How Knowledge Management maturity progresses

Here is a nice graph from our global KM surveys that shows how KM maturity progresses.

This graph is a combination of two questions, and we have combined answers from both the 2014 and 2017 surveys, so over 570 answers are included in the graph. The first question was:

Which of the following best describes the current status of KM within this organisation (or part of the organisation)?

• We are in the early stages of introducing KM 

• We are well in progress with KM 

• KM is embedded in the way we work

The second question was

To what extent is KM now integrated with the normal work of the organisation? Choose the sentence that most closely fits your answer.

• KM is not part of normal activity but is being addressed by a separate group

• KM is performed as a one-off intervention after which business returns to normal 

• KM is a non-routine part of normal activity, done as an exception or when requested 

• KM is fully integrated and is a routine part of normal activity or operations 

 The graph shows how the responses to the second question vary according to the first question, and shows how the integration of KM changes with maturity.

In the early stages of KM, KM is mostly either performed by a separate group (30% of responses) or as an exception to normal process (48% of responses).

For organisations which are well in progress, the role of the separate group is much reduced (to 12% of responses), as is the one-off intervention. The largest proportion of responses is still that KM is an exception to normal process (54% of responses), but the second largest is that KM is fully integrated in normal activity.

For organisations who claim that KM is fully embedded, almost three quarters say that KM is fully integrated in normal activity.

As you might expect, there is a close link between fully embedded KM, and full integration of KM activities into operations.