The document lists the top 40 pitfalls to avoid in knowledge management, including trying to take on too much, focusing on technology over people, not engaging constituents, doing too much planning without piloting ideas, being secretive, lacking trust, and pushing content without enabling users to pull what they need. It provides explanations for each pitfall and emphasizes the importance of reusing others' work, meeting in person, focusing on people and processes over tools and metrics, modeling desired behaviors, and integrating knowledge management into regular work instead of viewing it as a separate program.

1. Knowledge Management:
Avoid the Top 40 Pitfalls
Stan Garfield
August 9, 2019

2. Top 40 Pitfalls to Avoid
1. Trying to take on too much
2. Focusing on technology
3. Not engaging constituents
4. Doing too much studying and
planning and not enough
prototyping and piloting
5. Not reusing what others have
already learned and done
6. Focusing on collecting
documents or updating skills
7. Being gripped by anxiety
8. Not meeting in person
9. Frequently reorganizing,
including moving KM around
10.Relying on maturity models
and benchmarking
11.Using the term “best practices”
12.Reporting metrics for the sake
of metrics
13.Becoming certified in KM
14.Rolling out tools and driving
adoption
15.Using buzzwords and
corporate speak
16.Telling others to do as I say, not
as I do
17.Being secretive
18.Making it difficult to find
information and resources
19.Lacking trust
20.Pushing content
2

3. Top 40 Pitfalls to Avoid (continued)
21.Expecting that someone else
will do it
22.Believing that KM is dead
23.Believing that incentives don't
work
24.Saying that social is frivolous
25.Not controlling the creation of
communities and ESN groups
26.Trying to eliminate all risks
27.Trying to be like Google and
Amazon
28.Saying we need our own
29.Saying I don't have time
30.Saying we should work
ourselves out of a job
31.Believing that bigger is better for
organizations, and that smaller is
better for community
membership
32.Trying to make people do things
33.Saying that everything is a
community
34.Worrying that IP will be stolen
35.Using the DIKW pyramid
36.Denying the 90-9-1 rule applies
37.Trying to compute the ROI of KM
38.Archiving content after 90 days
39.Seeking a new name for KM
40.Starting KM without first
determining the objectives
3

4. 1. Trying to take on too much
• 50 different people, process, and technology components
• Avoid the temptation to try all of them
• Focus on choosing the few which will yield the greatest
benefits
• Watch out for the allure of the latest technology
4

5. 2. Focusing on technology
• KM initiatives are drawn to tools, systems, and databases
• Important, but should always be in support of a people or
process component
• Knowledge is shared and reused by people using
processes, not by systems
5

6. 3. Not engaging constituents
• Treat your users as customers whom you are trying to
acquire, satisfy, and keep
• Use virtual teams and communities to continuously solicit,
capture, and respond to the needs of the people in your
organization
• Interact in ESNs, conduct surveys, publish newsletters,
and maintain web sites
• Listen to what your constituents tell you, and take timely
action in response
6

7. 4. Doing too much studying and planning,
and not enough prototyping and piloting
• There is a time to declare success for your planning efforts
and move on
• Prototyping and piloting allow you to test out new ideas,
gain experience, and make iterative refinements
• You can quickly learn that an assumption was wrong and
modify your direction
• Instead of planning for a new version of a tool or a web
site for six months, try making small incremental
improvements each week
7

8. 5. Not reusing what others
have already learned and done
• The field of knowledge management has been around for
over 20 years
• You can benefit from this by taking advantage of a wide
variety of KM resources
• Reusing the ideas and experiences of others is what you
are asking others to do in a KM initiative
• You should model this behavior by applying it yourself
8

9. 6. Focusing on collecting documents or
updating skills
• Tom Stewart:
o Connection, not collection: That's the essence of
knowledge management
o The purpose of projects, therefore, is to get
knowledge moving, not to freeze it; to distribute it,
not to shelve it
• Dave Snowden:
o If you ask someone, or a body for specific
knowledge in the context of a real need it will never
be refused
o If you ask them to give you your knowledge on the
basis that you may need it in the future, then you will
never receive it
• Asking people to fill in skills profiles, contribute
documents, or otherwise share their knowledge
without knowing how and why it will be used is a losing
proposition
• Letting documents and expertise emerge at the time of
need is a better approach
9

10. 7. Being gripped by anxiety
• Many people are afraid of
• Failure
• Blame
• Criticism
• Being judged
• Embarrassment
• Change
• Standing out
• The unknown
• Taking the first step
• Losing control
• Being responsible
• Anxiety is just a pointless form of fear; it’s fear about fear
10

11. 8. Not meeting in person
• In this era of virtual work, face-to-face
meetings are rarely held any more,
although they should be
• Can’t you just use a video conference?
• Eric Ziegler:
• Face-to-face meetings are an
investment, not a cost
• Meeting face-to-face is absolutely
necessary to
• Build stronger relationships
• Increase trust
• Improve collaboration
• Bruce Karney:
• It is a dangerous delusion to believe
that frequent face-to-face knowledge
sharing meetings are a luxury
11

12. 9. Frequently reorganizing, including moving KM around
• KM struggles to find a home in organizations
• Often moved around and added to groups which
don't understand or appreciate it
• Each time it is moved, a new boss who may be
unfamiliar with KM takes over
• Selling that person on the program has to start over
• Example: professional services firms
• Home for weary road warriors
• Those whose primary skill appears to be availability
• Where does KM belong?
• Not under IT, HR, or some other stovepipe
• If there is no independent Chief Knowledge Officer
who reports to the CEO, then some neutral
organization such as Operations is the best place
12

13. 10. Relying on maturity models and benchmarking
• Each environment is unique
• Seth Godin:
• Benchmarking against the universe actually encourages us to be
mediocre, to be average, to just do what everyone else is doing
• Use frameworks, models, and benchmarking as sources of
ideas, not as precise prescriptions to be slavishly followed
13

14. 11. Using the term “best practices”
• The problem with the term “best practice” is that it
connotes that an ideal has been achieved
• It’s better to learn about and adapt proven practices
which fit your environment, whether or not they are
the “best”
14

15. 12. Reporting metrics for the sake of metrics
• Avoid collecting every random thing, sliced and
diced every possible way, which someone might
want to know once
• Those asking for it probably have no intent to do
anything with this data, other than to say, “Oh, that’s
interesting”
15

16. 13. Becoming certified in KM
• Taking a one-week class in knowledge
management and then being anointed CKM is not
meaningful, and is generally not respected
• Focus on learning, not on certification
16

17. 14. Rolling out tools and driving adoption
• Don’t fixate on rolling out tools, and then trying to
drive adoption, which is a losing proposition
• Everyone should collaborate!
• Start with the needs of the organization, not with
finding a use for a tool which you have already
bought
17

18. 15. Using buzzwords and corporate speak
• Don’t use buzzwords, insider jargon,
or corporate lingo
• Use words and expressions that are
widely understood
18

19. 16. Telling others to do as I say, not as I do
• Not practicing what you preach sets a bad
example
• People will closely observe the actions of leaders,
and mimic them
• Lead by example and model the desired behaviors
19

20. 17. Being secretive
• Don’t give lip service to transparency while
continuing to operate in a closed manner
• Communicate frequently, truthfully, and openly
20

21. 18. Making it difficult to find information and
resources
21
• It's hard to find relevant information and resources at the time of need
• People can’t find information, resources, or experts they need to do their job
• Search doesn’t work, and even when it does, the content is incomplete,
obsolete, or irrelevant

22. 19. Lacking trust
22
• People are reluctant to ask for help in public, contact people in other
organizations, or say the wrong thing
• They would rather suffer in silence than expose their ignorance to the world, or
to be criticized, blamed, or ridiculed

23. 20. Pushing content
23
• Organizations want to push information out to audiences
• They
• Publicize and advertise
• Rely on banner ads and spam
• Lament too much email, but send out unwanted messages
• They don’t
• Make it attractive to pull content for themselves
• Enable interaction with leaders

24. 21. Expecting that someone else will do it
24
• Leaders who initiate, then leave to others
• KMers who
• Don’t lead by example
• Don’t use tools being promoted to others
• Continue sending email
• Don’t experience what others are facing
• Avoid
• Getting hands dirty
• Learning by doing
• Taking risks
• Speaking up
• Acting
• Some else will ask, someone else will contribute
• Demand without supply

25. 22. Believing that KM is dead
25
• KM, email, social business, etc. are dead
• More positive indicators than negative indicators
• Something is going on that continues to sustain it
• It may not be rapidly growing in size, but knowledge management is not dead
• The need for knowledge management will endure
• Whether we continue to call it knowledge management or start calling it
something else
• We will continue to need to share and innovate and reuse and collaborate and
learn

26. 23. Believing that incentives don't work
26
• People will game the system!
• That is not how people are motivated!
• Incentives signal importance

27. 24. Saying that social is frivolous
27
• Not serious
• I don’t care what you ate for breakfast
• Wasting time
• Celebrate the time that people spend on social networks for:
• Sharing useful information for the rest of the organization
• Asking and answering questions
• Learning

28. 25. Not controlling the creation of communities and
ESN groups
28
• Let a thousand flowers bloom – use survival of the fittest
• Don’t try to control – rely on the wisdom of the crowd
• Result: confusing lists of overlapping tags, communities, and groups

29. 26. Trying to eliminate all risks
29
• Visible versus invisible: email vs. ESN
• Trust people to do no harm
• Intervene when necessary

30. 27. Trying to be like Google and Amazon
30
• Search like Google
• Content ratings like Amazon
• Behind the firewall is not the same scale as the Internet

31. 28. Saying we need our own
31
• Don’t practice what we preach – e.g., use private groups
• Internal vs. external collaboration
• Redundant, local, narrow niches: lack of critical mass

32. 29. Saying I don't have time
32
• Don’t participate online, in calls, or at conferences
• Don’t think that learning is as important as mundane tasks, endless meetings
• No one's making you learn
• No one's making you attend the conference
• When you do, you generally are going to get better at KM
• The excuse that you don't have time generally means that you don't think it's
important, and you should probably step back and reevaluate that

33. 30. Saying we should work ourselves out of a job
33
• Integrate KM into work processes
• KM is everyone’s job
• What about Finance, HR, and Operations?
• When you say it's everyone's job, it’s everyone's job to do it, but it's not
everyone's job to be
• The advocate for it
• The champion for it
• Shepherding all the people, processes, tools, and components that go into
knowledge management work
• You don't necessarily have to have some monolithic giant structure
• But you need something in order to shepherd knowledge management

34. 31. Believing that bigger is better for organizations, and that
smaller is better for community membership
34
• Large teams, offshore resources
• Dizzying web sites with animation and terrible user interfaces
• Simpler is better
• Tout how many groups, pages, visits instead of value
• Celebrate join-only members
• Exception: more community members (not join-only) is better

35. 32. Trying to make people do things
35
• Maintain expertise profiles
• Contribute all documents
• Forced membership in communities and ESNs
• Everyone starts from one home page

36. 33. Saying that everything is a community
36
• Sites, wikis, blogs
• Organizations, teams, companies
• The entire Enterprise Social Network

37. 34. Worrying that IP will be stolen
37
• Another business unit
• Competitors
• Disgruntled employees
• Is there truly a risk that we're dealing with here, or is it imaginary?
• The thinking that you need to lock it down and secure it so that other people
can't see it goes against the whole concept of knowledge management

38. 35. Using the DIKW pyramid
• No need for creating pyramids, hierarchies, or other
similar, meaningless representations
• Knowledge is information in action
• Find a more relevant way to make your point
• David Weinberger:
• I’ve long been irked by the Data-Information-
Knowledge-Wisdom pyramid that is so often casually
embraced as if its truth were obvious
• I disagree with its implication that knowledge is a
filtering down of information
• I disagree even more that wisdom is a filtering of
knowledge
• But perhaps most irksome to me is its leaving
understanding out of the picture entirely
38

39. 36. Denying the 90-9-1 rule of thumb
• In a typical community, 10% or fewer of the members will tend to post, ask questions, present, etc.
• The rule of thumb is:
• 90% will not post or speak up at all
• 9% of the members will participate at all
• 1% will regularly be active in discussions and presentations
• 90-9-1 may actually be optimistic
• Actual data from Deloitte’s ESN showed 94-5-1
• The SIKM Leaders Community’s Yahoo! Group showed 96-2-2
39

40. 37. Trying to compute the ROI of a KM program
• It is important to
• Define and communicate the benefits of KM
• Measure and report on progress
• But proving ROI should not be the point
• It’s possible to compute the ROI of a narrowly-defined project
requiring capital investment
• Building a new plant
• Buying a new piece of equipment
• ROI is ill-suited for broader programs
• Integrate people, process, and technology components
• Work with other broad programs such as learning, talent
development, and finance
• Improve the effectiveness of the organization
• Do we ask what the ROI is for these?
• Human Resources
• Finance
• Email
• Phone systems
KM
40

41. 38. Archiving content after 90 days
41
• The quality of knowledge does not depend on whether it is old or new
• But rather, whether it is relevant, whether it still works
• Don't automatically archive content in a knowledge repository, threaded
discussion board, or other collection of knowledge
• Instead, ensure that the search engine can limit results by the date of the
knowledge object
• Defaults can be set to limit results to the last 90 days, one year, or whatever
duration is desired
• But it should be easy for users to change the date range to include older
content in the search results

42. 1. Best Practice Replication
2. Best Practice Transfer
3. Business Improvement Services
4. Collaboration
5. Collaboration Systems
6. Collective Learning
7. Communities
8. Digital Enterprise and Digital Workplace
9. Digital Transformation
10. Enterprise 2.0
11. Enterprise Collaboration
12. Enterprise Content Sourcing
13. Enterprise Learning and Collaboration
14. Enterprise Social
15. Enterprise Social Network
16. Insights
17. Intangible Asset Plan
18. Intellectual Capital
19. Intellectual Property
20. Knowledge and Information Management
21. Knowledge and Information Sharing
22. Knowledge and Learning Processes
23. Knowledge Development
24. Knowledge Enablement
25. Knowledge, Engagement and Collaboration
26. Knowledge Exchange
27. Knowledge Flow Management
28. Knowledge Management
29. Knowledge Processing
30. Knowledge Publishing and Curation
31. Knowledge Retention
32. Knowledge Science
33. Knowledge Services
34. Knowledge Sharing
35. Knowledge Sharing and Collaboration
36. Knowledge Transfer
37. Learning and Knowledge Exchange
38. Learning Communities
39. Learning from Experience
40. Management
41. Organizational Effectiveness
42. Post-Industrial Knowledge Age Transformation
43. Performance Management
44. Radical Connectivity
45. Social Business
46. Social Collaboration
47. Social Learning
48. Social Media
49. Social Networking
50. Tackling Wicked Problems
39. Seeking a new name for KM
• There's nothing wrong with any of these, but we're still calling it knowledge management
• That's the label that stuck
• Talking about what we should call it isn't as helpful as worrying about how to do it better

43. 40. Starting KM without first determining the objectives
43
• Very unlikely a KM program will succeed without first defining clear
• Business objectives
• Vision
• Strategies
• Use cases
• Be sure to define those first
• Only then proceed to implement using the 50 KM components

44. For additional information
• Join the SIKM Leaders CoP https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/sikmleaders/info
• Twitter @stangarfield
• Site http://sites.google.com/site/stangarfield/
• LinkedIn Articles https://www.linkedin.com/in/stangarfield/detail/recent-activity/posts/
• Recordings https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/august-11-webinar-lets-talk-online-engagement-stan-garfield/
• Implementing a Successful KM Program https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/implementing-
successful-km-program-100th-post-20-years-stan-garfield
Managing the
ROI of
Knowledge
Management
(chapter author)
The Case
against ROI
Implementing
a Successful
KM Program
(author)
Successful
Knowledge
Leadership:
Principles and
Practice
(chapter author)
The Modern
Knowledge Leader:
A Results-Oriented
Approach
Gaining Buy-in
for KM (chapter
author)
Obtaining
Support for KM:
The Ten
Commitments
Proven Practices
for Promoting a
Knowledge
Management
Program (author)
Knowledge
Management
Matters
(chapter author)
Communities
Manifesto