Taking the NO Out of Knowledge Management

“What?! Joe’s writing about knowledge management?” I hear you cry. “That’s so early 2000s, do you have access to the internet yet?” And this little New Yorker can’t disagree with you. Knowledge management has been around a long, long time – Wikipedia suggests from the early 1990s – with the early 2000s a time when large organizations in particular wasted, sorry … invested, some serious dollars on corporate knowledge management initiatives and technologies.

But knowledge management, within IT service management (ITSM) or any other corporate scenarios, can be hard. It’s not easy knowing what (relevant) knowledge is, then getting the people with knowledge to share it, then making that knowledge accessible when it’s needed, and ensuring that the available knowledge is both accurate and timely, and thus still relevant.

Knowledge management and ITSM

From an ITSM perspective, knowledge management was introduced as an ITIL “process” in ITIL v3 (in 2007), then was one of the 26 ITSM processes that made up ITIL 2011, and is now one of the 34 practices in ITIL 4.

Although, for all you ITIL geeks about to jump on me, aspects of knowledge management were embedded within 2001’s ITIL v2, such as the use of a known error database for problem management. The timing was right – because enterprise knowledge management was at the peak of its popularity at the start of the new millennium.

But, in 2019, how great is knowledge management within ITSM and IT as a whole?

Yes, it’s one of the 34 ITIL 4 practices and defined as:

“The practice of maintaining and improving the effective, efficient, and convenient use of information and knowledge across an organization.”

Source: AXELOS, “ITIL Foundation: ITIL 4 Edition”

With ITIL 2011 previously stating that knowledge management is:

“The process responsible for sharing perspectives, ideas, experience and information, and for ensuring that these are available in the right place and at the right time. The knowledge management process enables informed decisions, and improves efficiency by reducing the need to rediscover knowledge.”

Source: ITIL 2011 Glossary of Terms

Although I prefer the Davenport (1994) definition, I love him in Pirates of the Caribbean (Editor: I think that was a different Davenport, Joe):

“Knowledge management is the process of capturing, distributing, and effectively using knowledge.”

Which cuts to the chase a little more quickly – that is, using and reusing knowledge to improve your organization’s ITSM capabilities and outcomes.

But what is ITSM knowledge?

The ITIL 4 Foundation Edition states that:

“It is important to understand that ‘knowledge’ is not simply information. Knowledge is the use of information in a particular context.”

Source: AXELOS, “ITIL Foundation: ITIL 4 Edition”

But where is the emphasis on value in this? Thankfully, ITIL’s 4’s new emphasis on value creation (or cocreation) addresses this, calling out how knowledge management contributes to the ITIL service value chain:

• Plan. Knowledge management helps the organization to make sound portfolio decisions and to define its strategy and other plans, and supports financial management.
• Improve. This value chain activity is based on an understanding of the current situation and trends, supported by historical information. Knowledge management provides context for the assessment of achievements and improvement planning.
• Engage. Relationships at all levels, from strategic to operational, are based on an understanding of the context and history of those relationships. Knowledge management helps to better understand stakeholders.
• Design and transition. As with the obtain/ build value chain activity, knowledge of the solutions and technologies available, and the re-use of information, can make this value chain activity more effective.
• Obtain/build. The efficiency of this value chain activity can be significantly improved with sufficient knowledge of the solutions and technologies available, and through the re-use of information.
• Deliver and support. Ongoing value chain activity in this area benefits from knowledge management through re-use of solutions in standard situations and a better understanding of the context of non-standard situations that require analysis.

Source: AXELOS, “ITIL Foundation: ITIL 4 Edition”

Outside of the new ITIL 4 guidance, it often feels as though we’re encouraged to manage knowledge but never to understand that knowledge can be valuable (and even invaluable).

Is more knowledge captured than used?

As my good friend Stuart Rance says in his 2014 (but still highly relevant) Knowledge Management Is Not Just About Document Repositories blog:

“Knowledge only has value when it is available to someone, either because they remember it or because they are guided towards it at the time they need it, then that can help us to understand what knowledge management needs to achieve.”

For some ITSM roles there’s a process-based need for knowledge exploitation, such as service desk scripts or the aforementioned known error database. But how well is knowledge captured and reused beyond these oft-quoted ITSM use cases? In my experience, not enough.

Firstly, how well is knowledge “collected”? Is it merely a process “add-on” – something to be done in addition to the day-job, usually at the end of the already-way-too-long work day or week? And on the flip side, are people expected to reuse and benefit from the available knowledge? Probably not.

Making knowledge management work

For knowledge management initiatives and operations to have any chance of success:

• Employees need to buy into, and be recognized, for knowledge sharing and knowledge reuse
• It needs to be embedded within business processes rather than being a discrete and disconnected activity that, in reality, never gets done.

So, when introducing or improving existing knowledge management capabilities, please do two things: first, think in terms of knowledge exploitation above knowledge management – perfectly stored but unused knowledge helps no one. And second, seek help from human resources (HR) colleagues as to how best to instill knowledge-friendly behaviors in your people as well as your processes.

Ultimately, there’s a big NO in kNOwledge management that must be addressed for it to work and to benefit your organization. If you’ve succeeded already, what did you do right? Please let me know in the comments.