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Knowledge management isn't about technology, it's about fostering processes that encourage employees to share what they know in a way that increases others' capabilities.
From a practical perspective, we define knowledge as information in action. Until people take information and use it, it isn't knowledge. In a business context, knowledge is what employees know about their customers, each other, products, processes, mistakes, and successes, whether that knowledge is tacit or explicit.
We define knowledge management (KM) as a systematic effort to enable information and knowledge to grow, flow, and create value. The discipline called KM is about creating and managing the processes to get the right knowledge to the right people at the right time and help people share and act on information to improve organizational performance.
It is our belief that people, not technology, are the key to KM. Why? First, sharing and learning are social activities. They take place among people. Second, technology can capture descriptions, but only people can convey practices. Unlike simple descriptions, practices involve complex cultural and contextual elements. Think of the differences between a map and the journey itself. Third, to ensure that practices are not only shared but also are transferred effectively to make a difference, you have to connect employees and allow them to share their deep, rich, tacit knowledge.
Across all cultures, mutual obligation and reciprocity are powerful social forces. Once employees start helping one another and sharing what they know, the effort becomes a selfperpetuating cycle.
We've seen a number of organizations' KM programs falter because KM professionals think they must first transform their organizational cultures. Our response is to get over it. Culture change is more often a consequence of knowledge sharing than an antecedent to it.
If your organization's natural tendency is to share and collaborate, then all you have to do is eliminate structural barriers and provide enablers (e.g., technology, facilitators, and standard approaches) to allow critical knowledge to flow where it needs to. On the other hand, if your organization's tendency is to hoard knowledge, then the best and greatest KM approach may not be enough to alter your employees' behavior.
The best strategy is to cultivate a knowledgesharing culture while building capabilities for your KM program. That is, you...