The intention
Getting knowledge management off the ground at a large multinational in 1994.
The approach
Encouraging employees to make more use of each other's knowledge by means of an intranet site with personal profiles of employees. Allow employees to ask each other questions via the web and thus allow them to collaborate better.
The result
After an initial growth spurt, the initiative came to a screeching halt. The reason for this was lack of support from management and insufficient awareness among employees about the initiative and the new web technology. Active use of the intranet was also a step too early for management. People still had the idea that every sentence that an employee wrote on the intranet had to be checked by an editor first. Web 2.0 was still very far away.
The lessons
No matter how good your ideas are and even if you are convinced of your own right, there is an important difference between being right and being right. In this case, we were just years too early with our ideas and with this initiative. We have learned that it is essential in corporate knowledge management to ensure management support and that no matter how good an initiative, some form of marketing is also necessary.
I now use this at the company that eventually emerged from the effort described here almost daily!
Author: Willem
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