Knowledge Management (Part 3)

Today’s post will delve into the specific techniques that I have used in building an effective knowledge management program. Every law department is different and not all these methods scale for all size law departments. In a three-person, co-located department, the best KM program may be to have robust lunch time discussions. But whatever the size and type of your law department, the goal of a KM initiative is the same: To create a knowledge sharing system that maximizes the resources available within the department to enable team members to provide quick, insightful, and meaningful advice to clients. Here are some approaches that can help achieve that aim:

1) Benchmark yourself. The first step is to mine your organization’s past for lessons and seek advice from others who have traveled the KM road. At the beginning of many KM initiatives, you may well discover that you are not really at the beginning. In fact, most organizations have made some inchoate attempts to capture and disseminate relevant knowledge. These efforts may take the form of intranet sites, bulletin boards, interactive legal advice applications, form libraries, document repositories, and on-line policies. Chances are also that these projects will be like the sand-swept pyramids, impressive monuments of limited utility.

Many companies develop some form of KM practice, often an ad hoc response to perceived bottlenecks, sometimes under the guise of an efficiency or quality program, but organizations rarely follow through with a holistic, systematic approach.

So, meet with colleagues who have been involved in your company’s earlier KM projects and run a KM Workshop to solicit additional ideas and feedback from colleagues.

2) Benchmark others. Visit other companies and organizations dedicated to applying KM and related technologies to the practice of law. I find that law departments are usually justifiably proud of their knowledge management efforts and are more than happy to offer pointers to interested parties.

3) Enlist Executive Support Early, With the day-to-day crush of duties faced by the average employee, it is hard to get buy-in of the rank-and-file workers without explicit direction or encouragement from senior management. This is especially true of a KM program that by definition requires interactive, not passive, participation from a substantial number of employees. As such you must (i) keep senior management closely informed of your intended goals and outcomes; (ii) find a supportive executive sponsor; and (iii) lobby for and include specific KM requirements in every law employee’s annual goals and objectives.

The individual goal requirement should be drafted both to capture a general support requirement and a specific output requirement (e.g. the creation of at least one knowledge asset) while still allowing the employee broad flexibility in achieving that goal.

Ideally one can impose a direct connection between participation in KM efforts and bonuses, but even without this carrot, KM participation can be a consideration in relative ranking and rating, and thus, participation in KM efforts can correlate in some way with compensation. Some companies make more explicit the connection between participation in these initiatives and a bonus. I know of one firm that earmarks 5% of each person’s annual bonus to their KM participation.

4) Rotation of Duties is Critically Important. Nearly as important as executive sponsorship is finding a cadre of dedicated leaders who will help drive discrete initiatives to a successful conclusion. There is a danger of overloading this set of employees with “extra” work and having the KM work fall by the wayside. To combat this, I recommend the practice of limiting leadership of KM projects to a defined term of six to twelve months, depending on the project. This approach:

-Lessens the likelihood that people will burn out ;
-Maximizes the enthusiasm of project leaders;
-Ensures the flow of new ideas ; and,
-Instills a healthy level of competition into how project leaders approach their tasks.

5) At the Outset, a Focus on Social Networking is Recommended. Literature suggests that 80% of knowledge sharing is done through informal social networking. As such, a good start can be had through low cost, high impact augmentation of social networking devices. A corollary to this rule is “don’t fall in love with the technology.” Technology is a tool, but not usually an end in itself. The landscape is littered with remnants of nifty technologies that didn’t resonate with employee needs.

More strategies for implementing KM initiatives will follow in my next post.