Knowledge management - challenges remain as opportunities grow

CILIP Conference 2019 Keynote Patrick Lambe, founder of Singapore-based Straits Knowledge will be looking at the impacts of successful knowledge management strategies in his speech. In this article he discusses how he brought his library experience – spending a decade working various libraries in the UK – to knowledge management and the challenges now faced by information professionals in all sectors. “I was trained in librarianship, and worked in special and academic libraries in the UK for about a decade before I moved into learning and development, and then knowledge management. Many of the core professional skills and ethics from librarianship transfer usefully into knowledge management. But knowledge management tends to focus on organisational boundaries, while librarianship has a strong focus on providing societal benefits. “Librarianship provides a frame for thinking about knowledge as a public good. However the library profession has struggled to keep up with how it meets the changing knowledge needs of society – we say that we are broadening our perspectives to include support for information and knowledge needs, but our training, our core practices, and our existing infrastructure is really still oriented to a world of very abstract notions of public good, assuming stable institutions and relatively homogeneous communities.”

Challenges in a changing world

He says the world has changed and with it the role and impact of information and knowledge. “We take a lot of things for granted that just don’t hold true any more. Our institutions are not stable, our communities are fractured, new institutions such as internet companies, personal data exploiters and politically-driven troll farmers are fundamentally changing the way society works with information and knowledge. Right now we have no real means as a profession to grapple with these changes in a practical and systematic way. We understand that we need to change in abstract terms, but we find it hard to get a handle on what specifically we should be doing. I want to explore a few examples of how we can adapt as a profession to meet these challenges.” Patrick says that while the landscape has changed, the challenges faced by KM Practitioners have remained fairly constant since Straits Knowledge was formed 15 years ago. He says: “The challenges are pretty much the same as they have always been. KM can touch many very different aspects of organisational life, from the way that individuals think about and work with their knowledge, to the way that teams nurture, protect and share (or don’t share) their knowledge, to the capabilities of an organisation to focus and prioritise on the knowledge work that really counts towards its effectiveness. “It’s complex. It can be messy. You need patience and persistence, as well as good frameworks and processes for making sense of KM needs. Showing impact can be slow, so continuity of effort is key.”

Unity of standards

Patrick highlights CILIP’s efforts to create a Chartership programme for KM practitioners as being a key moment for the profession. Patrick, who was part of the advisory board that developed the programme, sees it as part of a step to create unity, saying: “The opportunities are that we are seeing more stability in KM roles, and KM efforts, we are seeing more experience in the pool of KM professionals (and I think the CILIP KM Chartership programme will contribute to that in a significant way) and we have the ISO 30401 standard for KM, which represents a clear international consensus on how KM efforts should be framed and implemented. That will support greater consistency across KM programmes, and help organisations to compare their efforts and share their experiences in meaningful ways. When we were all calling different tunes, that was very hard.” Patrick adds: “KM has changed remarkably little, actually. The same old problems and issues that we were grappling with 15-20 years ago, hold true today. Organisations still tend to equate KM with managing information in portals and IT systems.

Growing consensus

It is just as common today as 20 years ago, that a successful KM initiative will lose support and lapse simply because there is a change in management focus, or a departure of key people. However there are two positive developments I can see. “In the early days, KM practitioners often had very little experience or background in KM, they were frequently teleported into KM roles from outside, and had to improvise programmes based on gut feel and instinct, sometimes effectively, sometimes ineffectively. And often they would not remain in KM roles beyond a few years. Today, this still happens, but I can see that there is a growing cohort of experienced KM practitioners, and growing consensus on core practices, skills and capabilities that are shared across the profession.

“Secondly, in the early days of KM, when it was still a management fad, there was also a period of intense interpersonal competitiveness among KM ‘gurus’, consultants and service providers. This could become quite nasty, as each voice struggled to establish its authority and novelty against others, often by trying to knock competitors down. Again, this still happens from time to time, but the successful agreement of the ISO 30401 standard in KM (after almost 20 years of effort) marks a sea change in KM, and I hope it signals a new period when there will be greater collaboration, consensus-building and knowledge building across the KM profession.”

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Help with pain points

Patrick says that his consultancy offers KM insights to businesses and organisations that help them “figure out how they can better manage their knowledge and information resources, in support of their organisational objectives. “The larger and more complex an organisation is, the more likely it is that it will run into pain points around knowledge and information use. The right hand might not know what the left hand is doing, so they may run into coordination problems, or be unable to get the full value out of useful knowledge that sits in an organisational silo somewhere. They might be at risk of losing key capabilities because there is no process for managing the renewal of specialist knowledge, skills and experience in its people when key people leave. “They might be unable to learn and propagate lessons from key incidents, and therefore keep running into the same old problems, or keep reinventing the wheel. “All these things get in the way of an organisation being able to realise its potential, attract and keep good people, and compete effectively in a changing environment. “The first thing we do is help organisations understand which of these pain points are most important to them. Secondly we help them identify the key knowledge resources that need most attention and stewardship. Thirdly, we help them frame and implement programmes and projects to address these gaps and opportunities.”