Sustainable Knowledge: A Story

Let me tell you a story. A cautionary tale, actually. Once upon a time there was a Knowledge Management Consulting group doing some client work in a terrific, intelligent, innovative organization. The objectives were clear-- help the organization learn how to identify, transfer, reuse and develop new knowledge, innovation, ideas and learning. However, no one had set the objective for sustainability. (And there, my friends, lies the caution).

Along the journey, many roadblocks were met and most, through the hard work and dedication of the team, were handled. Pilot projects were identified, processes put in place, employees and sponsors alike understood what was involved, the business benefits and the need to transfer experiences, insights and expertise. People were willing and certainly the organization and those who worked there held a great deal of critical knowledge.

As the work continued, it became more clear that though the innovation and the experiential part of knowledge transfer was interesting, even intriguing to the organization, what was not so interesting was the work it takes to sustain and continue to keep the knowledge alive and refreshed. The creation and  implementation of a sustainability plan-- creating and editing the documentation or other vehicles to capture knowledge, keeping the Wiki's up to date, ensuring videos were edited and, most difficult, creating the architecture plan for where the various pieces and types of knowledge would live-- was not the fun part for these intelligent, fast paced learners. Remembering to communicate that new content, in whatever form, was available seemed to be a bother rather than a show of pride. They had done the work to identify and transfer, but capture and compilation, along with labeling and meta data creation, was not where they wanted to spend time.

And so, eventually the good work the team had done was lost in and amongst the other data stored in various document management systems, in SharePoint sites and shared drives. Sometimes it even languished on hard drives.

The Knowledge Management consultant moved on to a new role elsewhere. But the organization's knowledge transfer was not sustained. There had been a great deal of work, even some culture change, but the next generation of employees were still left to spend their valuable time searching, sometimes in vain, to find the internal knowledge around their projects. Most simply stopped trying and used the external web to find information rather than reuse the hard won, expensive, time consuming and critical internal intellectual capital.

The moral of the story: Do not start what you can not sustain. Discipline is a GOOD thing. If an organization is not disciplined about their documentation, they will not be disciplined in the long run about their tacit knowledge. Start with the end in mind. And make sure everyone is willing and able to stick through the long term work of sustainable knowledge transfer. It might not look as sexy as the knowledge gathering, but the end game is much, much more valuable.