![]() ![]() ![]() Clearly communicate how they will benefit from their staff participating in KM, as well as the specific support you need. Executives have a huge influence over the culture, and you’ll need them on board to troubleshoot cultural obstacles. Involve leaders in KM strategy development.Cultural nuances between functions, units, and locations can also create siloes that complicate cross-functional KM. The culture can make employees afraid to ask questions or share, suspicious about how their knowledge will be used, or skeptical that their participation will be recognized or make a difference. Learn more in Overcoming Time as a Barrier to Knowledge Sharing.Įven if leaders say all the right things about KM, underlying assumptions, attitudes, and unwritten rules about “how things work” may work against the KM program. People will make time for KM if they think it’s important to leaders and managers, and if they think it will help their work and careers. Create explicit and implicit incentives.For example, if employees use timesheets or project codes for tracking, make sure those systems account for time spent on KM. Look for structural obstacles to spending time on KM.Employees should be able to navigate to the exact guidance they need, without flipping through a manual or sitting through a long video. Make KM training bite-sized and on-demand.Outline roles and expectations for key contributors like experts and community leaders, as well as rank-and-file KM participants. Position KM as part of people’s responsibilities. ![]() Look for ways to eliminate or automate steps, integrate KM into the systems and apps employees already use, and allow them to set up alerts and reminders. Time barriers also arise when employees are overburdened with other tasks or see KM as “extra work” that doesn’t benefit them. KM may be asking people to sit through long meetings, for example, or KM tools may be time-consuming to learn and use. Sometimes, this stems from problems within the KM program itself. Time becomes a barrier when employees think they’re too busy to do KM. Learn more in Overcoming Awareness as a Barrier to Knowledge Sharing. Convince leaders and mangers that KM matters, and make it easy for them to both role-model and encourage participation. Live events, contests, and funny videos can create “buzz” for KM. Find out what narratives resonate with different subsets of employees, and then customize communications based on what each cares about. You’ll need to hit employees regularly on a range of channels to ensure your point gets across. Some people never read email, and others zone out in meetings. Then promote the brand so employees instantly recognize that a tool or message comes from KM. Brainstorm catchy terms and phrases to talk about KM, along with a logo or motto that aligns with the organization’s culture and values. Many KM programs struggle to gain traction because they aren’t marketed in a way that cuts through the noise and resonates with employees. But if the message is not conveyed early, often, and in the right language and format, employees won’t understand the tools and approaches available to them, when they should use them, or why they should care. That’s why every KM program needs a cohesive and compelling communications strategy. People can’t do knowledge management if they don’t know what it is. But following this advice can get a struggling KM initiative moving in the right direction. These aren’t easy problems with cookie-cutter solutions, and the right approach will depend on your situation. People either aren’t aware of the tools and approaches available to them, don’t have (or make) time to participate, or unwritten rules and assumptions make KM participation difficult or unappealing.īelow are descriptions of the three barriers, along with ideas to work through each. A knowledge management effort can fail for countless reasons, but the breakdown usually starts with a “people problem.” According to APQC’s research, the biggest barriers that hurt knowledge management implementations are awareness, time, and culture.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |