"The KM Cookbook" - what a feast!

This book goes to my list of Top 5 Knowledge Management books of all times. Like the recent ISO KM standard that prompted its writing, The KM Cookbook will not tell you the “how to” of KM. However, it is packed with examples of how it can be done. Allow yourself to be inspired.

Note: This review was initially posted, in Portuguese, in KMOL.

The recent ISO standard for Knowledge Management systems and the “Chartered Knowledge Manager” status for individuals, make this moment “a key time for professionalising Knowledge Management”. They were the main prompts for Chris Collison, Paul Corney and Patricia Lee Eng to write this book. And what a book!

The idea came to Chris and Paul as they were having a lovely dinner overlooking the River Tejo, in 2017 after running a masterclass at Social Now. And if a restaurant was the setting for the idea, it also became the underlying metaphor for the whole book.

The book kicks off with a chapter about the ISO 30401:2018 “Knowledge management systems” standard.

The standard offers a framework for KM that tries to answer questions such as what makes a KM programme successful and what a knowledge manager should know. It appreciates the unique context and characteristics of each organisation and, as a result, it points out the “what” and not the “how”.

The standard follows the same structure of ISO 9001, defining requirements and recommendations in seven areas: organisational context, leadership, planning, support, operations, performance evaluation and improvement.

After an overview of the standard and its main requirements, the authors drill down on the role and key characteristics of a KM sponsor, ways of implementing KM (big bang, bottom-up, pilot, slipstream, etc.), how to hire consultants, and tools and processes which can be used in KM.

One of the first steps in KM is to define the goals for KM in the organisation. Those goals should be in line with the strategic goals of organisation, and the activities planned to achieve those goals should be mapped inside the connect-collect-create triangle.

In chapter 8, the authors introduce the KM Chef’s Canvas. This set of 57 questions grouped in 12 areas is meant to stimulate dialogue and help organisations explore their KM programmes and prepare for the ISO KM standard. 

An absolute standouts of this book is the quantity and diversity of examples provided: 16 in total, from public and private organisations, in all sorts of sectors and from all around the world. I was also impressed by the way each example is structured, weaving words from the authors and from those leading the work at each of the featured organisations.

On Drivers for KM

From the examples in the book, the most common drivers for KM are knowledge retention and to avoid duplicating errors and work. 

As a result, many organisations are tying KM to learning. For example, Saudi Aramco has a a map that identifies the knowledge gaps they have. The team works to close those gaps and the knowledge transfer programme has a very specific KPI – the number of knowledge gaps closed.   

The KM Lead for the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority, Christine Astaniou, describes her team’s job as “ensur[ing] that knowledge is flowing – that people have got the skills, knowledge and behaviours they need to conduct our work effectively, efficiently and consistently”. “Effectively, efficiently and consistently” are a great combination of adverbs to describe how organisations should work. It reminds me of Headshift’s “smarter, simpler, social” but in a language which may still find an easier path to the ears of the decision-makers.

On Strategy

I have long been an admirer of the way PROCERGS has embraced and led its KM programme. It started small, has grown and it is now a solid practice tightly linked to innovation. 

I was really impressed by The World Bank’s approach to KM. They have strategically devised a KM plan that includes both foundation work for results in the long run, and quick-wins to show results and get people behind KM as soon as possible. It is not unique to them, but it is great the way their approach is described in the book.

“We’re building our whole programme based on professional pride and human generosity” | Dan Ranta, Knowledge Sharing Leader at General Electric 

On Serving Knowledge

Also from The World Bank, I will retain the way they are using machine learning to create “knowledge packages” that combine data and information from many different sources. These “knowledge packages” are used to set their internal consultants off to speedier and more effective starts into their new assignments.

This idea of packaging knowledge in a convenient format and delivering it at the moment it is most relevant, is also behind the pocket books put together by Médecins Sans Frontières for its field operatives to read on the plane when deployed to an emergency situation.

On Communities of Practice

General Electric, Schlumberger and Syngenta are three examples of very structured approaches to communities of practice. 

At Schlumberger, each community holds annual democratic elections to determine the leader for the coming 12 months. Communities are seen as a strategic instrument and are expected to produce something that adds value to the business.

Likewise, at General Electric, each community has at least one KPI which links directly to a business objective. 

Some would argue that makes them not communities of practice, but I do not really care what they are called as long as it works for the organisation.

General Electric is using dynamic organisational network analysis to make visible the density and frequency of interactions between communities’ members. The information is used to identify the most active members, use them to inspire others, but also for managers to demand more from the less participative members. 

On Games

Different organisations are using games in different ways: Médecins Sans Frontières is combining virtual reality and gamification to train field professionals, Saudi Aramco uses handcrafted paper-based games in workshops to convey the strength of KM. 

On Wikis

I was surprised to read more about the use of wikis than about the use of intranets and other types of digital social tools. I am not too sure how to interpret that. Could it be because when these organisations started wikis the best possible option? Could it be because intranets do not cater to the type of work, activities and behaviours associated with KM?

One of the big wow moments for me reading this book came from General Electric’s “wiki-as-a-service”: “you just hit one button and the collective discussion – maybe five or six people who opined around the world on a particular topic in a forum – goes right to our team […]. They write the wiki article based on the discussion and you have effectively turned that ‘water cooler conversation’ into something that’s more powerful and put it in a fluid, dynamic environment where others can add to the knowledge over time.”

The authors decided to use a cookery and restaurant metaphor throughout the whole book. Personally, I felt that the metaphor was taken a bit too far at times – especially in the first chapters. However, the practical tone in which the book is written, the way the book is structured and the quantity and diversity of examples provided, totally makes up for that.

The authors’ combined experience permeates every page: it is in the book’s concept and structure, in the useful artefacts they developed (like the KM Chef’s Canvas, for instance), and in the way they expertly led and made sense of the interviews to then compose the 16 core chapters of the book - the KM approaches taken by different organisations.

One final word for The KM Cookbook companion website, where the authors tell the story behind the book and generously share the questions they used to guide their interviews.

If anyone had any doubts, this book is proof that KM is very much alive and delivering great results in many organisations. Let us all embrace the opportunity to make it happen!