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What Are Your Knowledge Managers Afraid Of?

Looking at the jack-o’-lanterns and inflatable spiders dotting my neighborhood this week, I started thinking about childhood fears—and grownup ones. I’m more likely to worry about the lure of leftover mini Snickers than ghosts or goblins, but the things that really keep me up at night tend to be “the big stuff,” such as work and family. So in honor of October 31, I wanted to share the top 5 fears we hear from enterprise knowledge managers, along with suggestions to avoid KM nightmares and keep the scary stuff where it belongs (with the haunted houses, vampires, zombies…) As an extra treat, we’ve made the starred content items free through November.

1. People aren’t even aware of the enterprise KM toolkit and how it can help them.

For a KM professional, there’s nothing more horrifying than talking to colleagues who have no idea what knowledge is available to them. Even if they don’t call it “knowledge management” (and often they don’t), you want people to know that your firm has a knowledge base, communities of practice, a way to look up experts—whatever the tools and approaches are. That’s why APQC advocates creating a targeted communication plan for KM*and employing a KM communication director to get the word out.

2. People can’t find the information they need to do their jobs.

As organizations contend with more content than ever before, it’s becoming harder and harder for people to sift through all the documents, intranet pages, videos, and wiki articles to locate exactly what they need. In our research, we see organizations using a creative blend of formal taxonomy, user-generated tags and keywords, powerful search tools,* and social feedback to surface the best, most relevant content.

3. Experts claim they’re “too busy to share.”

When people say they don’t have time to share their knowledge, it usually means that they aren’t being offered the right opportunities and incentives. For example, people are three times more likely to share with colleagues* if time is specifically allocated for them to answer questions and requests for expertise. Sometimes organizations need to create a charge code for time spent answering questions, but in other cases it’s more about creating a culture where experts and long-tenured employees see knowledge sharing as part of their jobs.

4. People revert to their personal networks as the easiest source of knowledge and expertise.

For employees who have been around a while and have lots of good contacts, it’s often tempting to reach over the cubicle wall or shoot off an email to a friendly colleague, instead of using the expertise locator to find the best contact or posting to Yammer to get a range of opinions. Change management tactics can help people understand the benefits of structured, public knowledge sharing, but you also need to make the tools easy so that people don’t give up and revert back to the way they’ve always worked. 

5. Lots of knowledge gets documented, but very little gets reused.

APQC has worked with a lot of organizations that are great at putting best practices and lessons learned in databases—and then never looking at them again. It’s hard to get people to capture knowledge, but it can be even more difficult to convince them to look at it later when they encounter a question or are scoping a new project.  Firms can help ensure that knowledge actually gets used by building captured knowledge into documentation and training, making employees accountable for applying existing knowledge* instead of reinventing the wheel, and measuring the value of reuse so employees understand the benefits.

What are your biggest fears when it comes to your KM program? What are the perennial challenges, and what are the emerging problems stemming from changing attitudes, processes, and technology? Post your thoughts below.