knowquestion :: Stephen Bounds

There is a dangerous habit that pops up in KM writings from time to time, and that is blaming "the organisation" for failing to recognise our brilliance. Most recently seen in Steve Denning's article Why do great KM programs fail?, Steve complains:

KM is incompatible with the underlying philosophy of traditional management, which no longer fits the world of today ... [but with managers'] increasingly desperate and flailing efforts to maintain control, to cut costs, to downsize and outsource ... knowledge management programs are perceived as “costs” that can be cut with negligible loss ... killing the KM program can be seen as an obvious quick win.

Newsflash: Hundreds of small, medium and large organisations around the world have given KM a try. If KM is still struggling at the margins, then we are failing! It ain't the fault of the managers, who are not separate from the organisation -- they are an intrinsic part of it.

Remember that the very essence of an organisation is the idea that it continues to operate in a recognisable way even as the people and other components within it come and go. So it's not surprising that organisations resist our change efforts.

In other words, we don't yet have the tools to disrupt organisations sufficiently to implement permanent change. Or perhaps, once a certain level of stability is reached hierarchical organisations can't be changed into adapatable ones.

If the latter is true, then all we can really do is sit back and watch evolution in action. If, as KM practitioners assert, the current structure of organisations doesn't work in the modern world, then over time we will see the "dinosaurs" die out and the newer "mammals" with flexible and self-organising structures will rise to dominance.

And the cause of these "dinosaur" organisations? Well, while I believe we can legitimately talk about the self-interest of an organisation, ultimately this self-interest only exists as an aggregation of the self-interest of those individuals who make up that organisation.

Organisations can adapt, but the driver for adaptation must come from within. Only when people who form part of the organisational structure demand changes or start leaving will evolution to self-organising teams become a real option. (Note that from a global perspective viewing all organisations as a megasystem, this is the same thing.)

We've seen this in the knowledge worker phenomenon. People now demand jobs that give greater autonomy in how they achieve individual tasks assigned by their manager. Organisations (mainly) accept this because it's the only way to recruit and retain talented staff. But KM demands a revolution in how to decide what the organisation does, and that is something people aren't ready for.

I don't believe that KM programs fail because of the managers; I believe they fail because employees, in their heart of hearts, don't want the changes required by the KM "revolution". For many people, going to work is an abrogation of responsibility. They want to be told what to do next, they want someone to make the hard choices for them. It's not that they are barracking for things to go bad, but it's nice to have someone to blame.

So if the core premise of many KM programs is rejected by employees, then of course the program will struggle to deliver value. And in that environment, organisations are probably entitled to call the program a failure.