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Knowledge Management Strategy 327

Box 9.4
(continued)

The gap analysis showed that the critical KM missing in this organizational context
was the formal capture and sharing of explicit knowledge. Meetings were often held
without an agenda, attendees changed at the last minute, and the proceedings seemed
quite chaotic to an outsider. For example, the topics to be addressed were arbitrarily
changed, priorities were suddenly announced, and discussions were very diffi cult to follow.
Attendees often interrupted one another, there was no set time for the meeting to end,
and there was no one to chair or to take the minutes. Employees explained that this was
the “ culture ” of the place — where everyone was involved in everything and every decision
was made by consensus. There was little systematic documentation of meeting results.
There was also very little refl ection on completed projects and what documentation did
exist was often very diffi cult to track down. Reports were written for each project, but the
reports varied in structure and content as each was dedicated to an external audience. KM
seemed to be invoked in order to fulfi ll very specifi c demands of external parties but rarely
was the KM lens turned inward.
As a result, the organization had to focus KM efforts on the knowledge capture and
codifi cation side of things. This would require the organization to identify the types of
knowledge they have and that they need to have, and to fi gure out how to render these
more visible and therefore easier to access by others.

• Content (management of explicit knowledge) and community (management of tacit
knowledge) priorities
• Identifi cation of processes, people, products, services, organizational memory,
relationships, knowledge assets as high priority knowledge levers to focus on
• What is the clear or direct link between KM levers and business objectives?
• What are some quick wins (i.e., early relatively inexpensive KM successes)?
• How will KM capability be sustained over the long term? (e.g., defi ned KM roles)?
A typical KM strategy document will contain the results of the audit, an inventory
of what exists, what KM initiatives were implemented or tried out, what types of
knowledge exists, who uses this knowledge, and how and whether or not knowledge
is being shared and disseminated throughout the organization. In parallel, it is also
important to assess the current status of the two key enablers of KM: the technological
infrastructure and the type of prevailing culture (or microcultures within different
units). All of the pieces of the audit can then be integrated to provide a snapshot of
the organization at this point in time and a high-level diagnostic: for example, the
level of organizational readiness for KM (based on KM maturity models, discussed in