Great post from Nick Milton of Knoco on the ‘Tipping Back’ point, or when KM fails. Timely also as I’ve been pondering for some time how big a KM pilot needs to be.
Nick says it was suggested to him that once 28% of the people have made the change, and 40% see this, then the tipping point has been reached (whereas conversely when 28% of the people refuse to do KM and 40% of people see them getting away with it the implementation starts to fail.) So how do you apply that in practice?
My approach has always been to move KM forward in those areas where there is a clear appetite for change. If that percentage of the organisation is less then 28% then you have to work with faith that others will see the good work being done and want to get on board. Or you engender a little friendly competition between teams or managers. That one’s a killer and certainly has worked for me in the past.
What’s tough is that there are so many ways you cut a really large department these dates, with myriad teams and groups working within it. If you work towards your 28% figure with tiny, niche teams who don’t have good visibility and/or transparency across the wider organisation, or whose work is stand alone and doesn’t have any impact on the deliverables of other teams, then although it will help those teams doing the KM, you potentially risk losing some of the impact that you need to catch the attention of that magic 40% of observers.
What do people think?
Great post Nick!
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