SOMETHING TO SHARE ON KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

I have been one of the implementers of knowledge management (KM) in my organisation. We have the system up and running and put the change management in place. We had also formally launched the system sometime in June this year. Apar from that, I sometimes give presentations on KM to other organisations. Interestingly, I am also part of the project team who is implementing KM in the Malaysian Government as a pilot project in 2 ministries and 1 central agency. Another 1 central agency is queueing to particpate in this pilot project, making it 2 central agencies piloting this.

But, what is interesting to note is that as an organisation that claims to be the advocate of KM, we sure don't practise what we preach to the fullest. We told our KM clients that leadership is important. That the top management buy-in and support are crucial in the success of the KM implementation in their organisation. We have also been stressing to the clients that there should be a proper KM governance in place. There should be a dedicated internal team managing the implementation and change management to ensure the success of their KM initiative. Let's not start with changing the working culture, putting the right process, etc. ect. etc. And of course, a whole lot of other things as well... All in the name of successful implementation of KM.

But preaching is easier than practising... In reality, what happens in my organisation is that... YES there is huge top management buy-in, but very little support in terms of putting the proper KM governance in place. There is no full time KM Manager being hired. There are no clear and defined roles and responsibilities of those who are supposed to be the implementers of KM in the organisation. The KM KPIs are in place, but they are not properly measured in terms of ensuring that knowledge sharing, application and dissemination are taking place effectively. In short, the implementer team was pulled out of the project before we could see and measure the success of the implementation in our own organisation. Yet, we preach KM so vigirously to our clients on so many things...

Another interesting thing to note and observe is the project team that is implementing KM in the Government. You would think that these people would be the experts and be the SMEs on KM since we have our own KM implemented and since we are the KM consultants to these organisations. They are so confident when presenting their KM cases to our clients starting from the KM Strategic Blueprint, KM system and now the change management to ensure the success of the KM initiative in the respective ministry/agency. But the truth is... these people DON'T EVEN WALK THE TALK. They don't share at all... There are no knowledge sharing sessions take place, there are no documents being passed around to avoid the team members from re-inventing the wheels. There are no lessons learnt being initiated and shared to ensure that the same mistakes are not repeated. Everyone is working in silos. I don't even know what the other team members are doing in the other ministry/agency. These people don't even access to our own company's knowledge management system.

And we call ourselves the experts and the advocates of KM...

ieja