6 warning signs that your KM strategy may be in a skid.

How do you know your Knowledge Management strategy is in danger of crashing? Here are 6 signs.

These 6 danger signs are from a 2009 blog post by Lucas McDonnell, reproduced as a Linked-In Pulse article in 2015, but now available only via this blog.

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1. People outside your group don’t understand what you’re doing. Assuming you’re communicating your strategy appropriately, the fact that no one else gets it usually means that far from being too brilliant to grasp, that instead you’ve simply got your head in the clouds.  You need to be able to translate the concept.

2. You keep changing vendors/technologies/products. Look very carefully to make sure that what you’re attributing to be a set of technology defects or a vendor deficiency isn’t actually a non-existent content management process or broken governance model. Changing vendors/technologies/products won’t help you with those sorts of issues. Ensure you implement a complete Knowledge Management Framework.

3. You keep layering vendors/technologies/products on top of each other. More vendors and products to deal with usually also means added complexity, and unless you have a strategy and the resources to deal with that added complexity, you’re going to drop a few when trying to juggle all those balls.

4. You find it difficult to explain what you’re trying to accomplish. If it’s really that tough to explain what you want to get done, it’s probably going to be really tough to get the money, support and people to get it done.

5. You’re prescribing organizational change. Organizations can be changed — but a knowledge management strategy that seeks to change every part of an organization at once is pretty much doomed to fail.

6. You’re making big promises. Making promises isn’t a bad thing, but don’t promise things you aren’t sure you can deliver — or assume that certain longstanding problems can be fixed via knowledge management.  Promise small, deliver big.