Continuing on the KM journey
By Dr Christine van Winkelen, former director of Henley's KM Forum.
Christine van Winkelen shares the results of the Henley KM Forum's 2008 survey of member organizations.
Towards the end of 2007, I shared with you the results of a survey of member organizations of the Henley KM Forum. In this survey, we asked knowledge managers three questions about the KM "journeys" that their organizations were undertaking. We repeated this survey in the summer of 2008 (about a year after the original data was collected), in order to build up a picture of the progress achieved in those journeys. Some of the most interesting trends are outlined here.
The survey is based on three questions:
- Who's giving the directions on the journey (that is, what's the functional "home" of KM in your organization)?
- Where have you been (that is, what have been your main areas of focus in the last 12 months)?
- Where are you heading now (that is, what will be your main areas of focus over the next 12 months)?
As with any survey, the results have to be interpreted carefully. This isn't a statistically valid randomized sample. We're using it to track trends over time within the membership of this Forum.
Question 1: Who sets the directions for your KM journey?
- Over half the respondents said that they sit within a function or activity that's responsible for organizational development, capability building or effectiveness, or a strategy or policy function, or directly to the CEO/Board. I interpret this as a recognition of the strategic potential of KM: how a strategic approach to managing knowledge and learning really does matter to achieving the purpose of the organization. This is up from about a third of respondents last year – so a distinctly growing trend.
- The next most popular “home” for KM is an IT or Information Management function. About a fifth of respondents said this was the home of KM in their organizations. This is down from about a third in last year’s responses.
- The final set of functional homes was varied and included operations, business development or some form of business support activity.
Questions Two and Three: Where have you been and where are you going in your KM journey?
Around a third of respondents reported a new KM strategy or significant growth in the KM team, with a similar number reporting no significant changes. Only a couple of organizations reported a significant decrease in funding or a reduction in the KM team. This is really quite a positive picture and is similar to last year’s findings.
In addition to these general points, we asked about areas of activity in the last 12 months and in the next 12 months.
- The greatest areas of increasing activity were demonstrating the value of KM and embedding KM in business processes and systems.
- The areas in which there was the greatest decrease in activity were rolling out previous initiatives (which was a major priority in last year’s survey) and trying to capture knowledge in databases – although developing intranet and content management systems is healthy and growing.
- Several aspects of improving collaboration registered strongly as having continued attention: collaborative working tools; social collaboration tools; and communities of practice and networks.
- There's an ongoing moderate level of activity with HR colleagues to embed KM into HR practices or to continue to develop knowledge sharing skills and embed KM in competency frameworks.
- A final area of activity is in relation to externally focused KM – with suppliers, partners, customers and so on. Previous research in this Forum has confirmed that this is part of the evolution of KM and it isn't possible to achieve the full benefits from KM initiatives and investments until these externally connected knowledge flows are integrated with the internal ones in a meaningful way. The activity level was low but increasing.
Some conclusions
The survey suggests that in large organizations, the "home" of KM is frequently now a strategy/organizational change function. It also demonstrated a positive view of KM – growth in the KM teams and in funding are evident. A significant focus is now on initiatives that improve collaboration and on continuing to demonstrate benefits and value.
I feel it would be remiss of me to end without a health warning. The trends indicated in this survey continue the positive picture about the development of KM first shown in the 2007 responses. However, the data for this survey was collected before the true nature of the current global economic problems had become evident. We won’t know how resilient KM is until we look at the 2009 results. If KM really is at the heart of business now it should have a real role to play in leading organizational transformation initiatives through the changing conditions.
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