The governance plan for this Knowledge Centre comprises of:
- Business reasons for the Knowledge Centre
- Adoption and engagement strategies
- Information Architecture (IA)
- Governance structure
This should come clear for any tools implementation serve to enable Knowledge Management. It's at the top of the pyramid to guide every action for this Knowledge Centre. The business unit uses the this business reason:
To achieve excellence in project delivery through sharing, learning and collaborating.This is a simple reason and some could be more elaborate. I like simplicity, it helps people remember and not to forget, this is for just one business unit with many more to come.
[Adoption and engagement strategies]
Adoption here is about helping people get use to the new Knowledge Centre, what it is, what can I do there, how do I do it? Whereas engagement focuses on helping individuals (and the team) discover the shared purpose and motivation for using the Knowledge Centre. They are mentioned together here because the strategies for dealing with them are overlapping and different people respond differently to these strategies.
Training
All tools implementation come with training and most of the time training conducted by the IT department or external certified IT trainers are... IT centric. This is why business owners must take ownership of training and address these areas:
- Desired behaviours - This is best done by the sponsor of the Knowledge Centre to authorise or mandate a set of rules. For instance, advocating preference for knowledge stewarding instead of knowledge hoarding, moving all technical discussions from email to the online discussion forum, blogging during office hours is acceptable, it's OK to overwrite each other's article in a wiki, respect - everyone knows something that the other doesn't, tag contributions so others can find it and so on...
- Orientation - A quick tour to the various sections of the knowledge centre explaining what they are, their purpose and how staff members can use them.
- Features training - The standard no frills training a geek can give. The minimum a staff member needs to know to survive.
- Effective learning and sharing - Bringing in tips and tricks on how effective learning and sharing can take place. For example, using Alerts or RSS to keep abreast on areas of interest, place a stub in a wiki and come back later, integrating events calendar with MS Outlook, allocating time for blogs and wiki, identifying new like-minded colleagues, what not to do in Sharepoint and etc...
We all know by now that the "Build and they will come" model doesn't work. A good way to liven the Knowledge Centre's ambiance is to have a Wiki Raid. It's a facilitated session where participants gather in one room and start writing an article about something that they are knowledgeable about. Before they start writing, the title of each article is advertised by the author, written on a cardboard and pasted at a gallery area within the room. Each title is numbered and participants can then decide which article they can link to, and which article they can co-author. There are a few benefits of doing this:
- In the instance where content migration is required, the author migrates his/her own content to the Knowledge Centre.
- The credentials of the author is preserved during the migration, giving the recognition back to the originator, instead of some Admin account in some cases of automated migration or passing the migration task to another person.
- Staff members familiarise themselves with the technicalities of Sharepoint and the Knowledge Centre.
- If wiki is something new to them, they'll start to experience the dynamics of this social computing tool and the amount of effort that is required.
- Of course, we get some new articles to refresh the Knowledge Centre. For new Knowledge Centre, we won't need to start from ground zero or depend on the central team for contributions.
A research titled Leveraging Social Networking & Web 2.0 Collaboration Tools in Enterprises conducted by the Human Capital Institute shows that the most common reason for not adopting Web 2.0 is due to a lack of understanding of them and/or uncertainty of their potential. Here are a few things we can do to provide clear usage guidance:
- Publicise the Desired Behaviours mentioned above
- Publicise how they could effectively Learn and Share
- Access to the online usage guides and contact information of the central team
The intrinsic value of accessing resources within the Knowledge Centre is to discover the link between knowledge resources to the contributing staff members. Since every contribution automatically captures the author's credentials with a link to his/her profile page, it's important that every staff member update their profiles. Matching a member's profile to his contribution helps tell a story on why this person is writing this article, whether what he says can be trusted, and if I should continue to follow him for this knowledge domain.
Apart from sharing work knowledge, it's also good to know about the social aspects of a person such as interest areas. This can be used to serve as an icebreaker for people who are talking for the first time. I was following a Sharepoint Consultant on his blog and he shared that his 9th kid was just born. Me, as a Dad of one, can hardly find time for this blog post. So I was really curious how he survived with 9! In our first conversation, I started asking him about this and he said, "Just close the door". That caught me by surprise and I replied, "Then you'll have to tell me more about the door." We both then went "ha ha ha" for awhile.
Lastly, filling up your profile information helps people to know you without having you know them. In this age, it's not about who you know anymore, but who knows you. Of course, who knows you comes largely from contributions by the individual, which is another motivation point for contribution.
Chanelling of knowledge
This is the movement of knowledge from their un-managed sources to the Knowledge Centre. I have 3 points on this:
- Instill knowledge processes - From an individual's perspective, he "don't really need" the Knowledge Centre to do his job! Tons of self-talk prevents people from going to the Knowledge Centre, "Can I find something useful if I spend my time?", "Isn't the Internet better?", "What is the quality of the articles there?", "Is it appropriate for me to blog?", "I'm busy, no time to go there?" and so on. The truth is that the Knowledge Centre is isolated from their work unless we channel some necessary learning and sharing processes into the Knowledge Centre. A good example is the use email for discussing issues, where it should be enforced to take place within the Knowledge Centre when it's materialised.The other thing we could do is to identify some project phases or repeatable practices for planting in sharing and learning activities. For instance, blogging about project learning at the end of each project milestone or scanning the Knowledge Centre for knowledge needs before embarking on a project phase. Time can be formally allocated for such activities if required.
- Removing cannibalisation - This is based on the idea that neither the new nor the old medium used to conduct activities will do well when the new one is introduced, and we should put a firm stop to the old ways of doing things. The activities that will be moved to the Knowledge Centre must be clearly articulated so that staff members within the department can synchronise their actions, gain confidence that this new way of working is going to take off and it's no longer "right" to do things the old way.
- Support open knowledge sharing - We can make people feel good about contributing to the Knowledge Centre, and maybe even cause them to want to do it. The first is a simple pat-on-the-back by the Sponsor to acknowledge individuals who have shown good knowledge stewarding behaviours. This goes a long way as people talk about it during coffee breaks and as the surrounding people witness the commendation. The second idea is to acknowledge that knowledge shared belongs to the individual and not the organisation, since good quality contributions can only arise from volunteerism. Thus, make it explicit for people to know that it's perfectly fine to copy whatever they have contributed when they move on from the business unit, even for articles that were co-authored. The third idea is to license outstanding articles under Creative Commons. The basic idea of Creative Commons is to share something useful to the world so that the recognition comes from anyone that re-produces or enhance the work. Wiki as a co-authoring tool makes the generation of good articles possible.
This goes beyond monetary rewards, attractive gifts and the bestowing of KPIs. As I've mentioned, the quality of knowledge is best when volunteered. These traditional rewards and recognition mechanisms are good for bringing awareness and understanding of the Knowledge Centre, or at best rally sub-standard contributions to fulfil the KPIs. I tend to think that we need to create a positive supply (sharing) and demand (learning) ecosystem to sustain the vibrancy of the Knowledge Centre. Work on people's motivation to contribute and help them develop individually. Here are a few ideas:
- Spotlight recognition - Showcase staff members who have exhibited exemplary knowledge sharing and learning behaviours prominently on the homepage. Tell people what they have done to earn it so that people can learn about acceptable behaviours and model after them.
- Peer recognition - When someone publish a post on the blog which is useful, tell them how that article has helped them or how they intend to use the ideas in the post.
- Celebrating expertise - Identifying articles published for Creative Commons licensing is a good way to recognise expertise. I remember that there was a cool walkway in one of my previous companies where title of patents and their contributors were engraved and showcased with artistically designed stainless steel plaques.
- Success stories - Tell the rest how the use of knowledge from the Knowledge Centre had helped them become more effective in their work.
It's very important for the central team use the Sharepoint Announcement as a focal point for communicating about the Knowledge Centre. This is in line with Clear Usage Guidance mentioned above. Here's a few pointers:
- Lookout for new contributions and tell staff members what is it about, how to find it and how to react to it.
- Share success stories of people who have used and benefited from the Knowledge Centre.
- Advise all staff members to subscribe to Announcement email alerts so that they do not "lose out".
- Constant interactions via the Announcements make people feel the presence of the knowledge centre (it's alive!) and help develop trust in the Knowledge Centre as a good resource.
There'll be staff members who would prefer the personal touch of someone being around when they need help. This is why the central Knowledge Centre team must be reachable electronically and physically. Meeting face-to-face has many benefits, although it's extremely time consuming:
- Get deeper insights on staff members' issues and concerns
- Provide better quality (and sometimes more efficient) support for staff members
- Establish rapport between staff members and central team. The effects of building this relationship will inevitably propagate to the use of the Knowledge Centre.
Follow Louis Rosenfeld for expert guidance on IA. My sharing here is not complete (or I'll seem to be writing a book), it's just to give an appreciation on the areas we should look after. IA put simply is the design of the information space that will contribute to ease and intuitiveness of finding information. Some emphasis is given here because the central team needs to take care of information findability as the amount of contribution grows and new purposes for the Knowledge Centre get introduced. Therefore, it's important to engage an experience information architect to design the IA and have him advise the central team how to maintain it. There are basically 3 aspects of IA to look out for in Sharepoint:
- Site Structure
- Page Layout
- Metadata
The best way to think about Site Structure here is to visualise a tree structure. It's how we group information, give those groupings intuitive labels, and use those labels as navigation items to guide staff members to find the information from the homepage or related pages within the Knowledge Centre. Site Structure in other words helps us browse for information (although the field of interaction design contributes to better information browsing experiences too).
Growing the Site Structure potentially makes existing information less findable. I was having a conversation today on the need to introduce a Calendar for the Knowledge Centre since we already have an Announcement feature which can be used to broadcast events. I was for awhile contemplating that if people are interested after looking at the announcement, they can add the event into their personal calendar or sort it by the event metadata value within the calendar itself. After the discussion we decided to include the new calendar because:
- There could be many events announced each month
- It's not mission-critical (calendar entries in Sharepoint don't show in your personal MS Outlook free/busy schedule)
- People need to see it along their work schedules in their Outlook calendar
- And because of the volume of events it can translate to an issue keeping track of events in staff members' personal Outlook calendar.
Page Layout
Page layout is the positioning of information elements on the page to achieve consistency across pages and priority in information access. There are a few things to take care of with regards to page layout and few other things at the page level:
- Page usability - What is this page about, what can i do here, why should I do it here, where do I start. I like the book from Steve Krug on Don't make me think! for advice in this area.
- Page clutter - Use sufficient white space and hot spots. Keep the level of elements on a page to the minimum (this could be a daunting task!).
- Visual prioritisation - The basic on this is to flow left to right and top to bottom in a zig-zag fashion.
- Navigation - Location of primary and secondary navigation.
Metadata are the attributes we give to information to describe it. Author, Publisher, Date Published, Title are all metadata of a book. While the Site Structure helps us find information based on location, metadata helps us find information based on meaning. There are 3 main uses of metadata in Sharepoint that I can think of:
- Search relevancy - The Sharepoint search engine depends a lot on metadata for the relevancy ranking of search results
- Creation of collections across lists and libraries, and across sites within the same site collection. For example, we may want to use the Sharepoint Content Query Web part to aggregate all the wiki articles, blog posts and discussions around (1)Java programming (2)best practices. Java programming can be a Competency metadata and Best Practices a Knowledge Type metadata.
- Improve information seeking, do away with folders - We can sort, filter and group information in Sharepoint using metadata which can generate various information collections. Folders on the other hand confines information to one location. I've shared a bit on this in Metadata design considerations.
[Governance Structure]
This is the roles and responsibilities we have defined to make the Knowledge Centre work. The roles comprise of the:
- KM Sponsor
- Knowledge Activist
- Sharepoint central administrator
- Sharepoint geeks
The KM sponsor is the overall owner of the Knowledge Centre. He is accountable for the success of the Knowledge Centre. His responsibilities include:
- Ensuring alignment of Knowledge Centre with technical excellence objectives
- Resourcing for the maintenance and vibrancy of the Knowledge Centre
- Communicating the value and success of the Knowledge Centre
- Communicating the appropriate behaviours for using the Knowledge Centre
- Reward and recognise staff members who are good exemplars of KM
The KM Activists are responsible for the success of the knowledge centre. They are responsible for:
- Ensuring that staff members adopt the use of the Knowledge Centre
- Facilitate the transfer of knowledge from blog and discussion forum into Wiki for sharing and further developments of the article
- Serve as a knowledge broker - Announce what's there in the Knowledge Centre. Connect people to information, and information to people
- Assess health of Knowledge Centre and lead improvement initiatives. This entails improving information findability and stewarding the use of Sharepoint.
- Moderation - moderation of blog comments to protect the publisher, resolve conflicts in wiki wars and keep track of discussion forum entries that may derail the enquirer.
- Policing violations - Making sure that people are not using email and other undesirable means to perform activities that should be done on the Knowledge Centre
This is the central Sharepoint Administration Team that makes sure that the application, infrastructure and data is well taken care of. They are responsible for:
- Administering the Sharepoint application and infrastructure making sure that they are operational and performing well. This includes central Sharepoint administration, applying patches, increasing disk space, replacing hardware and so on
- Performing Sharepoint admin tasks that the Business Owner can't do
- Resolving or helping to resolve technical issues reported by the business unit
- Backing up and restoring of data at the Knowledge Centre level
These are people whom we turn to when we have an idea and want to find out the best way of achieving it in Sharepoint. They are typically active in the Codeplex community. They are responsible for:
- Advising on Sharepoint technical approaches, strengths, limitations and design based on business intentions
- Assist on technical development - we need them for the technical talk with developers
- Highlight opportunities to KM Activists based on technology advancements (this is why Sharepoint geeks need to know about your Knowledge Centre)
I'm pretty sure that this is not a complete governance plan. But I'm also pretty sure that I've given enough for us to think about. As a practitioner and with the hype of Sharepoint, I felt a sense of obligation to know enough about Sharepoint so that I can connect what business needs to how Sharepoint can serve those needs. This means a keen eye in knowing what Sharepoint is good for and exploit its full potential, it also means that there is a need to know the limitations of Sharepoint from the features and usability perspective. This post is about the people side of making Sharepoint successful.
I welcome your comments.
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