Knowledge Management Implementation: Engage Key Leaders

In my Lucidea Press book on promoting knowledge management initiatives within the corporate world, I share my observations on how to build the critical great team to support your KM implementation.

You will need to build a team of leaders, direct reports, dotted-line reports, and community members to help sell, implement, run, and support your program. To do so, you should engage key leaders, establish a small program staff, solicit core team members, and create a KM community. Hold regular conference calls so you can meet virtually. You should also meet face-to-face with this team at the start of your program, and at least yearly thereafter.

Insider tips for engaging key leaders

Seek out key organizational influencers such as executive sponsors, department leaders, and respected thought leaders. Request their help in leading by example, setting goals for their organizations and teams, inspecting compliance with those goals, communicating regularly about KM, and recognizing and rewarding those who demonstrate what is needed.
Here are examples of how to do this.

• Spend ten minutes each week with the senior executive in the enterprise social network (ESN)
  • Help them to post a brief update on something that happened in the past week
  • Look for a thread that shows someone asking for help, answering a question, praising another user; help them reply to that thread with a brief note of thanks
  • Find another thread where someone shared useful information; help them like that post
• Ask a leader to include a knowledge-sharing session in an upcoming organizational meeting.
  • Have them kick off and participate in the session, which you can facilitate.
• Find a question that is unanswered in the ESN; ask a respected thought leader to answer it.
• Ask a successful program manager to present on a community call.
  • Help them structure the presentation to share lessons learned, proven practices, and how they use KM components to manage programs