May 2, 2003

Even businesses with well-established knowledge management systems can find room for weblogs, and derive great benefits from integrating them into their existing KM architecture. This article summarizes a presentation I'm giving next week to the Conference Board on "Blogs in Business". In two previous posts, The Weblog as Filing Cabinet and A Weblog-Based Content Architecture for Business , I proposed that business weblogs could be used to codify and 'publish', in a completely voluntary and personal manner, the individual worker's entire 'filing cabinet', and outlined how a company's content architecture could be built around blogs. In this article, I suggest a process for integrating weblogs profitably and productively into companies that already have well-established knowledge management systems. Defining the Need Here are the six knowledge problems that you most often hear voiced in businesses with substantial, conventional KM systems: You're still hoarding: More knowledge is needed, can't be bought, and isn't being voluntarily contributed by the company's experts. It's out of date: A shortage of current, accurate knowledge is exposing the company to unacceptable risk. We don't know what this means: More background or context is needed to make the knowledge in the company's intranet useful. What have you shared this year?: A more formal process is needed to assess individuals' contribution to knowledge-sharing. We needed it over here: Employees aren't sharing what they know beyond their immediate business circle. We couldn't find it: Knowledge isn't getting to the people who urgently need it to make management decisions or succesful sales presentations. Articulating the Value Proposition The consequences of these problems are the kind that keep CEOs awake at night: Lost revenue opportunities, a dearth of innovation , foundering productivity, dissatisfied customers, disgruntled employees, and lost learning opportunities. Therefore weblogs can be effectively pitched to senior management of major organizations by explaining how they help solve the six problems: They make contributing knowledge simpler, easier, and more automatic They make it easier to update knowledge on a timely basis They make knowledge more context rich They allow the authors of key business knowledge to build and retain 'pride of ownership' They make contributing knowledge more fun, since it becomes more like 'publishing' Each individual's 'collection' of shared knowledge is easy to define and assess at performance evaluation time They make knowledge easier to route, to 'subscribe' to, to canvass and to 'mine' Finding the Right Niche The first step in capitalizing on these benefits is to decide where and how weblogs can best contribute to knowledge management in your organization. The knowledge process has five steps, shown in the diagram below. Two of the gurus of KM, Japan's Drs. Nonaka & Takeuchi, define the four blue and green steps in this process as the Knowledge Creation Cycle : Knowledge is 'codified' by putting it in written form, enhanced by synthesis, analysis and repurposing, internalized by the readers that learn from it, and shared peer-to-peer on the job. People participate in some or all of the five steps, sometimes in multiple roles within an organization, illustrated by the eleven figures in this diagram. Knowledge managers can determine where weblogs best fit in their organizations by answering three questions: Which of the six knowledge problems listed above are critically affecting the company? Which of the five knowledge process steps are adversely affected by these problems? Which roles of the organization are sub-optimized because of these problems? For example, you might determine that expert knowledge is being hoarded by the company's specialists in institutional sales, and that as a result new sales staff are unable to learn how to manage these critical accounts. From this exercise you can derive a list of people in the organization who would most likely benefit the organization by using weblogs. That list could well include community of practice coordinators, subject matter specialists, internal newsletter publishers, and selected others in the organization whose 'filing cabinet' contents are most coveted by others. It will be different in every company. Implementation and Training Each person selected to have a weblog then needs to be trained how to set up and use the tool. This entails: Setting up the weblog's personal taxonomy (categories) corresponding to their filing cabinet tabs or 'My Documents' folders Setting up the weblog's 'permanent files': documents that are regularly and repeatedly used such as contact lists and policy documents Setting up the weblog's links, directories, and subscriptions Helping the weblog owner decide on appropriate publishing decision rules : what knowledge (reports, analyses etc,) he/she will be expected to create, what knowledge from other sources he/she will be expected to propagate, and who will be permitted or required to access or subscribe to which weblog categories Helping the weblog owner decide explicitly what doesn't get published, to avoid confidentiality risks, intellectual property law violations, and information overload Training the weblog owner to pause each time he/she saves or sends a document, link, or message, and decide whether to publish it to the weblog at the same time, using the agreed-upon decision rules  Possibly teaching the weblog owner how to create document abstracts, how to properly categorize posts, and how to notify potentially interested users of a post who aren't already subscribed The Five Obstacles I forsee five major obstacles to the successful introduction of weblogs into large organizations: HTML / Microsoft format conversion. Most large companies use MS Office as their principal document standard, and the conversion of Office documents to HTML remains a bloated and untidy process. Authoring rights: Decisions need to be made about who can post to each weblog, and about the potential use of 'group' weblogs, which in many organizations will be political. Proprietary macros: Existing commercial weblog software is too complex and techy for the average business user, so customization will be needed to keep weblog maintenance as simple as possible for neophyte users. Intermediation: Many business executives will want to delegate responsibility for their weblog to an administrative assistant or knowledge steward, which may complicate the process and dilute the benefit of using weblogs. New knowledge behaviours: Weblog owners will need to learn to develop and use appropriate publishing decision criteria and how to abstract and categorize the knowledge they produce. It's no longer just their filing cabinet. The key to success is to pick the spots in your organization where weblogs can solve pressing business problems, make a compelling case for their use, ensure the weblog owners are properly trained, and anticipate and deal with obstacles in advance. Given the enormous potential of weblogs to realize some of the long-awaited benefits of knowledge management, this should be well worth the effort. 9:28:41 AM