Could you envision KM as a way to bring civility and caring to organizations? After all, KM is essentially about employees sharing what they know with other employees. Sharing is about giving and kindness. And we seem to have a desperate need for both of those qualities in our present culture.
I think it's possible for KM to help make organizations places where people look out for each other – where they go out of their way to help others succeed. I remember that at Fluor when John McQuary was responsible for KM. There were large posters up on the walls in every facility that told stories of how someone had received help from a colleague and how the receiver benefited. There was one story about a young engineer who left Fluor to work for another company and after a year came back because she so valued the support of her colleagues at Fluor. I always found it interesting that the stories were about the receivers not the originators of knowledge. It celebrated giving rather than achieving. What if we focused on those kinds of stories in our organizations instead of the number of downloads or the dollars saved?
We would all like to work in an organization that puts people first, rather than in one where employees are always striving to beat each other out of a job. I have been a part of a few organizations like that and have written about them, CompanyCommand in the U.S. Army, and Kessels and Smit, a consulting company in the Netherlands. And I have read about many more.
We hear that employees are disengaged. Gallup found that having strong social connections at work makes employees more likely to be engaged with their jobs and produce higher-quality work, and they were less likely to fall sick or be injured. In HBR we read that workers, at all levels, are lonely. Vivek H. Murthy, who served as Surgeon General of the U.S. from 2014-2017 has written, “Companies in particular have the power to drive change at a societal level not only by strengthening connections among employees, partners, and clients but also by serving as an innovation hub that can inspire other organizations to address loneliness.” Although it may seem counterintuitive, the act of helping others reduces loneliness and increases engagement!
Maybe we’ve been putting the wrong focus on KM. Maybe KM is not about increasing production or saving dollars. Maybe it is about creating the kind of culture where we would all like to work.