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What is Knowledge Mobilisation?

At the heart of Knowledge Mobilisation is the concept of an interlinked series of processes that are designed to go beyond the standard ‘capture, store and share’ approach of traditional knowledge management in order to deliver significant added value to the achievement of organisational objectives. To deliver high impact Knowledge Mobilisation organisations need to develop and embed throughout their workforce a set of skills, processes and systems that:

• Link people to information - ensure that the staff, partners and customers are able to access relevant and timely knowledge tailored to their needs, properly evaluated and effectively aligned with business priorities;
• Link information to people - allow participants within the formal and informal organisational networks that are contained within the organisation and that span its partnerships and customers to identify those who are generating knowledge and putting it into practice and who could be defined as advanced practitioners and experts;
• Link people to people - the most valuable forms of knowledge mobilisation are those that are underpinned by direct dialogue (synchronous or asynchronous) between individuals and groups with an interest or challenge in common and who are seeking to deliver value for their respective organisations or groups.

Some things to think about before you start:

‘Start the way you intend to go on’. Critically organisations need to be able to get to the point where Knowledge Mobilisation is ‘the way we do things around here’ for staff at all levels. For organisations who want to tread this path then the way you start needs to be the precursor to the way you intend to go on. Embedding effective Knowledge Mobilisation works best when staff are engaged throughout the process of discovery, design, alignment, implementation and evaluation. How many of your current staff have stories to tell about what worked well and not so well for them in the organisations they have worked in before? What can you learn from that and how can you mobilise and apply it?

‘Knowledge Mobilisation does not end at the boundaries of your organisation’. At an early stage you need to discover and map the networks, affiliations and current knowledge resources that characterise the ‘space’ that your organisation occupies. Where do customers fit in? How can you build them into the process that harnesses their learning as they use your products and services to add value to their own businesses? How can you use this learning to develop your offerings, anticipate customer requirements and to help them derive even more value from your products. Are your staff part of formal or informal networks that can be harnessed to add value? Knowledge Mobilisation is not simply about leveraging your internal knowledge but also using external knowledge and networks to help find your position within the space you occupy and identify wider opportunities and challenges – in the jargon creating ‘situational awareness’.

Are your intended outcomes aligned with your business objectives?’ Well designed and executed Knowledge Mobilisation adds significant value to the business objectives or the organisation. From the outset be clear about those objectives and what you define as ‘value’ in this context. Ensure that the discovery and design activities are properly aligned with those objectives (a benefits realisation approach is a useful part of the implementation tool-kit). One way to do this is to make sure the project is led by and engages those staff whose livelihood it is to deliver on those objectives. Ensuring an aligned incentive structure that recognises and rewards the value of sharing knowledge is an important part of the design activity as is the design of the metrics you use to evaluate how well what you expected to happen is really happening

Don’t buy that software (yet)! Technology is undoubtedly an important component in delivering a modern, agile and responsive Knowledge Mobilisation infrastructure. But technology-led Knowledge Mobilisation strategies will almost always founder. ‘Build me a KM system’ is too often the cry from senior management – and then it is left to the IT department to go to ‘psychic receive’ mode in attempting to divine the requirements. Successful Knowledge Mobilisation blends People, Process and Technology and is always People led and designed – after all it is people who innovate, engage with prospective and current clients, close deals and tell the stories of success and failure most effectively.

So where do we start? The framework below provides a ‘lens’ through which to start structuring your approach to improving Knowledge Mobilisation in your organisation. It can be used at each of the key stages of engagement, discovery, alignment, design, implementation and evaluation.

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For more information and help in adapting and applying this framework within your organisation please contact:

Mark Outhwaite
mark.outhwaite@outhentics.com
Phone +44 (0)2078712461
Mobile: +44 (0)7768131770

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