The art of change is respect for resistance.

In every organization I managed change so far, the business case for change was rapidly made. The decision makers than base their decision on the benefits towards the cost without further ado. From that moment a monster of resistance is set free. Sources of resistance can become infections and the whole process become obstructed. 

Everybody who finds himself stuck in a process of change that went sour, wonders what they could have done different at the start. Let’s look at the start of a change process with a focus on potential resistance. 

-        First of all there is a big difference between identifying the cost of change and mapping resistance. Resistance will cost time and will delay the ROI of the change. It is therefore fair to say that resistance is the variable costs of change. Because of its complexity, it is not frequently brought in the equation of the change business case. 

-        Mapping the resistance is not possible, mapping its potential is. This is done by valuing the status quo of teams and departments and the position (or distance) they have in the core processes the change will interfere with. For each team or department you score the potential damage that full resistance will cause.  

-        Resistance will grow or fade away, often under the influence of involvement. Clever communication around change creates a pseudo-involvement that keeps many on-board. Effective communication tools are often used before and during change are brainstorms and workshops. Involvement differs from influence. Workshops used for influence are geared for informed decision making, and brainstorms used for influence are geared for first drafts of action plans. Workshops and brainstorms can be very effective involvers. In many cases where organizations organized sufficient workshops and brainstorms for people to get involved, the level of resistance was considerable lower. 

-        Recently we started to apply social media as communication tool to make the process of involvement more continues. Blogging, micro-blogging (Yammer etc.), interactive newsletters, video-casts, dedicated Facebook sites etc. have all been applied with great success. Still the real life meetings like workshops are necessary, but the frequency can be reduced dramatically. The results are that due to a near permanent involvement and opportunity to react and reflect, resistance could be dealt with in most instances. 

Still resistance to change will be an important part of any managers change project, but at least the tools are proven and should be applied.

Looking for a recognizable best practice in knowledge management? .. The Olympics.

Often when organizations want to start with a knowledge management program, they are looking for a clear and recognizable best practice everybody can refer to. The Olympic Games might just be that recognizable example of good practice everybody in your organization can relate to. For courses or workshops I often use this example, often leading to enthusiastic engagements form the participants.
 
The IOC, International Olympic Committee, runs a professional program with the name “Olympic Games Knowledge Management” (OGKM). The business case is clear, the transfer of knowledge from the current to the next organizer is crucial. This entails all traditional elements of intellectual capital; technical reports, documentation on logistics, lessons learned, critical intelligence, management insights and lessons learned. 

The initial thinking of is as old as the first serious theory of KM from the mid-nineties. During the preparation of the Sydney (2000) the KM program was created and makes use of an integrated platform for services and documentation. The purpose was to provide a solid mechanism of knowledge sharing between the current and the next organizer. There are official debriefings and the manuals are not just given to the next lot, but supported with good personal advice.
 
The observer program in Vancouver brought the observers from Sotchi valuable hands-on experience and in-sight information. On this turn in Sotchi more than 350 representatives from future Olypmics, up to 2022, have experienced how to organize activities and functional areas. (Rio 2016, PyeongChang 2018, and Tokyo 2020) and five Applicant Cities for the Olympic Winter Games in 2022 (Krakow, Oslo, Almaty, Lviv and Beijing). 

This transfer of knowledge is unique an very much in line with the Olympic spirit. It is also possible to adjust and copy it to all sorts of organizations. The Olympics are once again a true source of inspiration.

Five Reasons Knowledge Management is Broken

1. Knowledge is Not Accessible

While search and retrieval technologies are everywhere, paradoxically access to contextually -relevant information and knowledge is not. Hence existing knowledge is not properly leveraged and business is suboptimal. Organizations don’t know what they know – and don’t use what they know very well. This lack of access and relevance carries huge economic consequences: lack of relevance to customer needs, lower sales conversions, customer satisfaction, lower quality service, customer churn, suboptimal products and services, costs associated with reinventing the wheel, etc. Extracting this knowledge presents a challenge for many organizations though, as it is housed in systems inside and outside the firewall, and, more importantly, in the minds and experiences of their employees and experts outside the firm. Data must be organized into information and transformed into knowledge, often with the help of contextually- relevant experts who must also be found, before it can be interpreted by humans into actionable insight for strategic decision-making.

2. Knowledge is Useless without Relevance

Ultimately, knowledge has no value to users unless it is in context. The need to be relevant is more important than ever – and the inability to deliver and obtain the most relevant knowledge negatively affects business. Sales, service, online transactions and operations all depend on relevant information, because in a customer-centric world, customers are more demanding, empowered and knowledgeable than ever. Customers expect companies to return with speed and relevance, knowing their history, issues and having an immediate solution.

 3. Knowledge is Confused with Information

Organizations often treat knowledge as a transferable commodity that can all be stored in a system of record, retrieved and used mechanically. Companies are realizing that they cannot execute on the vision that knowledge is a transferable commodity, predominantly because knowledge is not just information. Knowledge is a form of competence or human ability to take action. Searching and retrieving information from a central source does not deliver actionable insight.

4. Knowledge Gaps Exist

With the crowded chaos of applications, databases and online resources, the data sources where knowledge is extracted also provide opportunities for knowledge to be lost. IT has traditionally handled this problem through integration, but i – that has been a very complicated, time-consuming and an expensive task. In a fragmented and heterogeneous environment, enterprises should resist the temptation to migrate data to a central system. The more data moves around, the more complicated it becomes to find again. And we’ve all learned from experience that systems of record never don’t really contain the “only” record. Fragments of data simply proliferate outside the system of record – different processes, point solutions, employee-activated cloud solutions, the list growsetc. Unfortunately, employees end up using incomplete or wrong information, or simply re-inventing the wheel. Often times, transactions stall or fail due to knowledge gaps.

5. Knowledge is Not not Generating the Business Return it Should

Anyone in business would agree that knowledge is a highly valuable asset for most organizations. Yet, like any other asset, that collective knowledge will only generate returns to the extent that it is re-utilized, often by employees and customers to take higher-value business actions. Otherwise the asset only sits there, latent and untapped. Because knowledge is what keeps organizations competitive, it is imperative for it to be accessed and shared across teams and geographies. Knowledge is useless sitting in repositories where no one even knows it exists; it is only valuable and can see deliver a return when it is accessible and reused as often as possible, and relevant to the dynamic context at- hand.

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Cursus

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