You Just Want to Know Where to Start, Right?

[Kerry11]

I attended my first knowledge management conference in the fall of 2009 just after I graduated with my newly minted master's in information science.  Even with that very expensive piece of paper, I didn’t know where to start as a new knowledge manager.  I attended every session I could fit into my schedule and I noticed that everyone around me looked the same way I felt.  I left every session thinking, “well, that’s great, but what do I DO?”

I forced my highly introverted self to start talking to other attendees to figure out if I was just missing something.  I wasn’t… we ALL were.  I quickly realized this was not the place we were going to get answers for how to actually practice knowledge management.

This may be how you’re feeling right now, and I’m here to help.

The beginning of a knowledge management program needs a few foundational pieces to build on.  Please don’t skip this part.  It’s hard and it totally sucks, but I promise it’s worth it and you’ll thank me later.

Find your people

• Who already understands and/or supports knowledge management?  There are two flavors of your people.  Ideally, you’ll have some of both, but you can do it with one kind or the other.
  • Leaders – probably the person who hired you or the leader who identified you to own the program. 
  • Boots on the Ground people – As you start talking to people on your team or in your larger business unit, you will find kindred spirits who just get it and they want to see this KM thing happen. 
  • Identify anyone and everyone who wants to join the movement and make them your squad (or KM Council if you aren’t a Taylor Swift fan).

Conduct A Design Session

The Consortium for Service Innovation developed a KM methodology called Knowledge Centered Service[1]which I cover in other posts, but the Design Session the Consortium created as part of the methodology is nothing short of genius.  Even if you’re not going to practice KCS, use their design session to start your program.  It will be the single most valuable thing you do.

In the design session, you’ll create the Strategic Framework that will the core of the program.  It’s so elegant and it’s the one document people resist creating more than any of the other pieces. Look at the example image and build your spreadsheet.  Do it!

Don’t let Perfect be the Enemy of Good

Yeah, yeah, you’ve heard this a time or twenty before, BUT; look, no one ever had every element of their KM program work the way they read about it in books, blogs, or even on the websites of organizations dedicated to KM. Take what you can get and work with it.  The important thing is to start somewhere and continuously improve. 

I’m an avid quote collector and one of my favorites is from Maya Angelou, “Do the best you can with what you know, then when you learn better, do better.” Amen, Maya… Amen.

[1] KCS Principles and Core Concepts by Consortium for Service Innovation is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License