Knowledge Mgt - Some possible reasons why it fails ...
Reading the Erik Berkman article (that I picked up from Jim McGee's site) on Knowledge Management prompts some thoughts. If KM is a good thing why isn't it more succesful, and why does it fail even when corporations make concerted efforts to implement it? I'm thinking about the problem in terms of law firms, and especially ones that have at least 15 lawyers.
Knowledge Mgt often fails because the tech tools are not the path to salvation.
Berkman give an example of failure of a "early adopter" of KM:
They were experiencing less-than-satisfactory results, like lack of usage and irrelevant search results, and grew disappointed with Lotus Notes and other tech-driven applications. Personnel simply weren't using what adopters implemented.
This is so true I can smell it. In our firm we have Novell Groupwise as our "Groupware" program. Most people call it our "E-mail" program because that's all they use it for. And many people don't use even the full E-mail capabilities. They don't create folders for each case that they work on, and they don't use shared folders so that entire team members have instant access to all emails received by any one of them etc. Many people refuse to use the Groupwise calender, which admittedly is not as good as Outlook. But again, the calender allows for one person to enter deadline dates for several people at once. Some people even refuse to use the Groupwise calender because they claim it is poor (so they use a calender program that runs on their desktop, but doesn't integrate with other users in the office)
So is the problem that we don't have the right contact manager program? No. The problem is that people don't want to learn all of the features of an existing program that has the ability to enhance their their collaboration with others in the office. But, to be fair, they also feel (justifiably) that management does not place a premium on people using tech tools in new ways. So, a few make a a strong effort, and a fair number don't, and one or two are outright hostile to any change in their environment. So we have tools, and we could use them better, but how?
A partial (but significant) solution to this would be training, but done in a way that conveys that management not only supports the use of tools that enhance efficiency, but also would consider it favorably in job evalutions. In my view (which, again, is based on life inside a law firm) that would happen first with the lawyers. That is, management would have to show that it was going to reward everyone who used tools effectively. And it would have to be committed to penalize those who were deficient in using technology. But, we can't pick on staff. If the lawyers aren't going to be responsible for learning to use technology in better ways, then why should the staff have to do it? This is a tough one for the lawyers who are in charge of management of most law firms. Most management level lawyers are not young enough to accept the idea that lawyers should be proficient in the use of tech-tools. So they aren't going to push it on the lawyers. And, of course, the staff isn't going to just decide to take on a whole new level of commitment to using something that the law firm doesn't signal in a strong way is of value....
Management often fails to implement technology solutions through the proper people
Berkman's article points out that attempts to implement knowledge management schemes fail because the task is assigned to the wrong person or group. For example, you assign the task of rolling out some fancy new knowledge management scheme to the IT guys (because they know the tech-side). But it fails because they don't have the experience of the user, and lack an entire perspective that is vital to getting the new system rolling.
This is a classic problem. In a law firm it does no good to ask the IT guy to figure out what sort of software is needed for a lawyer, paralegal, or legal secretary to do their job. How would he know that? Or how would he (or she) gauge how best to get people to learn how to use the software. He wouldn't. He doesn't have the perspective of a casual user, and can't. On the other hand, how many lawyers know enough about the technical limitations of their network (or of computers in general) to know whether a particular software program is implementable in their system? Not many. So there is a huge gap.
To me that is the central problem of knowledge management or any other techical enterprise that attempts to get users of computers to do a little something more.
Another class of Knowledge Worker is needed
I think the bottom line is that while it looks like we are making great strides and that a great revolution has taken place in the workplace (because things like E-mail have started to proliferate etc) we are actually in the very early stages of the knowledge-processing revolution. We have the Brahmans of Tech (i.e. the IT guys) and we have the Brahmans of the Profession (in my profession, that would be the lawyers). But we don't have the Brahmans who bridge the gap between those other two groups. It will take time for that class to emerge. I suspect the problem, as I have just described it, is not unique to the legal profession.
7:43:54 PM 
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