Knowledge & Information Management (KIM) strategies that make a difference
Salutations! Just posting to
tell you about Tuesday night. We had the pleasure of hosting another
highly successful and enjoyable TFPL Connect networking event. Our
delegates and panel of speakers represented a broad range of organisations from
the private, public and third sectors with a shared interest in knowledge
management and its evolution in the current political and economic climate.
You can follow a Twitter feed
from the event under the hashtag #kimtfpl or check my page for more (@shooreshian)!
We kicked off with three
presentations on how KIM strategy is being aligned in HM Treasury,
PricewaterhouseCoopers and The Social Enterprise Coalition. As tradition
has it, we then broke off for networking, drinks and snacks (strictly
prescribed in that order by our chairman, Ian Wooler!).
Jacqueline Rees - Head of
Knowledge Management - HM Treasury
Jacky introduced her
presentation by describing the structure of KM as a function within the
Treasury. She heads a central KM department, with a knowledge manager placed in
each of the five directorates. There are
’knowledge champions' attached to each department (or team) at operational level.
The Treasury's KIM vision:
To empower staff to perform
effectively in their roles, through capturing and sharing the right knowledge
to the right people at the right time in the right format to enable HMT to
fulfil its objective to be a strong, respected and professional Economics and
Finance ministry.
Jacky has overseen the
alignment of KM within corporate and directorate strategies at the Treasury,
all of which have a KM enabled business plan. The Treasury's senior
management is thoroughly convinced of the virtues of KM: the Permanent Secretary
is one of the departmental champions and supported the formalisation of the
discipline to a function in 2006.
Touching on the economic
crisis, Jacky told us how the recession has raised the stakes in KM at the
Treasury placing emphasis on doing it right and getting it right first time,
both at a strategic and a tactical level.
Jacky went on to describe areas of KM success at the Treasury including:
An awareness of KM as an effective tool amongst staff at all levels
- A solid evolution of KM in her organisation from ambiguity to its solid embedding within the Treasury
- Effective embedding of techniques such as knowledge harvesting
Some of the key KM challenges
which Jacky highlighted were:
High staff turnover Lack of incentives for staff to abide by good KM practice
- Security policies block the use of some social media collaboration and KM tools
- The impact of business and economic cycles on staff (for example the Budget and pre-Budget report)
- Managing people’s perceptions about sharing
Scott Pearson - Knowledge
and Communications - PricewaterhouseCoopers
Scott introduced PwC as an
entity which basically makes its money from the sale of its knowledge
PwC's knowledge vision:
We are renowned for
distinctive thought leadership and delivering insights that help our clients
succeed. We are motivated to build our networks and leverage them effectively
to share and combine our knowledge and experience to deliver a unique client
experience. We know where to find the contact or information we want quickly.
Scott went on to describe the
kinds of knowledge aims, metrics and structures are in place at PwC. What struck
me most from this was how the knowledge function in PwC has
aligned itself with the corporate vision of competitive advantage: that good KIM
enhances PwC as a factor of differentiation. As a result of the solid
foundation which KIM enjoys at PwC it has been possible to productise knowledge
and 'sell' it to internal stakeholders, at the same time as keeping a keen eye
on trends in the external environment to ensure the relevance and currency of
the solutions they offer.
Kirsten van den Hout - Director of Business - Social Enterprise Coalition
Kirsten firstly introduced the concept of social enterprise to us: that it is commercial but with the difference that profits are reinvested into the organisation to further its social or environmental mission, rather than paying shareholders. Social enterprises have three bottom lines/measures of success: commercial profit, social impact and environmental impact.
This is a significant sector with 62,000 social enterprises, with a combined turnover of £27bn in the UK. Examples include The Big Issue, Divine Chocolate, Hackney Community Transport and Hill Holt Wood. The Social Enterprise Coalition has a membership base of 300 organisations and an outreach to an estimated 10,000 social enterprises.
The SEC is an industry body which aims to:
Promote the benefits of SE to government – use insight/research to inform policy
- Strengthen the sector through knowledge exchange of best practice
- Run programmes and media campaigns to raise awareness
The fact that social
enterprises are commercial doesn't make Kirsten's job any easier.
She described the membership as naturally wary of sharing due to their
commercial and competitive nature - so a great deal of effort is required in
"managing personalities", at events such as the Social Enterprise Knowledge Exchange (SEKE).
SEC is 60% grant funded, the
remainder of its income has to be generated through internal funding
initiatives such as hosted events. With this in mind the management of
costs poses a significant challenge to the organisation especially in a
challenging economic climate.
In terms of the overall KM
strategy, Kirsten highlighted that her organisation is now in the second of a
three year programme which is yielding results with overall improvements in
knowledge sharing.
Like Scott Pearson, Kirsten
found the use of KM as a term potentially problematic and her preference is to
use the phrase "doing what we do, better" instead.
Angela Abell (TFPL) summarised the presentations well saying that, "They had one common theme – behaviours. The need to embed IM and KM behaviours in everyone – and the real difficulty in doing that. ‘Changing organisational culture’ just doesn’t sum up the real challenge. Very interesting that all three bought out real business drivers for what they are doing – which is a leap forward. And that the KM language issue hasn’t gone away – but is being tackled pragmatically."
Martin Sanderson (TFPL) reflected after the event that "KM is
essentially positioned on a risk – opportunity spectrum which varies from one
organisation to another but is never just risk or just opportunity; that the
biggest challenge to implementing KM is, as with other information programmes,
changing human behaviour: change management by many means."
Feedback from our delegates
on the content and the general atmosphere of the evening
We received great feedback in conversation with the delegates on the
format and quality of presenters. The delegates clearly shared a great
passion for KM; the Q&A session, time for reflection at the end and the
fact that the speakers stayed on for drinks and networking really added value
for them. The content created a real buzz for conversation with prolific
exchange of ideas and business cards.
Many organisations in the current economic and political environment are actively reconsidering their KIM strategies and structures. Because of this, delegates felt that the event was very timely in giving them a platform for insight into how peers across sectors were pushing the KIM agenda in the wider business strategy - a great learning and sharing opportunity.
Here are some pictures from the night:
For
information on TFPL Connect and our other events, please visit our
Comments