KM Horror StoriesThese tales from the dark side of knowledge initiatives may keep you up at night. Email this article...Print this article...Reader Comments...Link to this article...by Steve BarthFrom Knowledge ManagementMagazine October 2000 How important are knowledge management initiatives? According to studies by KPMG and the Conference Board, 80 percent of the world’s biggest companies have KM efforts under way. The Radicati Group, a research firm in Palo Alto, Calif., predicts that the market for knowledge management tools will reach $1.3 billion this year and $9.8 billion by 2004. Yet KM initiatives fail, perhaps as often as they succeed. Such failures aren’t discussed in industry conference sessions, but even after deployment projects are declared complete, knowledge workers still cope with information overload, inadequate time in which to share knowledge and duplication of efforts. Then there’s the state of the technology: when Bain & Co. studied categories of electronic management tools, KM applications ranked last out of 22 categories in terms of user satisfaction (see "News," September 2000 KMM).It is said that we learn more from our mistakes than from our successes. These days, many corporations say they encourage managers to "fail more"—that is, to take more risks. Wouldn’t it be nice, though, to learn from somebody else’s mistakes rather than makeyour own? Couldn’t a collection of worst practices be as helpful as best practices? With that in mind, we present the following tales of knowledge management initiatives gone wrong. Why bother?The Pillsbury Co. of Minneapolis began its knowledge management efforts in 1996 in the research and development group, where 500 scientists, technologists, technicians and support staff serve 14 different business teams. Not all of the food manufacturer’s KM initiatives have turned out as planned, according to Phil Perkins, who was responsible for KM at Pillsbury until he joined another company this year. Many of Pillsbury’s R&D teams worked on products and technologies associated with flour, batter and dough. One scientist who was having problems with the consistency of waffles concluded that there had to be a lot of batter knowledge in R&D groups and within support sectors such as process technology, analytical laboratories and strategic technology development. He proposed creating a forum in which everyone could contribute knowledge about batter and products basedon it, such as ideas and suggestions for ways to improve product consistency and quality. The IT department set about building a virtual space in the company network designed specifically to share knowledge about batter. The application was built and seeded with a few thought-provoking questions, and e-mail invitations went out to all the groups. Then the scientist who had initiated the project waited for the knowledge to flow.After six months, he was still waiting; not a single user had signed on. The application was deemed a failure and shut down. "It’s not that there wasn’t significant knowledge about batter within Pillsbury’s extensive R&D group—quite the opposite," Perkins says. "The fact was that there was no incentive for anyone to invest time and energy to solve other people’s problems. The culture did not reward and recognize this sort of activity. In fact, some vice presidents frowned upon the idea of ‘their’ people working to help other teams." The batter effort failed to rise because the originator of the idea focused on the perceived benefits to the organization withoutconsidering what incentives would have to be offered to get people to contribute; the IT staff focused solely on delivering a quality technology solution. In short, both wanted to solve a problem but didn’t ask if it was the right problem to solve. Perkins calls this the Field of Dreams trap. "Don’t assume that if you build it, they will come," he warns. "First ask, What is the business problem that this application is trying to solve? If you can’t find an acceptable answer, don’t do it."Quality controlEven well-known practitioners of KM make critical mistakes. As managing principal of IBM’s Global Knowledge Management Consultingand Solutions in Somers, N.Y., Scott Smith exports lessons learned at IBM to Fortune 1,000 corporations worldwide. The consulting practice integrates IBM hardware, software and research knowledge to show companies how to extract maximum value from information technology. Today, Global Services is the fastest growing part of IBM. With more than 140,000 consultants in 160 countries, IBM is the world’s largest provider of information technology services. But Smith’s group did its job so well that it neglected to manage its own intellectual capital. Early in its history, leaders of the consulting group recognized the importance of conserving knowledge of client engagements, so it created an intranet-based repository of best practices. However, as thebusiness grew, the process by which consultants contributed their experiences to the repository became unwieldy. "It never occurred to us that we needed to manage the content," Smith admits. To rectify this oversight, managers first added carrot-and-stick incentives for submitting to the intellectual capital management system. A consultant’s contributions were reflected in performance evaluations and/or bonuses. "Everyone submitted. But we are on a calendar year, so 90 percent of our submissions came in between December 15th and 31st," Smith recalls. Worse, there was no process to monitor the quality of the written contributions. "Not only did they all come in at one time, but they wereincredibly long and unintelligible," he adds. Forced to improve the method, IBM eventually created a community submission process involving a network of experts that on a rotating basis review, comment on and request contributions to the knowledge base.Sometimes even horror stories have happy endings. Once the practice fixed it, the intellectual capital management system became a key toolin IBM’s consulting. In 1998 it won an award for best knowledge management process from Giga Information Group.Enough to be dangerous A successful software company created a professional services group to support implementation of its product lines. This group built award-winning solutions by solving complex business problems through innovative technology and was rated highly by its customers. Yet the group