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Enamul Haque

Senior Process owner, Knowledge Management

Nokia

Why many KM initiatives fail?

Top reasons of why many KM initiatives fail Too much dependence on technology

• Many Knowledge Management initiatives fail because of excessive

dependence on technology.

• Technology enforces our processes, it doesn’t create them.

• The functionality of the system must be simple to use and very straight forward both for knowledge creation , utilization and maintenance.

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• Lack of management buy-in

• One of the most frequent failures is the lack of a true commitment of Senior Management around the scope, financial outcomes, and organizational impact that any Knowledge Management System poses over the organization’s culture and climate.

Top reasons of why many KM initiatives fail Lack of adoption

• If people (IT end users, agents, specialists etc.) don’t use the system it can’t pay for

itself.

• Having a big launch with incentives to use the system is important

• Making IT end user adopt this change of company culture to use the self service is

challenging.

• If the personal is reluctant to use productivity these tools the failure is warranted. If

we want to mitigate this possible risk the Human Resource department should apply

an incentive policy to encourage the habit of using effectively the Self service

offerings.

• Effective change management facilitation is needed to overcome doubts,

apprehensions and fears that can potentially damage any possibility of succeed.

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Top reasons of why many KM initiatives fail Lack of maintenance

−Ongoing work is required to weed out unused articles, rewrite content as

necessary, etc.

−Don’t let your big investment and hard work go to waste, keep up the

effort to maintain the content.

−Many KM initiatives tend to fail because often they start with a bang with

people being all excited about this knowledge in the organization but they

tend to fizzle out because the initiatives may not align with the overall

business strategy.

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Top reasons of why many KM initiatives fail Lack of participation

− Many of us are reticent to contribute our knowledge to the system because

we fear it will make us less valuable.

− Many of us don't wish to expand our knowledge in case it leads to more work

for us.

− BUT, If that is the case, how can there be billion web pages, face book,

socialcast, millions of documents, thousands of books, infinite number of

email communications, existence of thousands of communities and so on.

− We should understand that the goal of KM is to give us more interesting and

challenging work, and not have answering the same questions over and over

− The key factor here is the reward/recognition for the employees. Encouraging

for quality in knowledge capture and not quantity.

− The answer, the academics suggest, is to provide people with better

incentives to share - and, possibly, to use email a bit less...

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The cost of ignoring human knowledge

There is a cost to pay of ignoring human knowledge

Much of an organization's knowledge is personal.

• It is and remains in employees’ minds.

• A market survey by KPMG showed there is little provision for capturing, sharing and disseminating it.

• When individuals leave, their knowledge is lost to the organization.

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KM Survey: Organization’s intellectual capital

Respondents acknowledged the cost of failing to look after their organization's

intellectual capital – in other words, of failing to convert individual knowledge and

know-how into corporate knowledge.

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KM Survey: willingness to share knowledge KPMG Management Consulting survey also reveals that individuals are willing to share knowledge but do not have the

time to participate actively.

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Reward and recognition is a MUST

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© 2011 Nokia Why many KM initiatives fail? / 2011-08-14D / Enamul Haque

Motivating people: Getting beyond money

Respondents to a McKinsey survey think that three noncash motivators—praise from immediate managers, attention from leaders, and a chance to

direct projects—are at least as effective as the three most highly rated monetary ones. These nonfinancial incentives make employees feel that their

companies value them, want to foster their professional development, and take their well-being seriously. Most studies on motivating employees

emphasize these three principles.

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Individuals - Knowledge sharing – what’s after?!

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Knowledge sharing – trust

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How data translates into information which gives birth to knowledge

Data: Meteorological data, collected from across the world by weather satellites. => Information: Its going to rain in

London => Knowledge: Better carry an umbrella if you are travelling to London

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Knowledge sharing – customer language

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Finally - Full benefits for early adopters of knowledge management

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Source: Knowledge Management Research Report - K P M G M a n a g e m e n t C o n s u l t i n g

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