A LOOK AT THE TOP 10 KM CHALLENGES

Knowledge Management Review, Jan/Feb 2008 by Edwards, Donna, Wolff, Jim

For students working towards a Master's degree in Knowledge Management at California State University, Northridge (CSUN), a key part of the program involves identifying the KM challenges that prove most taxing to today's practitioners. In this article, two students enrolled on the distance-learning course, Donna Edwards and Jim Wolff, present the findings of a class-wide exercise to identify those challenges.

Improving project outcomes by identifying hurdles upfront

Whether your organization has a mature KM system or is just starting to formulate a KM strategy, it's bound to encounter challenges. Identifying and then understanding these challenges, we believe, will help an organization's KM initiatives be more successful.

That's a tall order, however. While most organizations share some common KM challenges, they also have some that are unique to their business. Other challenges, meanwhile, may become apparent only as a result of an organization's increased focus on knowledge.

We can guess what you're thinking: Isn't KM supposed to solve all my organizational knowledge challenges? It depends. Perhaps not all challenges will be resolved by KM, but certainly many of the more significant ones can be with the right approach.

A background on our research

Both the authors of this article are currently enrolled in class KM 642, part of the Master's in Knowledge Management distance-learning program at California State University, Northridge (CSUN).

One of our more recent assignments was to identify five KM challenges in our own workplaces. Once we had done that, we were asked to work in groups to consolidate the list of challenges identified; choose five and explain our rationale behind that choice; and outline our thoughts on how companies might benefit from addressing these challenges.

In this article, we've combined the lists of KM challenges contributed from all of our fellow students (ourselves included), in order to identify a top 10 list of what we believe to be the most important KM challenges faced by organizations and practitioners today.

What is a challenge?

But let's start with the basics: How do we define a "challenge"? The word, after all, has many interpretations. In a business context, it's often used as a euphemism for a problem or an issue of the type that individuals or organizations regularly confront. By their very nature, they tend to involve some land of conflict caused, for example, by disagreement or by competitive pressures.

Other challenges occur when demands are placed on individuals or organizations to change the way they do things, to develop new and unfamiliar skills, or to utilize higher levels of knowledge.

In our opinion, an important role of KM is to gauge the amount of change individuals or organizations can accommodate, or even tolerate. This alone might reduce some of the challenges.

But the primary question we are concerned with here is: Once identified, how can we turn these challenges into productive opportunities for organizational improvement!5

Where to start?

Deciding exactly how and where to begin a KM initiative is a daunting task for any organization, large or small. Most KM practitioners know that an organization should start with defining the business purpose for implementing a KM system or program, and then allocating resources to address the issues facing that organization.

This article aims to get you thinking about the KM challenges you already know about, as well as the ones you have yet to identify.

Resolving these challenges should provide substantial rewards to the business, including increased productivity and an increased ability to meet the needs of both customers and employees. Other tangible benefits: increased opportunities for innovation via knowledge reuse; improved technology; stronger executive and management sponsorship; and clearly defined charters for both KM and information management programs.

Challenge 1: Addressing people issues

Employee assimilation, development and retention are processes that, taken together, may contribute to the success of a knowledge-based organization more than anything else. It's people who develop the knowledge needed to make an organization thrive, and since tacit knowledge is people-based, KM has a vital role to play in ensuring that employees are assimilated smoothly, continue to develop their knowledge throughout their careers, and are retained as their value (in terms of knowledge and expertise) increases.

The assimilation of new employees, whether they are just coming out of college or joining from another company, is critical. Organizations spend many thousands of dollars recruiting and selecting people to work for them, but they often don't take the time necessary to ensure that new recruits have a smooth arrival. A seasoned recruit may not need as much attention as a new college graduate, but both deserve (and will likely expect) more than just a one-day orientation to familiarize them with the company, the job and the people who they are expected to work with.