Paul Burns

Paul Burns is an experienced Knowledge Professional with a demonstrated history of working in Customer Operations within both the financial service industry and the health industry.?

He is passionate about driving transformational and cultural change to help organisations achieve their strategic ambitions via effective collaboration, stakeholder engagement and information sharing techniques.

He is married with two teenage children… and a dog. In his spare time, he practices multiple sports and likes playing guitar.

Paul is currently working towards achieving the CILIP KM Chartership qualification and the EY Tech MBA.

Despite all this, he found some time to answer a few questions on knowledge management (KM) strategy and KM teams: who should be in the team, where the team should sit, and how it should relate to other organisational areas.

A Portuguese translation of this interview is available at KMOL.

Paul, what is KM for you??

For me, Knowledge Management is how valuable information is captured and retained by sharing the knowledge and experience of employees within an organisation. KM therefore maximises the effectiveness of an organisation’s collective expertise. Once collated, this information can be used to upskill the employees within an organisation or to win in the market as an aide to the bidding process when going after new clients or project work.

You had the chance to create and manage a KM team for some years. What lessons have you learned from that experience when it comes to team composition??

In my opinion, an effective Knowledge Team needs 3 main components:

• a Knowledge Lead to manage the team members and key stakeholder expectations and to take forward the vision and strategic direction of the team;
• Consultants or Knowledge Workers to source the content and to build relations with engagement partners and subject matter experts; and,
• a Content Manager to provide a 'belts and braces' approach to knowledge governance, taxonomy design and appropriate tagging of knowledge content.

There is often the view that the KM team should act as a consultant to other areas and teams within the organisation. What is your view on that??

I would say that the KM team should always be considered when project teams are being assembled and throughout each stage of normal business processes.

Collaboration between the KM Team and the Project Management Office, the Change Function, Website Development Team, Communications and Training is vital to the ongoing success of a business.

Do you believe organisations should have a KM strategy?

No. I believe that a culture of knowledge sharing should be woven into the fabric of an organisation.

KM should have its own strategy which should align with the overall business strategy, and KM should be a core component part of that business' operating model.

You say the organisation should not have a KM strategy and then you say "KM should have its own strategy".?It feels like a contradiction.

I understand why this might sound like a contradiction.

In my experience, most organisations tend to work in two ways.

Some will have KM as part of the overall operating model (which in my view is rare) and such firms will include KM as part of its core service offering and will thus have KM built into its overall business strategy.

The more common situations tend to be where KM is a standalone discipline within an organisation, and therefore the KM dept would be expected to create a KM strategy which complements that of the overall business strategy.

At one of the organisations you worked, KM sat under Change Management, reporting to the Head of Change. What was the thinking behind it? How was that influenced or shaped the narrative used to promote KM in the company?

Knowledge was viewed as a function which formed part of the Change Manager’s checklist and was also closely aligned to the Project Management Office. It was therefore mandatory to capture lessons learned when a project was closing down, and to add key project questions to the knowledge base to allow the customer service teams to answer questions received over the telephone, web chat and via email.

How would you describe, in 5 words or less, the?desired?relationship between KM and each of these organisational areas?

• Innovation: captures new information to compete
• Information Technology: enables sharing on digital platforms
• Human Resources: upskills new staff and onboarding
• Internal Communications: raises awareness of valuable content
• Operations: processes are more efficiently deployed
• Board: integral to business effectiveness

How would you describe, in 5 words or less, what you tend to see as?the?most frequent?types of relationship between KM and each of these organisational areas?

• Innovation: not viewed as cutting edge
• Information Technology: infrastructure design changes aren’t welcome
• Human Resources: don’t often pursue exit information
• Internal Communications: focus on corporate event activity
• Operations: challenge is providing SME resources
• Board: difficulty in seeing investment value

Are there any other organisational areas that you consider to be important stakeholders for KM?

Business Development, Sales and Marketing.

Tina Turner has recently passed away and one of her songs keeps playing in my head. Let me play the chorus back, with a twist, and as a question to you:?what’s risk has to do with it?

Knowledge can take the risk out of most business situations, as long as it has been governed appropriately and is sanitised to protect client and customer confidentiality.

I know that you value the role of content (explicit knowledge) in KM.?What are the key steps in keeping it relevant?

Keeping on top of business priorities and market trends to ensure that your content is relevant and promoting?it via Hot Topic campaigns and other communication methods?where the?opportunities?exist.

Make sure it's appropriately tagged to make it findable and review it regularly to ensure it's still accurate and up to date.

Archive what you don't need?and keep promoting what is valuable to the business. This means that Knowledge gets to the right people at the right time.

How does one design a KM model in such a way that KM actually exists to serve the organisation, as opposed to one that makes people feel they work to serve the KM model?

Take time to understand where the business problems exist by properly engaging with the operational teams, subject matter experts and business managers and adopt a KM approach which the business can accommodate. If people understand what you are trying to do and how you intend to approach it, they will be more inclined to support the KM model you are designing with their input and more importantly, with their resources.

Finally, let me ask you the same question I recently asked Stuart Townsend.?What would be the 2 or 3 things you would recommend to a fellow KMer who'd like to bullet-proof KM against being dropped at the first reshuffle or at the first sign of an economic crisis?

Provide regular value statements, impact stories and case study examples of how KM has improved the efficiency and overall standing of the business, both from an internal and external perspective.