Knowledge Management – Challenges

Challenges you might face as a Knowledge Manager:

As a knowledge Manager, you will have to face many challenges – but it is important that you stay the course and do not let other people to influence what you are supposed to do.

Your main challenge will, of course be from the Operations team – they are the ones who are supposed to be doing the “dirty job” – driving the business and earning the much needed revenue for the company. They are the only ones who, they think, will be held responsible if the SLA & other objectives are not met. There will be a general tendency by the management to overlook even deliberate lapses by them. Be aware of this and be mentally prepared to face such situations. But, most importantly, you have to remember that you are equally responsible too, for the performance of the account/team you are assigned to. So do not allow yourself to get distracted by such situations.

You need to understand that while it is your job to make sure all the knowledge is available, all available knowledge is usable, all available, usable knowledge is indeed used effectively to meet business objectives and if there are any deviations, bring it to the notice of the operations team – they might just ignore your findings.

A simple example could be: You see somebody smoking a cigarette and you walk up to him/her and tell that person that cigarette smoking is a bad thing and you show that person medical reports which say just that – but he/she only thanks you for the information and lights up another cigarette!

In this example, the actions of that person is affecting his/her own health. But in a business scenario, it will impact the earnings/revenue and reputation of that company.

It all depends, to a large extent, also on the psychology of the company to drive the right practices and take corrective actions whenever necessary in order to achieve their own business objectives.

If you run into such situations, do not be too disappointed and do not let such disappointments affect your work. Just keep doing what you are supposed to.

The other challenges could be in terms of tight schedules and co-relating “raw” knowledge scattered all over the organization.

The last, but not the least, you will also come across many situations when you find that knowledge is indeed available freely to be used but there might be a general reluctance to use it or follow established procedures available in the knowledge-base(s).

How well you handle situations like these depends not only on your skills but also on how the company you work for views this. Mostly, it is dependent on the later because there are many times when organizations are forced to ignore best practices or established processes for business reasons. Situations like this are prone to cause a lot of disappointment and frustration but this is exactly when you will have to use your best judgment.