Practically every organization has some experience with knowledge management. Even when these efforts are not necessarily labeled “knowledge management,” they nonetheless represent real investments in people, process, technology, and content-related initiatives and tools, typically with the goal of enabling their staff and teams to do their jobs more effectively through the access to, and sharing of, relevant data and information.
Unfortunately, many of these knowledge management initiatives have not achieved business success. This can be the result of many factors, such as poor planning, cultural misalignment, lack of business sponsorship, and technology errors.
Iknow helps our clients to assess, restructure, and “renew” their knowledge management programs. By applying our extensive experience working with other organizations, we can quickly help our clients reset their knowledge management strategy and programs on a proper path forward. Our goal is to leverage existing tools and investments as much as possible and to focus directly on user-level business impact.
Iknow’s KM Renewal services are designed to rapidly reset a client’s KM programs by addressing their most critical knowledge gaps. KM Renewal is often supported by our Current-State Assessment and Strategy and Roadmap offerings.
The main deliverable from this work is a refreshed KM Strategy and Roadmap. The strategy helps reset the dialogue and the underlying business case with the organization’s leadership; the roadmap is a focused action plan on how to enhance and optimize the value of the current knowledge management programs. Iknow builds this action plan through internal interviews and surveys, and an assessment of existing programs.
Iknow also offers assistance for implementing KM Renewal programs.
KM Renewal programs offer the potential to provide a fresh approach and new momentum to existing KM programs. If the shortfalls in an underperforming KM program are not addressed, then these failures can “poison the well” and cause businesses to abandon otherwise good investments in knowledge management.