It’s been a while.
Too long, in fact…
Since I last blogged I have started a new job as a Knowledge
Management (KM) Specialist at a large utility organisation. I began in May and have 2 main roles:
- To provide KM input and advice to senior managers and others running various initiatives
- To help introduce new KM capabilities and improve existing ones
To support this latter role, we are running a complementary
initiative, which is taking up the majority of my time at present – namely, the
planning and execution of KM pilot projects.
The aim of KM pilot projects is to generate quick value, win senior management support and maintain momentum for longer-term capability development. They are also valuable KM training opportunities and will teach us what kind of KM will work in our organisation, and what won't.
What does 'quick value' mean? Simply put, it's about achieving one or more of the following benefits:
What does 'quick value' mean? Simply put, it's about achieving one or more of the following benefits:
- Working faster
- Working more cheaply
- Working more safely
- Working better
Focusing primarily on the core, technical divisions, we have
run a series of exploratory workshops with management teams, to understand their
work and identify any challenges or opportunities where KM interventions could
help.
This produced a shortlist of potential pilot
projects, which we then assessed against a set of criteria, including:
- Impact
- Senior management support
- Feasibility
- Transferability of knowledge
This enables us to prioritise and sequence the pilots, and
then allocate one each to different KM department colleagues for planning and
execution.
We have identified the training requirements and divided
these up amongst ourselves, with each colleague researching, and preparing training
material on, a different topic. These
training modules include:
- Introduction to KM pilot projects
- Knowledge capture
- Knowledge organisation & synthesis
- Knowledge transfer
- Access & retrieval
- Performance management
We will deliver this training to ourselves, offer one
another feedback, then revise and improve the materials. Then we will train the relevant Divisional colleagues
who will be involved on each pilot, including both Knowledge Champions and
those from the business teams within the pilot scope.
The plan is for us to begin the first pilot project together,
then for others to follow on a rolling basis, with each department colleague
peeling off to initiate and run their own pilot project in turn. The idea is that after 18 months or so, we
will have completed 5 or 6 pilots in the core divisions and the KM skill and
experience levels will be greatly improved.
I will update on our progress over the coming months. Obviously I won’t share confidential details
but am happy to discuss what I’m learning as we go along – what is working and
why, as well as what isn’t and what we are doing about it.
In the next blog post, I'll explore some of the potential pilots in detail, and explain what a KM response might look like.
In the next blog post, I'll explore some of the potential pilots in detail, and explain what a KM response might look like.