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Reaching Out To Managers

November 3, 2010 by David Kay

Millau Bridge

Photo credit: Millau Bridge, tibchris. Creative commons, some rights reserved.

As knowledge people, we spend lots of time on PowerPoint decks for executives explaining the benefits and ROI of our work.  We generally spend some time thinking about how we’re going to get staff aligned, too.  We do communications plans, talk about what’s-in-it-for-me, and build recognition programs.

What we don’t do, nearly enough, is focus on the managers.

I feel for the managers we work with.  Here they are, doing their best to satisfy more and more customers, with increasingly complex problems, and little extra funding.  Again and again, they’re told their team needs to participate in new initiatives…any one of which would be great, but taken as a whole, it’s just overwhelming.  And few look as overwhelming as knowledge.

As knowledge professionals, we know that knowledge really isn’t a new initiative.  It’s a new way of doing business, and it’s going to really help support managers.  They’ll have more efficient staff, because they’ll all rely on the organization’s collective wisdom.  They’ll have happier customers, receiving shorter resolutions and talking with more knowledgeable people.  The team will be happier, with better work-life balance, opportunities to do new things, and fewer redundant cases.   Self-service works, too:  As one engineer told me, “I love helping people when I sleep!”

So we know it’s all good news for managers.  But don’t expect to show them your PowerPoints and have them applaud.  They’re stretched to the breaking point, and all they’ll hear, at first, is that we’re asking for more.

Slow down and take the time to have the conversations.

Filed Under: KCS, KM

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Lala Mamedov says

    November 5, 2010 at 4:44 pm

    David,
    you are making a great point. Knowledge Management initiatives cannot succeed if they are only owned and executed by Knowledge Management leaders, no matter how passionate, committed and KCS-empowered they are. The battle for success of KM is a battle for the hearts and minds of the frontline managers. One approach that worked for me was to help them understand how this new initiative will help them in their daily lives of managing a support team. They will help their employees feel more competent, they will deliver better support to the customers, they will have better visibility inti top issues so that they can be fixed faster, they can me more productive in their daily work with easy access to process documentation, and so on…

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