Barriers to knowledge sharing

Continuing my list of the four main barriers to knowledge sharing.

Possible barriers to knowledge sharing

2 – Technology

Lack of or insufficient search solution for knowledge

No engagement tools to rank and rate – “like minded” tools

No opportunity to find ‘people who know people’

Social media is all about participation – all content is collaborative. I have to search to collaborate

Data management ??? a strong data management structure helps to support Knowledge Sharing

Asking the user creates the mo’ factor

We are currently working with sub groups of a knowledge community, to get their areas prepared as part of the ongoing development of the community’s new knowledge portal. Its been tougher than anticipated, with a mixture of security and lock down issues, which means some compromise to usability and user centric best practice. What has been really encouraging is the amount of people within the community who are starting to mention the site as an important tool going forward. By good stakeholder and user input prior to the design and build stage we’ve started to create a momentum behind it.

Think we are now approaching the finishing line for launch before Xmas.

Happy World Usability Day!

Today is World Usability Day, which was founded by the Usability Professionals’ Association to promote the belief that the services and products important to life should be easier to access and simpler to use. Each year it is held on the second Thursday in November. To read more about it, just go to the site

 

http://www.worldusabilityday.org/

 

Usability, in relating to our web products and knowledge processes is something we are passionate about. Unfortunately, time and resource, does not always allow us to go as faras we should. providing we keep it on the agenda I can live with myself.

Barriers to knowledge sharing

Mentioned in a previous post the barriers to knowledge within my organisations. In 2008 we undertook a knowledge survey with over a third of the organisation taking part. Survey was a mixture of online polls, face-to-face interviews, anecdotal evidence and telephone interviews. We found there were four main barriers to knowledge sharing. Over the next 4 days I’ll run through these. Looking back over the last 12 months I’m not sure they have changed.

Possible barriers to knowledge sharing

1 – Culture

Knowledge Sharing not seen as a priority

Lack of awareness of the potential role of Knowledge Sharing

Not aligned to processes

Not essential for daily work

Silos and rigid reporting lines

To many firm bottlenecks and roadblocks that prevent holistic approaches to knowledge sharing

No time invested in creating a passion for knowledge sharing

Trust

The long journey to knowledge begins

Had a really enjoyable brainstorming session today with representatives of one of our largest communities. They have a very well used online knowledge community (or in reality a good information sharing model and validated sharing) but little physical structure when it comes to knowledge networking and sharing.

The introduction of a Knowledge Sharing strategy to this community is a very large undertaking both in terms of change management and stream buy-in. A robust structure and understanding of what Knowledge Sharing means within the community is needed to ensure that this roll out is a success both initially and in the long-term. Therefore, not only were their community respresentatives but also stakeholders from our IT department, Learning & Development function and similar knowledge communities within the firm.

After detailing the hurdles to knowledge sharing in the physical, virtual and social spaces we looked possible achievements within 3 months, 6 months and future down the journey. We went away with a shopping list of actions to progress.

Within wishing to preempt the findings I believe the keys elements will be ensuring top level sponsorship and visible; action support for the initiative; some tangible expectations of what is required from key groups within the community; a physical structure for networking; reward for networking and sharing; and key to all of this help, guidance aqnd support for the community to know how to share knowledge – in terms of how to access knowledge, how to use the knowledge, and how to network with the providers of this knowledge.

Really looking forward to this developing.

Thinking of the people

HR and people related content on intranets generally feature highly in the most popular pages. Our HR pages are no exception, with over 20,000 visits per month to ???people??? related areas. However, over the past 24 months the attention given to maintaining these areas has not reflected this popularity. The area has suffered from old, duplicate and incomplete content.

This area is now being addressed. A project, sponsored by our HR department are now looking at ensuring content will be published within a governed, user centric structure.

The approach has two stages. First the ???ticking plaster??? ??? urgently addressing the issues with the current site. Stage two sees the complete redevelopment of HR related areas, bringing content under one structure, improved search, enhanced navigation, new taxonomy/tags and a greater focus on how the user engages with the content. Working with the Intranet team the project milestones will include stakeholder workshops, user research, design briefs, user testing and a full adoption programme to ensure a site that is sustainable moving forward.

In need of a digital nanny?

Read the Farhad Manjoo article (New York Times) over the weekend (‘Taming Your Digital Distractions’) where a variety of software is used to tame the digital distractions faced when logging onto a PC (i.e. using blogs, receiving email, desktops alerts etc). The term digital nanny is used. I wonder if we all start to need a digital nanny? We have so many options to receive information and I fear we have yet to find a practical solution to the information overload we now receive (already today I have a Yammer alert and now the instant messaging is heating up). I must spend 25% of my day dealing consuming, assessing and replying to digital connections. I spend much of my time evangelising on the need to share, network and produce via digital channels. Perhaps I need to remember why I do this. To help people with their day job. If a user has less time to do the day job are we succeeding or do we need to introduce a digital nanny – creating a time and place for this consumption?

A slow start

Love this item from Intranet Focus

regarding the implementation of SharePoint.

I had an initial meeting with our IT people yesterday on the implementation of SharePoint across our collaboration/knowledge sharing functions. The initial approach is to look at the metrics and value behind the current offerings. Maybe appropriate to start slowly – I doubt we will see a major impact internally until late 2010 – but really exciting at looking at how we can start connecting the various collaboration and knowledge tools we have.

My fear, speaking to other intranet folk who have implemented a new platform, will be anything and anyone associated with the old platform will be excluded, being seen as part of the problem, rather than using their skills and experiences to see how they have done the best with what they were given. Rather than a technical deployment it should be seen as a vehicle/platform for integrated collaboration. This vehicle takes trained drivers rather than mechanics. Interesting times ahead!

Training to engage

Just read the Guardian article about the digital divide (actually brought the paper rather than read it online –

For me, the same applies within the workplace.  We all talk about engagement and collaboration (well I always do) but we provide little to none training in collaboration or how to use the tools to collaborate.

No-where is there budget or resource to include all our staff within the digital framework. In my disucssion with various online stakeholders many agree that its the basis digital skills that are a hurdle to collaboration within the organisation, and greater resource on training or inclusion in this area will reap greater rewards. Problem is, as the article mentions, is that no resource of funds are available to provide this. No department has the remit, nor I suspect the desire, to deal with the issue. Why don’t I do it? You’re right (now I’ll talking to myself) – its something on the list and one day I’ll get a sponsor. Maybe not today but one day.