Overselling Knowledge Management

I have reached the stage in my career where giving something back and helping people who are starting out on their career or perhaps moving their career path in a different direction is very important to me. I am very happy, and often make the offer, to people who are new to knowledge management or perhaps have been recently appointed to the role of knowledge manager, to give me a call and have a chat. This allows them to bounce ideas about, seek a second opinion or just generally share some of the thoughts and challenges that they are experiencing in the role.

I received such a call earlier this week which I thought would be worth while expanding and sharing on in this blog. In essence the person who had relatively recently been appointed as a knowledge manager wanted my advice on how to sell knowledge management to their executive board.

It would have been extremely easy for me to have responded along the lines of ‘don't sell it to them’ but that would have been condescending as this was an issue that was obviously taxing and troubling them.

Let me try to explain why I think you shouldn't try to sell knowledge management to executive boards and senior stakeholders.

In some ways this reflects my experience of marketing and sales. There is one school of thought which says that you can push a sale on to someone by badgering them until they eventually submit and agreed to the sale. This is the super slick salesmen type approach, one to which I do not subscribe. Rather I believe that you should work back the way from what is the identified stakeholder need or if that is not available work with the stakeholder to identify what that need may be. Once you have done that you can then illustrate how what you have to offer can help to satisfy that need. What I'm trying to say is that when you're talking to the executive board or senior stakeholders trying to push the benefits of knowledge management to them might not be the most effective way of communicating or engaging them. Rather attempt to uncover their need or desire for the business. This may be growth of market share, it may be expanding into a new geographical territory or perhaps it is the successful launch of a new product.

If you can identify what that need this then you can start to illustrate how the knowledge management framework or a specific knowledge management processes such as BDAL (Business Driven Action Learning) can help to deliver the desired outcome. By approaching them in this way you're more likely to engage them in a conversation which adds value to them. They will buy into the overall concept and will most likely give you permission to proceed. Trying to push knowledge management onto them could result in a pushback or rejection. I remember in one instance where a senior manager said to me, "Don’t tell me that knowledge management will wash my clothes whiter than white because I don't believe you!" What he was trying to get across was that by promising that knowledge management could solve world famine, make my clothes whiter than white, make me beautiful, make my teeth sparkling white, I guess you get the picture by now, in this experience people associated with knowledge management had been over promising what the results might be and frequently ended up disappointing. All he wanted was a conversation about the challenges facing him in that role and how, if appropriate, the application of knowledge management could help to overcome or perhaps partially overcome some of these challenges.

As we finished our chat on the telephone I suggested that instead of trying to present knowledge management in a way that could be misinterpreted or in a way that could be interpreted as over promising, that they consider a softer marketing type approach being led by what the senior executives needs and desires were and building from them.

Perhaps in a forthcoming blog we may to explore the difference between needs and wants in the context of knowledge management.


Knoco Ltd