Social Collaboration at the heart of Knowledge Management (r)evolution

Why the former Knowledge Management was never be fully adopted by employees ?

Following a previous blog (here) summarizing how Atos internal Digital transformation has well evolved from ZeroEmail™ over Social Collaboration to WellBeingAtWork, I would like to explain a good side effect on how the Social Collaboration is disrupting the old Knowledge Management.

It’s time to unleash your Knowledge assets

Our Enterprises operates in a knowledge economy that is undergoing significant transformation. You can no longer have critical information locked into individual mailboxes, or folders and archives unavailable to your employees and stakeholders.

A good Social Collaboration, consisting of an Enterprise Social Network creates a global structure of so-called communities that should encompass all your organization, your markets, portfolio and your customers. All communities and knowledge should be globally available to your employees within a unique collaborative platform.

So why people are so excited about Enterprise Social Networks ? 

What I found within Atos after 5 years of promoting social collaboration are the following benefits:

- It’s improved team work and communication with more transparency
- It’s reduce internal emails overload and fewer meetings
- It’s accelerate peer support and knowledge re-use
- It’s share the Power of Knowledge (enterprise social technologies enable personal knowledge to become organizational knowledge)
- It’s work because employee daily business create context & audience automatically
- It’s work by connecting people (and no longer documents)

Knowledge Management versus Knowledge sharing

So whay so many old Knowledge Management solutions was not working and was not adopted ? Mainly because the KM governance :

1.         wanted to manage and control all the company knowledge
2.         defined knowledge as a transferable good, which is centralized provided
3.         required knowledge sharing without providing any audience

But we all like to share knowledge on the web (wiki, blog, social media…) for 2 reasons, if we get the right audience, if we can communicate and have social conversations with other people, if we get positive feedbacks from others (that promote ours status as expert).

Without that we are not motivated to share or to use within the old KM . Because we share knowledge when we have the right audience and purpose, that motivates us and create the right context.

Knowledge Sharing is …not a new knowledge management tools, no longer about storing knowledge on everything, but it’s about Knowledge just in time, that happens by connecting people in formal and informal networks.

Knowledge communities can also give to the “knowledge” a face and a name, accelerates the recognition and e-reputation of your staff.

To succeed the knowledge sharing and collaboration (r)evolution, you need a coordinated organization (communities manager & leaders), to adapt & simplify your technological landscape (with social as the entry point) and a new culture and team spirit.

Knowledge sharing depends on the habit and willingness of the knowledge worker to seek out and to be receptive to these knowledge sources. The right digital culture, incentives, and so on must therefore be present.

But not with a classic « change » culture but more with an « influence » culture by using ambassadors, influencers, collaborative leaders with visibility, by promoting success stories, by rewarding innovators and entrepreneurs , by changing the old KM habits …there is a lot to be done !

A social networks properly integrated and promoted will be adopt by many employees and can become your indispensable knowledge infrastructure of your organization !

Are you ready to unleash your Knowledge Capital by evolving from “management” to “sharing” ?