If you mention Knowledge Management (KM) to people who don’t quite understand of the term KM, you will probably see blank stares. Try as you might to explain the meaning of KM to these people, you probably will get a one-phrase, “oh we are already sharing knowledge”, or a polite nod without an appreciation of what KM can bring to their organisation. As a result, many KM professionals tend to withdraw to their Ivory Tower, lamenting the ignorant people who don’t understand KM. This somehow reminds me of Harry Potter novels where the wizards live in their own magical world, separated from non-magic folks (muggers). Unfortunately, we as KM professionals, can’t just simply use our magic wand (as if we have one!) to implement KM and coerce everyone to share their knowledge.
Though many KM practitioners will agree that in order to flourish, KM needs to be understood, appreciated, and practiced by all members of an organisation, there seem to be lack of efforts to bring down KM from an exclusive knowledge, where only people who are trained in KM can practice it, to a common knowledge, where every member of an organisation embraces and practices KM. In other words, we – the KM practitioners – ought to promote KM in a jargon-free language. According to Davenport and Prusak, one way to do so is by conducting knowledge fairs, or KM awareness activities where participants list down what they know and what they need to know, and trade their knowledge. Some KM experts even advocate not to mention the term KM and simply encourage knowledge sharing among staff.
To successfully conduct knowledge fairs or KM awareness activities, you will need to launch some publicity to inform and educate staff about knowledge sharing and KM. You will need to persuade your fellow colleagues that participating in KM-related activities will benefits them, i.e. answer your colleague’s “WIIFM” – What’s In It For Me. Simply telling your colleagues that they will be able to exchange knowledge or gain new knowledge is often not sufficient because the idea of knowledge sharing is so general that people usually will not think of what can they gain from it.
Some KM professionals tap on their informal network (relationships) to persuade their colleagues to engage in KM-related activites, or to practice KM. However, many of us, especially those who are new to the organisation that we work for, are not able to leverage on relationships to encourage participation in KM-related activities and to build common understanding of KM. Furthermore, depending on relationships alone to boost participation in KM-related activities may not necessarily help to promote KM practices in your organisation.
Indeed, promoting KM related activities and educating your colleagues on the concept of KM are by no means easy tasks. KM is not a discipline that can be grasped in one night. How then can we publicise KM? Although there is no hard and fast rule, we can learn two things from the discipline of marketing. First, you should familiarise your colleagues with KM through some advertisements that they can participate in, since such advertisements will stimulate conversation and create awareness. For example: the cadbury’s advertisement.
Notice that the advertisement above has nothing to do with chocolate, which is the commodity that cadbury is selling, but the purpose of such viral marketing is more to generate buzz and encourage participation, than to hard-sell chocolate.
Second, you should have evangelists that tell people that KM is good and it benefits whomever that practices it. Many marketing gurus advocate developing a group of evangelists to promote product, because the evangelists usually are people who have used the product and thus their testimonials carry more weight than those of the manufacturer. Similarly in KM, you should develop and nurture a group of KM evangelists – a group of people who practice and appreciate KM.
