Mastering Organizational Knowledge Flow

APPENDIX A

Key Success Factors

Throughout the book I touched on a number of key factors that will make mastering your knowledge flow more successful.

The following list collects those key success factors into a convenient collection. Ordered by general areas of focus they combine important clarifications with specific actions and approaches.

Make sure to have these in mind when approaching any of the areas or pick specific actions to approach issues with your knowledge flow initiatives.

Analytics

• It is not part of knowledge flow management itself but rather an element for knowledge creation.

• It is an important dimension for high-quality knowledge to enter the flow around the organization.

• Develop analytical thinking in the minds of those supporting your initiatives.

• Feed analysis results back to all stakeholders.

Barriers

• Remove barriers to enable a natural knowledge flow.

• Attack barriers at the right level (i.e., from the top).

• The position that “Knowledge Is Power” can be a dangerous personal point of view.

• Acknowledge that sharing knowledge takes effort; reduce the effort but do not expect to reduce it to zero.

• More is not always better—offering too much information will often result in the targeted people skipping the information completely.

• Quality can be hard to judge; small and raw ideas can be more valuable than large complete deliveries.

• Encourage people to contribute to initiatives earlier instead of holding back ideas too long.

• Acknowledge legal limitations ...