How the perception of KM barriers changes as KM develops
As our KM programs develop, our perception of the main barriers and enablers change
Our Knowledge management surveys in 2014 and 2017, responded to by over 700 knowledge managers world wide, addressed (among many other things) the issues of barriers and enablers to KM programs. You can see the results in an earlier blog post “KM’s biggest barriers and enablers – new evidence“.
Recently I experimented with crossplotting these barriers and enablers against the length of time the respondent’s organisation had been doing KM, to see if the perception of these barriers and enablers change over time. Results are shown below.
These graphs show the percentage of respondents, for each length of time doing KM (half a year, 1 year, 2,4,8 and 16 years) choose each of the barriers and enablers as “the most important”.
Some of the key results are as follows:
- “Senior management support” grows as a perceived barrier as time goes by
- “Senior management support” decreases as a perceived enabler as time goes by
- “Lack of KM roles” and “Lack of defined KM approach) decrease as barriers over time, presumably as these are introduced, and “accountability and roles” develops as an enabler over time
- “Cultural issues” do not really change very much in their perception as a barrier over time, but grow in importance as an enabler, presumably as an enabling culture is developed.
- The issue of incentives is quite minor in importance on both graphs, but the lack of incentives grows as a barrier over time
The most interesting result for me is the way that senior management support becomes perceived as more of an important barrier and less on an enabler. This either could be the issue of maintaining senior interest in KM as time goes by, or it could be that KM reaches the attention of seniors over time, and they become more influential in its development.
Certainly the conclusion is that you cannot assume long term senior support for KM, but need to work on this continually, as over time it can become significantly more of an issue.
Shared by: Nick Milton
September 25, 2018
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