Kathy Harris

I’m often asked to review strategy documents for organizations that are starting innovation, KM or other workplace initiative. These documents are usually a presentation or written proposal making the case for pursuing the initiative.  There are several common mistakes that I see so often, I decided to talk about them here. 

First, many strategy documents read like an academic study rather than a business dicussion. While it is true that KM, innovation, collaboration, etc. are people-centered and deal with intangibles such as “the knowledge in people’s heads” or “creating a culture of innovation”, the end result of these programs is business outcomes and value.  So, two common mistakes occur right at the outset (and either delay approval or set the team up to fail for lack of clear direction) :

• Academic definitions are used to introduce workplace programs. While these definitions are technically correct, it is more important to focus on the business problem or challenge to be resolved and how the initiative will address it. Use the academic definitions if you must, but explain how the apply in the context of the business objectives.
• Documents are often too long to easily consume. Size your documents to suit your audience. If you’re asking for approval and funding from executive leaders, you’ll have only a short time to sell the proposal – I’ve observed that if you don’t make the important points in the first 15 minutes, your audience will begin to lose interest, interrupt you or look ahead to find the really important information. Details are valuable – they show you’ve done your homework – but don’t let details obscure the important messages. So, put the details in an appendix and draw on them only if you must. 

The next mistake is that many teams are not clear about what they intend to achieve or when and how this is linked to business strategy. For example, in KM, can you identify the 5-10 work processes that you will knowledge-enable and the benefits of these changes?  Or in innovation, is your goal to identify process innovations that can cut the delivery time for key products or decrease the cost of sales in new markets? It’s important to specify your business targets for the first 6-12 months. You must achieve these early successes to ensure longevity of your program.

Another failure point is failing to recognize that programs such as innovation and KM will change the way you work or add new processes to your work. I see a lot of teams staffed with mostly technology experts to focus on managing the “stuff” – content, ideas, tools, etc. It is important to add process design experts to your team – replacing existing work processes, adding new ones, eliminating old ones and socializing these new business practices are the essence of workplace benefits. You won’t gain these benefits if you don’t change how the work is done. 

Finally, most teams don’t quantify and specifcy the benefits of their initiative. For example, in KM, you should answer the question: “where will knowledge make a difference in our processes and work?” The answers should identify specific areas and benefits (and please note that if you don’t have the answers, there may be no reason to invest in KM). Examples of benefits might read:

• Leverage past work into new projects – aim for 10-15% reuse of past work in every IT project.
• Identify experts and the work they do so that others can locate them and their expertise – aim to increase the productivity (in the number of projects supported) of business process modelers and enterprise architects by 15%.

I’m sure you have other “mistakes” to contribute. Feel free to share them.