Identifying Objectives and Obtaining Executive Commitment for a KM Program

Knowledge Management Programs: Identifying Objectives and Obtaining Commitments Stan Garfield KM Chicago March 2010

KM Program Implementation Steps
Create a Top 3 Objectives List of challenges and opportunities which your KM program will address.
Provide 9 Answers to questions about people, process, and technology.
Define the KM Strategy .
Gain the sponsorship of your senior executive through The 10 Commitments .
Create and execute the Implementation Plan .
Objectives and Commitments

Goals of Knowledge Management
Enabling better and faster decision making
Making it easy to find relevant information and resources
Reusing ideas, documents, and expertise
Avoiding redundant effort
Avoiding making the same mistakes twice
Taking advantage of existing experience
Communicating important information widely and quickly
Promoting standard, repeatable processes and procedures
Providing methods , tools, templates, techniques, and examples
Making scarce expertise widely available
Showing customers how knowledge is used for their benefit
Accelerating delivery to customers
Enabling the organization to leverage its size
Making the organization's best problem-solving experiences reusable
Stimulating innovation and growth

Opportunities Survey
Check all of the following challenges you are currently experiencing:
It's difficult for my team to make decisions, and when we make them, they are bad.
It's hard to find relevant information and resources at the time of need.
We have to start from scratch each time we start a new project, and my team keeps reinventing the wheel.
We repeat the same mistakes over and over.
It's difficult to find out if anyone else has solved a similar problem before or already done similar work.
Information is poorly communicated to me, and I am unaware of what has been done, what is happening, and where the organization is heading.
I can't find standard processes, procedures, methods, tools, templates, techniques, and examples.
I can't get experts to help me, because they are scarce, in great demand, and unavailable when needed.
We are unable to respond to customers who ask for proof that we know how to help them and that we have done similar work before.
It takes too long to invent, design, manufacture, sell, and deliver products and services to our customers.

Opportunities Survey (continued)
List any other challenges you regularly experience with sharing, innovating, reusing, collaboration, learning, and searching for knowledge.
From the challenges which you checked and the ones you listed, please rank the three most important in decreasing order of importance:
<fill in the most important challenge>
<fill in the second most important challenge>
<fill in the third most important challenge>
What examples can you provide where sharing, innovating, reusing, collaboration, learning, and searching for knowledge are working well today?
What examples can you provide where sharing, innovating, reusing, collaboration, learning, and searching for knowledge worked well in the past?
What examples can you provide where sharing, innovating, reusing, collaboration, learning, and searching for knowledge worked well in the past or are working well today in other organizations?
What suggestions do you have for dealing with any of the challenges you identified?
What other needs do you have sharing, innovating, reusing, collaboration, learning, and searching for knowledge?
What suggestions do you have for meeting the needs you identified?
Describe how knowledge management would work ideally.

Example of Top 3 Objectives
Increase win rate by improving the proposal development process.
Lower sales and delivery costs by reusing proven practices.
Increase engagement quality by collaborating with customers and partners.

9 Questions to Answer
People
Which people in your organization need to participate in the KM program?
What are the different roles that participants will need to play?
Who are the key stakeholders and leaders to line up in support of the new initiatives?
Process
What existing processes need to be modified to incorporate KM activities?
What new processes need to be created?
What policies will need to be changed or created to ensure desired behaviors?
Technology
What existing tools can be used in support of the new initiatives?
What new tools will need to be created or obtained?
What integration of tools and systems will be required?

Example: People
Which job families in your organization need to participate in the KM program?
Consultants
Project managers
Managers
What are the different roles that participants will need to play?
Consultants: need to collaborate as members of project teams and communities of practice
Project managers: need to reuse content from previous projects an contribute details about new ones
Managers: need to ensure that consultants and project managers perform their expected roles
KM leaders: need to provide the required people, process, and technology components
Who are the key stakeholders and leaders to line up in support of the new initiatives?
Senior executive: sponsor program, provide funding, communicate regularly, establish goals, and inspect ongoing performance
Management team: lead by example, ensure goals are defined, and reward good performance
Thought leaders: lead communities, endorse processes, and use tools

Example: Process
What existing processes need to be modified to incorporate KM activities?
Project team collaboration: replace ad hoc email and file sharing with use of standard team spaces
Employee goal setting and reward: add KM-specific goals and rewards
What new processes need to be created?
Capture: collect project information and documents
Reuse: search for existing content and contacts from previous projects and employ as much as possible in new projects
What policies will need to be changed or created to ensure desired behaviors?
Collaboration: ensure that all project teams use standard team spaces
Capture and Reuse: ensure that the capture and reuse processes are followed

Example: Technology
What existing tools can be used in support of the new initiatives?
Threaded discussions
Virtual meeting rooms
What new tools will need to be created or obtained?
Collaborative team spaces
Structured repositories
What integration of tools and systems will be required?
Threaded discussions with email and search
Collaborative team spaces and structured repositories with email, search, and workflow

Knowledge Management Strategies
Motivate : communicate, model, set goals, recognize, reward
Network : connect, cross organizational boundaries, collaborate, build communities, converse, tell stories, meet in person
Supply : databases, skills inventories, document repositories
Analyze : verification, distillation, harvesting, lessons learned, proven practices, sense-making, social network analysis, positive deviants
Codify : consolidate, collate, integrate, value, tag, refine, standardize
Disseminate : distribute, publish, syndicate, aggregate, personalize
Demand : just-in-time KM, expertise location, ask the expert, search, user assistance, e-learning, threaded discussions, appreciative inquiry
Act : decision making, proven practice replication, process improvement, embedding in workflow, responding, answering, reusing
Invent : create, develop, innovate, transform, stimulate, rethink, imagine

Example of a KM Strategy
Motivate: measure and reward collaboration, sharing, capture, reuse.
Network: get all consultants and project managers to collaborate on projects, actively participate in communities of practice
Supply: capture proposals and other project documents for all projects.
Analyze: select proven practices from contributed project documents.
Codify: ensure metadata is attached to submitted documents, and cleanse proposals to use as standard templates.
Disseminate: make it easy for everyone to find reusable content, methods, tools, templates, techniques, and examples.
Demand: search for proven practices and proposal templates for each new project.
Act: reuse proven practices and proposal templates on each new project, and employ customer and partner feedback to improve project quality.
Invent: use customer and partner feedback to improve existing services and create new service offerings.

10 Commitments from Senior Executive
Approve a reasonable budget for people and other KM expenses.
Ensure that all KM leaders have the time to do a good job in the role and are allowed to meet in person once a year.
Learn how to give a KM program overview presentation .
Learn how to use KM tools and use them to lead by example.
Communicate regularly about how the organization is doing in KM.
Provide time during leadership team meetings and employee communication events for KM messages.
Ensure that KM goals are really set for all employees, and are enforced.
Inspect compliance to KM goals with the same fervor as for other key performance indicators.
Reward employees who share, innovate, reuse, collaborate and learn.
Ensure that time is allowed for sharing, innovating, reusing, collaborating, and learning.

Ensuring the 10 Commitments are Met
Submit a reasonable budget for people and other KM expenses.
Submit a proposal for the first annual meeting.
Schedule an event at which the senior executive will give the KM program overview presentation.
Subscribe the senior executive to an appropriate threaded discussion, and ask them to post or reply to a question.
Prepare a communication to be distributed to all members of the organization.
Request time during a leadership team meeting and the next employee communication event for a KM message to be presented.
Prepare a communication setting KM goals for all employees.
Request that the organization's balanced scorecard or equivalent performance indicator reporting be updated to include compliance to KM goals.
Submit a proposal for a recognition program to reward employees who share, innovate, reuse, collaborate, and learn.
Prepare a document defining how time is allowed and can be reported for sharing, innovating, reusing, collaborating, and learning.

Positive Culture: Ask your senior executive to endorse, communicate, and exemplify this credo:
I will practice and reward caring, sharing, and daring – caring for others, sharing what I know, and daring to try new ideas.
I will insist on trust, truth, and transparency in all dealings – earning and respecting the trust of others, communicating truthfully and openly, and demonstrating and expecting accountability.
I will look for opportunities to help, thank, and praise others.
I will eliminate criticism, blame, and ridicule in all interactions with others.

Example: MindTree Consulting Values
Caring – requires empathy, trust; needed to enable sharing and individual push of knowledge
Learning – required for individual pull of knowledge
Achieving – high performance requires resourcefulness and heavy reliance on knowledge
Sharing – active cooperation; requires fair process, openness, transparency.
Social Responsibility – an outward extension of all the above values

For additional information
Visit my web site and follow me on Twitter @stangarfield
Read my book and my blog archives
Join the SIKM Leaders CoP and the Midwest KM CoP
Stan Garfield http://sites.google.com/site/stangarfield/home Objectives and Commitments

Deloitte refers to one or more of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, a Swiss Verein, and its network of member firms, each of which is a legally separate and independent entity. Please see www.deloitte.com/about for a detailed description of the legal structure of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu and its member firms.

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Identifying Objectives and Obtaining Executive Commitment for a KM Program

by KM Chicago on Mar 10, 2010

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Identifying Objectives and Obtaining Executive Commitment for a KM Program — Presentation Transcript