How changing perspectives can help one grow and evolve - even as a seasoned "expert"...

I was asked to write this piece by one of my mentees recently, as she found my story interesting. A story of how views change, and we continue to evolve our thinking, even well into our careers and with lot of subject matter expertise and experience, under our belts. At least that’s why I think (hope!) she asked me to write it, as I take pride in this fact and I am always very excited even when I find myself doing a 180, as it tells me I am still evolving, learning and growing – as a person and as a professional.

I started my own business about 15 months ago, having recently resigned from Microsoft Corporate HQ for the second time. I love the company, and I love their products but “life, the universe and everything” seemed to align towards a perfect “48” (my age at the time), and not "42"*!

It was time to fulfil my dream of having my own business, and more so, a business doing what I really believe in and feel so passionately for: Knowledge Management.        

When I launched KnowFlow Value , it was with Microsoft marketing’s vision about [surfacing and enabling Knowledge Workers to tap into] Knowledge in the Flow of Work in mind, that I named my company. I really believed in this idea because the man who is solely responsible for teaching me most of what I know about KM, and inspiring me to pursue it as my chosen career path, always said “We don’t know what we don’t know.” and when we do, we have Search. But the introduction of LLMs, Azure AI Services and eventually Generative AI changed all of that. Now our collaboration and content platforms, our productivity tools, are becoming “knowledge solutions” and could surface information even when we don’t know what we don’t know, without us having to context switch and change applications to find the knowledge we need.

Fast forward 8 months, and Microsoft announces the retirement of Viva Topics - the product that we very much built for the intent and purpose of surfacing Knowledge in the Flow of Work. The strategy has changed, and the company (seems to be) taking a turn, again honing in on more traditional, albeit AI-powered, Enterprise Content Management.

I am starting to feel that the key thing I loved about “Knowledge in the Flow of Work” no longer holds as true, as the vision we had when launching Viva Topics & SharePoint/Microsoft Syntex (now SP Premium).        

In June 2024, I am at the inaugural Knowledge Summit Dublin, speaking and exchanging knowledge with KM-practitioners and enthusiasts from around the world. I am of course attending my friend Stuart’s session. He is having a little mini-WS together with another KM heavy-hitter, Arthur, and it’s about identifying and mapping knowledge blockers, to unleash Knowledge Flows across an organisation. And right then and there, everything just falls into place. The frustration I have been feeling over the past year, trying to grow a business at a time when KM should be top of mind for anyone investing in AI-solutions, in a country where not even 120+ years old, global and multi-national organisations, have heard the term “Knowledge Management” and sometimes (too often!) do not prioritise things like content governance, meta data and taxonomy, or RBA-controls.

I realise in the few weeks following the event, that this is the way I need to shape my business going forward, instead of trying to sell Knowledge Strategy or even Knowledge Management services. Because things are simply moving too fast. No one (hardly) has the time, resources, or bandwidth to spend months on analysing, strategizing, planning, and deploying a “Knowledge process”. Currently technology, market situations & financial volatility, and the demand for technology across every workforce, is pushing us forward at breakneck speed.

We need to find ways to be nimble also in Knowledge Management. We need to shorten the cycles, and we need to be adaptable, or we will fall behind.        

Does that mean we shouldn’t be strategic and intentional with what we do and how we do it? Not at all! But we need to be more agile and embrace a failing forward mentality. And we need to tie everything we do into solving actual business problems for people and businesses, to drive business value and create something that is useful to the employee, the organisation, and its customers. We need to address and harvest knowledge when and where we need it, across and within our existing business processes - not put it in parallel to our business as a supporting process, as this will easily make “KM” an additional administrative activity, when in fact we need to eliminate low-value, highly repeatable work tasks (to keep up). Like searching for information.

We need to focus on what blocks knowledge from flowing across our organisation, connect our silos as opposed to attempting to break them, and remove those blockers to enable Knowledge to Flow across our business. This is what will enable collaboration, save time, and reduce frustrations (hence stress and eventually have a negative impact on health), drive problem solving and innovation, and make us all more successful - driving genuine business Value. For us as individuals. As teams. And as organisations.

*) Some of you will totally get the reference but if you don’t, then you need to read a book called The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy!