Above and Beyond KM

In his Notes on Productivity blog, Eric Mack makes the following observation about technology and culture:

In the mid 1990s many of us thought of and promoted products (e.g. Lotus Notes) as Knowledge Management (KM) “solutions”, rather than “tools”.

For organizations that did not develop an underlying methodology or knowledge sharing culture, they blamed the “solutions” [read: tool] for failing to transform the organization, while other organizations that did develop a knowledge sharing and collaborative culture thrived with these same tools.

While his initial focus is on Lotus Notes, his conclusions have wider application. He rightly points out that Microsoft’s SharePoint may be headed for trouble if it continues to be marketed as the silver bullet KM solution, rather than a capable tool that can advance productivity in an organization that has an established knowledge sharing culture.

Which leads to an interesting question: if you’re at the point of considering a substantial investment in a tool like SharePoint, how do you first assess the quality of your Organization’s knowledge sharing culture?

Let me begin by thanking Doug Cornelius of KM Space, whose comments on my previous knowledge sharing post got me thinking further about the current state of knowledge sharing among lawyers. Doug thought I was underestimating the level of sharing that currently exists in law firms, and pointed to the document management system (DMS) as an example of sharing. He is right that lawyers do share now, but it’s the quality of that sharing that interests me.

Many firms have passive knowledge sharing — we use a single repository for our documents. The beauty of such a system is that it reduces to one the number of places you must go to locate firm work product. With enough ingenuity and persistence you can usually find what you’re looking for there, provided (of course) that it exists. Within a few fortunate firms, lawyers need less ingenuity and persistence (at least with respect to finding documents) because their thoughtful knowledge managers and IT professional have installed fantastic search engines that make it almost painless to locate the desired content within the DMS.

This is all well and good, but it’s not the Holy Grail. For KM purposes, the Holy Grail is active knowledge sharing — where firm culture encourages lawyers to look for ways to make their knowledge available to their colleagues. Before you ask me what I’m smoking, consider the small handful of lawyers you know who voluntarily share with colleagues on their client teams or in their practice areas. Almost every firm has a few of these stellar folks. They produce while the rest of us loaf through life as knowledge parasites. What’s extraordinary is that these paragons do what they do because it is the right thing to do — despite the prevailing self-interested organizational culture. Imagine what would happen if the organizational culture actually supported the paragons and shamed the parasites?

There’s a terrific challenge here for all law firm knowledge managers. The law firm that truly cracks the knowledge sharing nut will reap enormous rewards in efficiency, in quality and in collegiality. But this means more than just facilitating access to content. This means having lawyers who actively contribute and promote content within their communities of practice. The goal is to create a culture that supports a self-propelling, self-sustaining system of knowledge exchange. Then the knowledge managers can spend their days at the beach. Clearly a win-win situation for everyone.

A persistent theme of this blog is that when it comes to doing knowledge management right, culture matters. In fact, there are days when I’d argue that having the right organizational culture in place is as important (if not more important) than having the best technology. You can buy great tech tools, but if you have a culture that does not encourage knowledge sharing, those tools will never yield the results you intend.

It looks like the Knowledge Sharing party has been in full swing for a while now. My last post reflected a growing conviction that I’ve had for some time: that facilitating knowledge sharing is a much more productive focus for an organization than attempting to manage knowledge. Well it turns out that I’m not the only one who has been thinking along those lines. In fact, a quick search revealed a variety of organizations and bloggers weighing in on the subject. Here’s a sampling:

* Knowledge Board’s summary of IBM’s Knowledge Sharing initiative
* Luis Suarez’ post: Into the Big Blue Yonder
* PWC’s Global Best Practices: Companies put a familiar face on knowledge sharing
* Dee’s post at splunk.com: Knowledge Management, Knowledge Sharing
* Library clips post: Knowledge Sharing in the New KM

According to Chris Cooper (knowledge sharing solutions leader at IBM Global Business Services), this change is a “philosophical repositioning.” He rightly observes that “[m]anagement suggests control: control of process and control of environment.” By contrast, knowledge sharing focuses on people, processes and tools to create “organic and unimposed sharing” leading to the efficient circulation of knowledge.

Now that a blue chip company has adopted knowledge sharing as its preferred alternative to knowledge management, the approach probably can’t be viewed as radical or cutting edge. So I guess I’m a little late to the party. (As are all of us who have been toiling in the vineyards these last few years trying to “manage” knowledge.) Oh well. Better late than never.

For some time, I’ve been frustrated by the seeming futility of trying to “manage” knowledge.  In pursuit of well-managed knowledge many of us have created elaborate systems and databases that require some or all of the following supporting factors:  cooperative users, sophisticated search engines, smart profiling tools, and incredibly competent KM professionals who actually understand the substance of the content they are trying to manage.  There are few organizations that are fortunate enough to have all these factors in place.

So if you don’t work in one of these fortunate organizations, what’s the better approach?  Knowledge Sharing.  This means that we stop trying to gather, classify, distribute or otherwise herd knowledge.  Instead we create more opportunities for content creators and content consumers to share knowledge.  The current law firm knowledge management fad is to provide this by using web 2.0 tools such as wikis and blogs.  (I call this a fad since there has been a lot of talk, but when I last checked very few large US firms could actually claim widespread use of these tools by their lawyers.)  Despite the apparent slowness of law firms to adopt these new tools, they do show a great deal of promise for knowledge sharing purposes. 

It’s worth noting that the rather skimpy wikipedia entry on knowledge sharing rightly points out that technology is not the main issue when it comes to knowledge sharing.  Equally important are organizational culture, trust and incentives.