Introducing Knowledge Management

2. Carefully reducing fears and inhibitions

Major changes are a particular challenge in any organisation. Participants often approach changes with mistrust and are initially reserved, in some cases even dismissive. Despite this, the many advantages make it worthwhile to implement knowledge management in your organisation.

This is how you can help reduce fears and inhibitions among everyone involved:

• Dialogue: Engage directly with participants who are sceptical of knowledge management. This can take place through a personal message or, ideally, through a personal conversation, whether by phone or in person. Keep in mind that rejection usually stems from fear. In a personal conversation with the biggest sceptics, you have the opportunity to explain precisely what knowledge management is about and which advantages it brings for everyone involved.
• Awareness-raising: Before participants develop scepticism towards knowledge management at all, it is worthwhile to provide preventative awareness-raising. This can take the form of talks at your organisation’s events, printed or digital brochures on the topic, and circulars. This ensures that everyone is thoroughly informed and knows exactly what knowledge management means and entails when it is introduced. One example of a common fear during the introduction of knowledge management is that shared knowledge could be “stolen”. Awareness-raising provides you with the opportunity to address this and explain that knowledge is not taken away but used for the benefit of the organisation.

3. Promoting transparency

In a Social Intranet, you can share not only processes, dates and work results, but also news about the organisation. This helps colleagues feel better informed and more included. For this reason, transparency is of central importance when introducing knowledge management. This gives participants more trust in your organisation, making them more willing to share their knowledge with everyone else.

• Sharing news: As soon as information arises that concerns your organisation, you can share it immediately on the platform. This gives users the feeling that they have a voice. Furthermore, it helps avoid the risk of rumours. For knowledge management, this is helpful, because such news can influence which types of knowledge are particularly relevant to the organisation at that moment and should be collected. It is also possible to automatically create a public post when uploading a document to announce that something new has been added.
• Ensuring accessibility: Transparency in knowledge management also involves ensuring that all participants know that the collected knowledge is accessible at all times. Communicate when, for example, large amounts of available knowledge are uploaded. A simple post in the Social Intranet is sufficient, but internal newsletters are also suitable. Such newsletters can also be created using your Social Intranet. When new users register on your platform, you can refer to the uploaded knowledge in the welcome message and make it easier for them to enter the platform’s knowledge-friendly culture. This helps raise awareness of the knowledge collection, ensuring that it is actively used, managed and expanded, and grows together with the organisation.

Step 1: Research:

What knowledge actually exists in the organisation? In the first step, this must be identified. It is important to consider where data and information that could be valuable are being lost, because the goal of knowledge management is to secure this data and information.

Knowledge can be found in many places. It may be in old and new documents, or there may be a collection of books within your organisation, both in digital form and as physical books.

Finally, a very particular type of knowledge is relevant: the knowledge and know-how in the minds of the participants relating to procedures, processes and other matters concerning the organisation.
Ensure that it is made clear where knowledge accumulates within your organisation and consider what steps you can take to secure this knowledge for the long term.

Step 2: Convert:

The introduction of knowledge management brings major change for everyone involved. Everyone must rethink how they deal with knowledge. Effective change management can simplify this. Change management is also a process with great depth and must be carefully planned to ensure it succeeds.

In connection with knowledge management, this becomes relevant because the knowledge identified in the previous step is now to be converted into a format that can be preserved for the organisation in the long term. This is a process that many participants must first get used to.

Therefore, in this step a method must be chosen for how the knowledge is to be collected and stored, and all participants must be informed that a knowledge-collection process will take place. Participants must be mobilised and made aware that a demanding process lies ahead. To maintain morale and avoid intimidating participants, the communication should emphasise the advantages of knowledge management.

Step 3: Collect:

Once it has been determined which knowledge is required and everyone has been informed, the knowledge must now be collected. A structure must also be created for the knowledge. Even though knowledge is a valuable resource, not all knowledge is relevant to the organisation’s goals.

Therefore, before collection begins, it must be clear how the collected knowledge will be stored and sorted. Categories and subcategories can be developed to make the stored knowledge easier to find. It may also become clear that not all existing knowledge is relevant to the organisation, which must also be considered in this step.

For this reason, it is particularly important to consider which tools will be used for the collection and storage of knowledge to ensure that it can be properly organised.

Step 4: Secure:

Once the required knowledge has been collected, it must be secured. This can be done using a platform such as a Social Intranet, where knowledge of any kind – document, presentation or video – can be uploaded and appropriately organised so that it can be easily found by everyone.

Data are uploaded there into a kind of media library and arranged in folders and subfolders. Depending on the type of content, certain knowledge can also be made accessible only to a closed group of participants via a group, if the knowledge is relevant only to a particular part of the organisation.

By securing data on such a platform, this knowledge is not left somewhere on a hard drive where it can easily be lost. Instead, it is stored online and is readily available to all participants in the organisation at any time.

Step 5: Distribute:

The collected knowledge is now available on a platform. But it must not simply be left there and forgotten. It must therefore be ensured that all participants know that this collection exists and can be used. Newcomers in the organisation can also make use of this collection to learn about common procedures and processes.

Therefore, it is important that, in this final step, responsible persons are designated to maintain the knowledge collection, continuously add new knowledge and update or remove old knowledge if it is no longer relevant. Because people look after the knowledge collection, the long-term benefit of the collected knowledge can be ensured.

An active core team, the early reduction of fears, and organisation-wide transparency – these are the three best practices that can greatly facilitate the introduction of knowledge management within your organisation. Make sure that you apply all three practices when introducing knowledge management in your organisation, so that a knowledge-friendly culture emerges and remains in place over the long term. This enables your organisation to continuously develop without losing the knowledge it has gained.

Of course, the process may vary depending on the organisation. In some organisations, participants are much more willing to share their knowledge than in others, and the infrastructure available for knowledge management also differs. Nevertheless, these five steps can serve as guidelines for the process of introducing knowledge management.