Culture and Change Management Services

Operational Support for KM Program Rollout

When our clients do not have the required personnel, Iknow can provide temporary staffing to perform KM-related roles. Many of Iknow’s senior consultants have led internal knowledge management functions, and bring a wealth of experience in carrying out the day-to-day tasks of supporting KM processes.

Business Value

Iknow’s operational support services are valuable because our clients can obtain immediate staffing for important KM roles. Iknow’s personnel resources are highly qualified and have extensive practical experience. Temporary staffing sustains the momentum created during initial KM projects while permanent staff are being recruited and/or trained.

Deliverables

Iknow’s deliverables for operational support are closely tied to each client’s specific requirements. As described above, they could include assistance in almost any area of KM program design, development, and implementation.

Training

Training is always an important component of a knowledge management implementation roadmap. Typically, training needs vary by audience, and training programs differ for end users, systems administrators, and dedicated KM support staff.

Iknow has significant experience in designing and delivering effective training programs. Iknow designs and delivers programs to support single software product deployments to enterprise-wide knowledge management initiatives. We design and deliver custom training programs that use all types of training channels and formats.

Business Value

Iknow’s training programs ensure that staff at all levels can gain the skills and know-how to effectively use the new KM processes and tools, thereby increasing the ROI from KM expenditures.

Deliverables

Iknow’s deliverables could include:

  • Training strategy, typically differing by stakeholder group
  • Training content development
  • Training program delivery

Cultural Change Management

An effective approach to change management issues and risks is critically important to the success of KM program implementation. In fact, the reasons most often cited for why KM implementations did not deliver expected benefits are organizational and cultural issues. Some of the reasons include failure to integrate KM into everyday working practices, insufficient communications, a lack of training and/or time to learn new systems and processes, and a lack of clear and sustained executive leadership.

Business Value

Sustained KM success depends on knowledge sharing and collaboration becoming embedded in the organization’s cultural fabric. A strong organizational change management program is a critical lever for making this happen. The change management program needs to be developed and executed in parallel with the other activities in a KM implementation roadmap, and given equal or greater attention by senior management.

Deliverables

In parallel with other implementation work streams, Iknow works with clients on the planning and implementation of people-related organizational change management and institutionalization activities, including stakeholder assessments, change management planning, communications planning, training, rewards and recognition programs, and KM organization and role development.

Rewards and Recognition Programs

Highly visible rewards and recognition programs are a great way to reinforce the organization’s commitment to knowledge management initiatives. Appropriate choices for these programs vary significantly based on each organization’s culture and previous experiences, so we are careful to develop programs that are highly customized for each client’s unique situation.

Business Value

Effective rewards and recognition programs can be a key element in both launching and institutionalizing a knowledge-management initiative. Rewards and recognition programs are important in the early phases when the primary goal is to gain traction, as well as help maintain momentum in more established KM initiatives. Well-designed rewards and recognition programs encourage end-user knowledge contributions, system usage, and collaboration; promote awareness of KM to nonusers; and demonstrate KM involvement to senior management—all critical factors for building a sustainable knowledge culture.

Deliverables

Iknow works with clients to develop customized rewards and recognition programs. Our deliverables typically include all aspects of rewards and recognition program design, development, and implementation.

KM Performance Management, Metrics, and KPIs

Successful knowledge management programs yield a variety of business benefits. KM programs can produce operational improvements in an organization’s productivity, timeliness, and cost-effectiveness, as well as improve internal culture and employee satisfaction.

Business Value

A comprehensive performance management framework plays a major role in sustaining the success of KM programs and ensure continued senior management support. Ongoing performance reporting enables successes to be recognized and built upon. Ongoing measurement also helps identify KM-related business process issues before they become serious risks.

Deliverables

Iknow develops comprehensive and customized modified balanced scorecards for evaluating the performance of KM programs, and the governance policies and infrastructure to support ongoing KM program evaluation.

KM Value Analysis and Business Case Development

Iknow is often asked to help identify and develop a clear and compelling return on investment (ROI) for KM projects. Iknow will work with senior business, financial, and information technology management to develop the business rationale to justify the KM investment and to evaluate its overall financial impact. Our process typically follows four steps: defining the current state, defining the future state, quantifying the benefits and costs of moving to the future state, and then summarizing these to create the business case.

Business Value

Resource investments in knowledge management must generate a financial return. Preparing a strong economic justification to support KM investment is essential to achieve full management buy-in and ongoing internal support.

Deliverables

Iknow has worked with numerous clients to develop business cases for knowledge management. Our teams work with clients to create comprehensive business cases that demonstrate a clear and compelling ROI for the KM project or program.

Building a High-Performance Workforce

Subtitle
Increasing Employee Productivity at a Global Airline

One of the world’s most respected air carriers launched an Office of the Future initiative. The goals of this initiative were to achieve higher levels of employee productivity, flexibility, and internal communications. The project, sponsored by the senior vice president of Human Resources and supported by the corporate IT staff, involved ten major workforce groups (e.g., flight operations, cabin crew, engineering, and customer affairs).

The specific objectives of the Office of the Future initiative were:

Approach

During this initial assignment, Iknow delivered a high-level business requirements document, a solution architecture, an organizational and governance model, an implementation roadmap, and a business case. Iknow started with a current-state assessment to understand the company’s existing business processes and the various software applications in use. The project team then performed a series of detailed business analyses. Specifically, the team documented the functional and content requirements needed for the Office of the Future, developed a set of comprehensive technical requirements and various future-state hardware and software options, and identified the governance requirements and optimal organizational model to support the Office of the Future. Based on these analyses, the business case was developed and a high-level program plan and implementation roadmap were created.

Results

An Office of the Future framework was created that identified and integrated the business processes of the ten workforce groups, the content needs for each group, and the enabling technologies into a coherent whole. The detailed roadmap was used to guide executive management through this large, multiyear effort and the business case was used to support funding decisions.

Project Summary No.
61

Instilling a Knowledge-Sharing Culture

Subtitle
Building a Foundation for Knowledge Sharing in Research and Development

One of Europe’s largest research-oriented pharmaceutical and diagnostic product companies wanted to embed a knowledge-sharing culture into its worldwide research and development (R&D) organization. The company’s executives desired a culture that would more readily collaborate, share knowledge, and recognize and reward knowledge-sharing behaviors. They launched a knowledge-sharing initiative with three goals:

Approach

Iknow started by defining the specific business requirements regarding access to experts and content. The project team conducted extensive diagnostic interviews in Europe and the United States. Iknow’s deliverables for this work stream included detailed interview results and a requirements summary for future state. The requirements summary covered business requirements, content and content architecture requirements, functional requirements, and organizational, governance, and change management requirements. Iknow also outlined other characteristics of successful knowledge-management program implementations.

A second work stream identified specific types of commercial software packages that enable various aspects of knowledge sharing. Specifically, the Iknow team analyzed the functional requirements, matched the requirements to commercially available technologies, developed selection criteria for knowledge-sharing solutions, and evaluated and recommended specific software packages. Iknow’s deliverables for this work stream included a software vendor analysis and an evaluation of commercial software products. The technology recommendations focused on an expertise and learning portal, an author/expert contribution portal, a content management system, and advanced search and content discovery tools.

A high-level design document and an implementation roadmap were also created.

Results

The company’s senior executives understood that this initiative would provide the foundation for transforming the R&D organization into a knowledge-sharing environment. Desired tangible benefits included streamlined decision making due to faster access to experts and expertise; increased productivity from reduced rework and the reduced effort spent in locating data and documents; and higher-quality R&D outputs.

The company used the outputs from this project to guide its knowledge-sharing initiative.

Project Summary No.
70
Subscribe to Culture and Change Management Services