness to knowledge use are:
(a) Awareness: People have to be (made) aware of the necessity using knowledge in their work. In order to achieve awareness, the corporation must set knowledge use as a primary corporate objective in its operation.
(b) Acknowledgement and potential rewarding for knowledge use: Motivation is boosted with acknowledgement. Acknowledgement of the responsive employee requires that the corporation itself acknowledges expressly the value of knowledge. Acknowledgement is also closely connected with actions that nurture a learning mindset, as described above and pointe out below.
(c) (even more importantly) A Learning Mindset: As indicated above, a learning mindset involves an eagerness to acquire and apply new knowledge.