I work in a government department in Southern Africa and I am not giving my name for fear of retribution - this is because what I am to write:

Brother Andile has so many interesting ideas. I agree with much of what he says. Our situation at work is that KM leadership is very poor. Our bosses use the words Knowledge Management like a whiping stick. We are expected to 'do' KM in our work without being given adequate role models by KM leaders who could be showing us how it is done. When we are in a teambuilding session, the big boss is absent or withdraws themselfs. When we ask the big boss to participate in the social network by providing their opinion via a blog post it is simply ignored. We can't continue in this way - what could be done to model appropriate knowledge sharing behaviours by KM leadership? How could they walk the talk so that we could see how it is done?

Musi M.
Africa South

Looking at the state of KM in the public sector and more specifically SA, one cannot help but wonder why it is that we still battle to understand and properly implement KM in our government departments and state agencies when we have many of the so called 'KM gurus'. for example, I have heared about a few people in the country who are highly respected and acknowledged as successful KM managers or KM gurus. Some of these gurus are in fact working for the very same government departments and some for state agencies but the question I think the government fails to ask is 'what exactly do these gurus or specialists doing to assist in uplifting not only the practice of KM but its application within the public sector as well as empowering of young inexperienced KM professionals.

I have observed that strong personalities affect the way we work, positively or negatively. There can be a strong case for KM but if certain individuals in senior management are convinced that KM is an add-on or, even worse, a passing fad, they will not support or they will sabotage every KM initiative that gets introduced.

Job insecurities, fear of being exposed and sheer resistance to change also count. The Performance Management Office is faced with very similar challenges as the KM Unit. Major assumption made is that there are many job misfits (i.e. under-qualified candidates) in most critical positions. They will do everything in their power to protect their turf—e.g. send subordinates to important meetings that need people that carry with them power to make decisions.

A question I have as a KM professional is this 'how do we expect other people to share their knowledge and expertise when we as KM professionals ourselves cannot do that'? I think we must apply the saying ' good manners start at home' by first looking critically at what we do, how we do it, when, with whom and what impact does our actions have on another person and or within our organizations before we start making noise about 'the' difficult people within our work environments who are not willing to share their knowledge and transfer relevant skills to others.

You’re so spot on about the one above. Being long-winded, technical, bureaucratic etc. is very counterproductive as being long-winded and technical is often void of clarity and to top it off have the “my way or highway” mentality. KM, as far as I understand it does not feed on this kind of thinking. In my case, we had a volunteer from overseas to specifically work closely with me to, primarily, transfer skills. The volunteer got frustrated and has now been adopted by another area to make herself useful. Reason, the manager of the KM Unit won’t let that knowledge transfer happen. The claim was that the new KM practitioner (me) should know it all because that is what I’d claimed during my interview. The other thing is, the manager won’t let the KM practitioner get involved with meaningful projects as a part of a cross-functional team. This also borders on the strong personalities that affect the way we work negatively.

Assumingly as KM professionals we know that populating the intranet, depositing all whole lot of documents in our IT systems, creating impressive databases and designs and forwarding presentations, newsletters, articles and many more do not by itself mean that we are empowering one another. Why is it that we hide information from one another but then expect other people not to do the same?Going back to the question I started with- 'with so many acknowledged, respected and in some cases, self-proclaimed KM gurus why do the public sector still seem to battle implementing KM? Where are these gurus, what are they doing to assist the public sector or even public sector professionals to implement KM within their own environments? Are we selfish as KM professionals? Maybe at the end of the day we are simply just trying very hard to convince people to do something that we ourselves do not believe in.Are we just interested in occupying those boards and executive positions without giving back to the very same government that put us in those positions in the first place? Are we scared that if we try to assist upcoming KM professionals then they will take over our positions? I have many many more questions that arise from the observations I have made, the results of which makes it difficult to believe that at the end there will be a successful KM story to tell which is of course a very sad and unpleasant sight. Let us not bombard one another with hundred articles that any other person can simply get from another person or by simply just browsing and searching Google- let us share real practical experiences, let us show others what we have done as KM professionals, describe how we did that, advice and assist others to do not only the same but even better in their own environments.

“If all you do is build, they will not come.” In other words, marketing comes in handy here. IT=we could contribute as many as there are articles and all that, in our context, we dub “knowledge documents,” as long as these are filed systematically and constantly target-marketed.

RoI is an important factor. Perhaps if we could trace the payoffs of oral tradition we could get more cooperation/support/buy-in. However, this requires a major revamp of the organisational culture. This renders KM a change management issue, which requires equal opportunity as all other change management issues.

Andile

Dear Maphuti
Thank you for this wonderful forum post that touches so many important areas. For me what emerges from this is need for a discussion around KM and what exactly KM professionals need to do in order to have the desired impact in the organisation.

Starting with your title - KM Leadership, I have always understood leadership is learned, to some extent, by observing those in positions of leadership - and particularly what people in leadership positions do rather than what that say. Since KM has only formally been around for a relatively few years, we have clearly been taking leadership cues from people who are 'making it up as they go along' while receiving input and feedback from others who are doing precisely the same.

So, to your question, 'how do we expect other people to share their knowledge and expertise when we as KM professionals ourselves cannot do that'? I would look at starting a conversation in the organisation around 'Who in this organisation shares their knowledge and expertise effectively and what do they do when they are sharing knowledge and expertise effectively?' In every organisations, people will be able to identify individuals who achieve this, even if it is not the Knowledge Professional. This information can be used to provide to create role models of KM sharers and turn up the volume on their behaviours in such a way that it provides inspiration to all.

About your question regarding KM luminaries, it is always interesting to ask what they might be doing to achieve guruhood and what this actually means besides one's name being associated with KM.

But your question about 'what exactly are(do) these gurus or specialists doing to assist in uplifting not only the practice of KM but its application within the public sector as well as empowering of young inexperienced KM professionals?' is an especially interesting one. I suggest that one of the ways is by setting up spaces such as KMAfrica.com in which conversations like these occur. I'm certain that you have generated lots of ideas for an appropriate conversation in this forum. Lets see what the others have to say....

Steve Banhegyi
steve@storytelling.co.za