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Knowledge management governance can seem like one more term in a knowledge management ecosystem that feels fraught with similar jargon.
But you’ll need to know all about it if you want to bring things like your knowledge management strategy (KMS) to fruition. With this handy guide, you'll be a knowledge management governance guru before you know it.
We'll break down exactly what it is, why your company needs it, who should be involved, and how to make sure you get it right.
We’ll cover:
Let’s get started!
Everybody talks about having a "knowledge management strategy," but what about knowledge management governance?
Your knowledge management governance determines how your knowledge management strategy is developed, implemented, and maintained. Without it, you're just crossing your fingers and hoping for the best!
So, knowledge management governance refers to the framework that sets rules and guidelines for how a company's knowledge is managed.
It establishes roles and responsibilities, ensures data quality and security, and promotes best practices for knowledge sharing and use.
Knowledge management strategy is not the same as knowledge management governance — no matter what Larry from accounting says.
Knowledge management strategy focuses on what you want to achieve with all that knowledge floating around your organization. It sets the vision and goals for building a knowledge-sharing culture.
Knowledge management governance, on the other hand, focuses on how you're actually going to achieve those goals and make the strategy happen. It determines the practical rules, processes, and policies to implement the strategy.
In other words, strategy is dreaming big, governance is making the dream happen. Strategy points to the destination, and governance paves the road to get there.
Have you ever been in a meeting where everyone talks over each other, and nothing gets done? That’s what happens when there’s no proper governance!
Knowledge management governance is like the referee in a football game, making sure all the players follow the rules so you can actually score some points.
Here’s why it can help:
Without governance, your knowledge management program is like the Black Pearl without Jack Sparrow — it’ll just float aimlessly.
Governance provides the oversight to set objectives, priorities, and policies to keep your program on course. The steering committee and key stakeholders will determine the direction and scope of your initiatives so you’re not wasting time and money on things that don’t really matter.
There are only so many hours in a day and budget dollars to go around.
Governance helps ensure your knowledge management resources, like technology, staff, and funding, are allocated properly and not duplicated across the organization. The steering committee has the high-level view to identify where resources are most necessary and how to use them most efficiently.
Disagreements happen, but without a proper process to resolve them, they can stall your knowledge management program.
Governance establishes a mechanism, like an issues log or escalation path, for addressing and resolving any problems that come up. The steering committee acts as a final decision-maker if lower-level issues can’t be resolved.
Knowledge management can get messy if everyone does things their own way. Governance helps by establishing standards for how knowledge is captured, stored, and shared. This ensures your knowledge stays organized, accurate, and easy to find — even as your company changes or people come and go.
You’ve got the strategy down, now it’s time to figure out who’s actually going to make this knowledge management thing happen. You definitely don’t want to fumble the ball when putting a team together.
You’ll want to appoint a Knowledge Manager or Chief Knowledge Officer to lead the charge. This pack leader should be an enthusiastic, forward-thinking person who can keep everyone moving in the same direction.
Their job is to develop and execute the governance plan, motivate the team, and make sure you achieve the strategy’s goals. Yeah, no pressure there, buddy!
These leaders represent key departments or business units in your organization. They help tailor the knowledge management approach to their area’s needs and make sure their team is on board.
The rest is made up of individual contributors — knowledge capos, subject matter experts, and anyone else who creates, shares, or uses knowledge in their daily work.
These are the folks who really bring the governance plan to life by participating in knowledge sharing activities, contributing content, and helping build a culture where knowledge flows freely.
You want to get your knowledge management (KM) program off on the right foot. That means putting some rules in place to keep things running smoothly.
Think of it like setting up a democracy — you need checks and balances so no one person or department gets too much power. These governance “rules of the road” will help encourage collaboration and sharing across your organization.
They are:
Knowledge management governance is crucial for harnessing all that brainpower and keeping it from going to waste.
So, you need to: Get the right people involved, put some sensible processes in place, and make sure you stay flexible as things change.
Do it right, and you'll be surfing a nonstop pipeline of great ideas to keep your organization humming along.
On the other hand, mess it up, and you may as well flush buckets of cash down the toilet by leaving all of that knowledge untapped.
Lindy goes way beyond your typical AI tool. It's a powerful system crafted to unlock the full value of your company's collected knowledge.
It creates specialized versions of itself ready to handle specific missions — whether that's building a knowledge base or providing round-the-clock customer support.
The Lindy advantage:
