Six best practices for organizational success

Nitin’s insights:

A focus on what matters most, what represents proprietary knowledge, and a knowledge marketplace approach is essential, but these three elements by themselves cannot drive organizational change.

I have had the opportunity to be intimately involved in developing the knowledge management capability within McKinsey and also engaging with many clients on their knowledge management journeys. In my experience, there are six knowledge management best practices that are critical for driving sustainable change and momentum and in shifting the day-to-day operations in an organization where individuals are conditioned to having an attitude of ‘this is how we do our work’.

1. Strategic levers
   1. Leadership commitment and explicit embedding of the strategic importance of knowledge aspirations in the strategy and values of the organization – A top-tier global consultancy embraces a knowledge culture through its leadership commitment: ‘Knowledge is the lifeblood of the firm. We have easily doubled our investment in Knowledge over the past couple of years. If that means that we do 10- 15% less client work today, we are willing to pay that price to invest in the future.’
   2. An organizational culture that promotes sharing of knowledge and design of incentives for long-term career growth and promotions – An organization must have role models in the shape of leaders driving thought leadership and encouraging others to engage. Role-modelling on the part of leaders drives thought leadership and enables leveraging of in-house expertise rather than reinventing of the wheel each time. It demonstrates organizational commitment by moving high-quality professionals to lead knowledge initiatives, making them visible to the organization through consistent communication of the financial benefits and increased productivity. Successful knowledge initiatives must be profiled with the same enthusiasm as business success stories are. Additionally, incentives are aligned to encouraging a culture of knowledge development and sharing.
   3. Organizational design – Incorporation of knowledge management deliverables and output into individual roles and responsibilities and performance measures: A best-in- class organizational design incorporates the enablers for knowledge management functions – research, knowledge- development support, knowledge systems as centralized functions for economies of scale – anchored by experienced practitioners. It decentralizes practices in the functional areas of the organization that encompass dissemination of knowledge, sharing of best practices and learning agendas to develop new perspectives.
2. Operational Levers
   1. Knowledge architecture – Specificity of the knowledge domain is a crucial principle behind an effective knowledge architecture. Specificity results when the design principles of taxonomy and its structure are industry specific. A knowledge map brings it together by mapping the domain-specific areas and the assets under its scope. A well-designed knowledge architecture enables knowledge discovery, powered by search capabilities that can go beyond the classic keyword search to a cognitive search that can bring a variety of knowledge sources together, interpret the search’s intent and personalize the results for relevance. Through policies and quality indicators, governance ensures that the knowledge assets in the knowledge marketplace are of high quality and will go through an editorial review process before publication.
   2. Knowledge processes – Processes and prescriptive methods for content creation and curation are critical enablers for codification of tacit knowledge from existing bodies of work and enforce a discipline for knowledge capture, standardization and availability. It sometimes involves special projects, such as building the right processes and methods, for curating a knowledge base of AI algorithms across an organization. Key supporting processes covering taxonomy management and audit mechanisms for ensuring relevance and high quality of content in the knowledge base at all times are critical to avoid the risk of the knowledge assets becoming stale and of diminished value to the users. A customized taxonomy organized by a functional area of a given industry or function and breaking it down to its next levels of subject matter, topics and assets, ensures a continuous cycle of methodical identification of knowledge gaps and the nature of knowledge demand in the organization.
   3. Technology – Digital technologies, including machine learning and AI, offer distinctive new capabilities for use in knowledge management platforms. Semantic search capabilities using NLP can interpret intent and draw relationships between knowledge assets to deliver the most relevant results. While the technologies represent multiple new possibilities in this space, it is vital to avoid the common pitfalls of such initiatives:
      • fragmented technology initiatives (disparate data sets, unique classification systems), leading to integration nightmares
      • multiplicity of access points (microsites, search tools), often creating a confusing end-user experience
      • Inconsistent and non-scalable architectures

By embracing best practices, focusing on initiatives that deliver high ROI, technology can effectively enable an organization’s knowledge management vision and goals.

Nitin’s conclusion:

Digital disruption offers unique opportunities for organizations across industries where winning in the global marketplace calls for developing strategies for competitive differentiation using proprietary knowledge as a strategic asset. To succeed in the digital age, every company needs to become a knowledge company. This is not an easy task, but those who are able to build a distinctive knowledge management culture and practices stand to gain long- term competitive advantage. Effective implementation of knowledge management approaches, combining the marketplace approach with the right strategic and operational levers for organizational change, will deliver superior business performance and value creation in the future.

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