Recipe for a successful KM team

It's a human tendency that we take care of things that matters to us, and we pay attention to things that help keep them in good condition. For example, we pay attention to our mobile phone casing for our mobile phones, and we pay attention to our shoes if we do a lot of walking. But do organisations pay attention to the KM team for improving business performance? I hope the answer is Yes. However, I've seen circumstances that cause KM teams to underperform:

• Not the core business - The KM team is often a support function to the core business and may not fall within the active radar screen of the senior management. i.e. don't really matter since the KM function is not the direct contributors of the organisations KPI.
  
• Inadequate resourcing - Trying to rollout too many or huge initiatives with too little resources resulting in delay of KM initiatives. When a KM team member has to juggle himself between projects or submerge himself in one part of a huge project which he fronts alone, momentum is broken and stakeholders get disengaged. It then takes unaccounted effort to re-establish the work, build rapport and trust.
  
• Poor planning for the post-implementation - In many cases, the focus were given to implementation and less emphasis for the operation. Just as one of my pass KM program manager puts it, "We have created a huge dinosaur, now we have to feed it" - too late I suppose.
• Lack of measurements - Without proper measurements and feedback to the organisation on the effectiveness of KM makes the KM team unpopular over time. "What is this KM team doing? Are they required?". Engagement with stakeholders become a problem as they question the value of KM.
• Too future-oriented - Why spend too much on building the infrastructure for the future when there are already immediate pains today. When we are too future-oriented, we end up doing things that don't relate to people's current issues and thus don't really make sense to people who need to prioritise their work. For example, Knowledge Base may be a good idea for issue resolution but updating skills profile in a staff directory is a much faster way to connect people to the right expertise.
• KM team members - KM is a wide domain with varied practices. Team members who work in silo give up learning opportunities which will make them less effective and outdated.
  

And what can we learn from these observations in making KM teams successful?

• Strong support - A KM team needs strong senior management support. A KM program is an investment and so is the team. Don't start a KM program unless the organisation is truly serious about it.
• Buffer time, allow experimentation - As we probably know by now that KM best practices are hardly repeatable. KM team members need the additional bandwidth to explore and design their initiatives. They need time to exchange and validate ideas with those who've been there and makes sense of new territories with those in the same practice. I would argue that each type of KM initiative for every organisation has its unique challenges. This means that it's a good idea to start small, test the ideas, refine them and even be prepared to scrap them.
• Resourcing KM operations - Governance for the operations of each initiative is essential and the timing to start planning for it is just as crucial. Think about users adoption and engagement, the makeup and recruitment of members needed to sustain and rejuvenate the initiative, support from the KM team, budgeting and work processes during implementation. Without proper governance, the present KM team will be consumed by the post-implementation duties.
• Communicate successes - Measure before and measure after. Establish baseline for the state before the implementation and measure the effectiveness after the implementation. Shout about successes - don't be shy about it. This helps to build credibility for the team.
• One of us - Take care of the present pains. It's crucial that people in the organisation regard the KM team members as one of them. Doing big picture things which takes too long to realise demotivates participation. Not to forget that some initiatives need a period of constant participation before the benefits will be realised. To keep KM team members relevant to their colleagues, make sure that KM team members are up-to-date with what people are doing. Do at least one project that addresses current pains at any point in time.
• The right KM team - The right attributes and attitudes of a team member is more important than the KM skills, experience, relationships and artifacts that he possess. The KM domain is constantly evolving. A competent team member will be one that constantly keeps up, leverage new opportunities, unlearn old practices and master new ones, validate ideas, form new relationships and demonstrates curiosity as an everyday affair. As a change agent within the company, he must be courageous, demonstrate perseverance, engage with staff members and facilitate discussions. In short, a KM team member must possess the drive for self-improvement and solve problems. Skills can be picked up, experience can be accumulated, relationships can be established and artifacts can be collected; but attributes and attitudes are ingrained. There are many ways to achieve KM goals and objectives just as there are many ways to get to a location, thus it's worthwhile to bend the initiative to capitalise on the team member's strength once we've found them.

KM is a demanding job. It's not a place for the weak-hearted or someone who's looking for a 9 to 6 job. The team needs to work cohesively to cultivate a spirit of our KPI and not my KPI. Thinking only about the success of the KM program without thinking about the success of the team is the beginning of failure in itself.