Social Culture Change vs Social Knowledge Management?

Knowledge Management (KM) culture is facing its fair amount of challenges in today’s world; while these challenges aren’t at business or industry levels, but rather into our day to day social and individual activities. Simply to note the many articles, reports and statements from corporate and from experts sharing various concerns. If KM’s implementation requires a plan, a process, technologies, or governance and of course, the management’s buy-in to adopt it, the essential pillar to this knowledge culture adaptation easily remains taken for granted: people! People (employees) who will, at first, benefit from KM (for the various business expectations speaking of efficiency, time saving and return on investment (ROI)). When maturity happens, it will provide critical content (knowledge) to the company’s expertise assets. 

While experts take care of the organizational details, analyze the strategies and decide the technologies and processes, it is also critical to involve people (employees) to the various phases of such projects. One of the main reasons to involve people in this process remains the well-known idea saying that people feel engaged and motivated to the success of such an initiative, provided they are considered real partners throughout the existence of such projects. I can’t forget the complex challenges I had to face, when I was required, from my employer, to find and implement an Electronic Document Management System (EDMS) solution. After struggling many months with the existing rooted habits of corporate and project documentation, it was clear that this project would live and die and probably get forgotten the day of its official launch. During the piloting process of implementation I realized I built the strategy thinking (with the help concepts of Design Thinking (DT)); the challenge helping users embrace a major 360 degrees change (shifting trend) of the actual methodology based on existing processes and procedures; last but not least I needed the full buy-in from the managing staff (who in fact knew how to do, but never got their hands on the details). Getting users involved and bringing up the solution from their “on the job” experiences, was the key solution to come up with what became, since, the corporate solution for electronic document management. 

In comparison, KM required a humanized approach in parallel to the “standard procedural ways”. With the years of hindsight I may conclude that the success of such projects resides in the solution that can be defined with the following terms: what relates to people must be built by people. KM follows today’s realities and trends. From individualistic “I know”, people and organizations stepped into the “team contribution”, an obligatory way of sharing at work (regardless if people go to work or act remotely). At that time, it was the appropriate occasion to adapt new technologies as KM needed to grow and expand in efficiency and profit (Management concerns). 

In these times, we observe a faster shift to a new generation of tools: the Social Tools. 

Social tools have spread all over the place so rapidly, allowing people to easily use and access new technologies, I would rather call these “Social Technologies”. Regardless of age, location and level of knowledge, people can today virtually anywhere any place. They do not need long and cumbersome learning time to get “up and running” using tablets, their smartphones, in other words people get their knowledge almost instantly. It is somehow amusing to note today’s resistance to change does not come from users as it was in the previous decade, it comes more from IT people, organizational specialists, experts, and more people who previously were in an authoritative moral and effective position. 

Even unaware, people seek knowledge, they also expect to grow in their various fields of rising expertise, they will less seek what subject matter experts gathered over the years. Today’s knowledge is shifting into a new expression: The Social Knowledge Management (SKM). This does not mean we need to discard KM as it is now, on the contrary, KM’s foundations are here to stay and will nurture the “new-born” SKM. 

SKM is a natural derivative of the current KM. Governance would be the “keeper” of SKM, allowing both management and people to contribute in benefits and profits for the common cause. It is essential to strengthen the foundations of the new social culture of knowledge by adopting a new charter, the Social Charter of Knowledge (SCK)! It is about trust, trust in the people who use social tools to complement their learning on one hand as on the other hand feed the corporate knowledge gained through their experiences. If SKM has a reason to exist and prosper, experts and senior management have a duty to make a leap of faith and trust in the people they employ so every person becomes not just a contributor but a shareholder.

Until our next chat.

Michel © - 2023

This paper was first published in September, 2014