Opinion: KM: A matter of culture

By Karen Battersby, course director in know-how management, Nottingham Law School

The cultural aspects of implementing knowledge management continue to be the most difficult, yet most important, factor for a successful KM project. Most law firms start their KM initiatives by setting up systems, appointing practice support lawyers (PSLs) and focusing on the tasks involved in ‘doing KM’. However, they quickly come to realise that unless a culture of knowledge sharing is instilled within the firm and its people, there will be difficulty in making those systems work effectively. Lawyers and others will be unwilling to contribute to the systems or to use them without such a culture.

An alternative approach that many companies in general industry have taken, is not to start their KM initiatives with the set up of systems, but to tackle the cultural aspects first. This has a number of implications for the way in which KM is implemented.

If the starting point is to embed a culture of knowledge sharing among everyone in the organisation – rather than appointing dedicated KM personnel (who may be viewed by others in the organisation as solely responsible for implementing KM) – this also makes it the responsibility of everyone in the organisation to participate from day one. Initial consideration has to be given to how people can contribute to and use knowledge resources in the course of their daily work with minimum additional workload. Driving the implementation of KM falls on the shoulders of the managers in the organisation, rather than a separate function.

The cultural approach to KM puts a premium on educating everyone in the organisation, firstly as to what it is, and then as to how they can contribute to it practically. Demystifying technical KM jargon into layman’s language is all part of this process. People need to be aware of how KM will benefit not only the organisation, but also themselves personally, in terms of helping them work more effectively and being rewarded for knowledge sharing by the organisation. This may require a structural change to formal reward systems as well as positive encouragement for employees by management.

Every organisation has its own culture, and law firms are no different. The most successful cultural approaches to KM seek to understand the existing values and culture of the organisation, and then fit the KM initiative to that culture. An example I have come across, which involves an organisation with a similar culture to that which prevails in most law firms, is the case of an emergency relief organisation whose workers are called away to provide emergency relief in international crises at short notice. The cultural similarity with law firms is based on the fact that both are time-pressured environments. The cult of the chargeable hour is perhaps the most influential factor in general law firm culture and one of the main reasons why lawyers prefer to focus on fee-earning rather than non-chargeable initiatives such as KM.

The relief organisation decided to take a cultural approach to implementing its KM from the outset, immediately recognising that for KM to be successful it needed to fit with the time-constrained culture of the organisation and its work. The benefits of KM in this organisation were that, if workers who had dealt with international relief operations could bring learning back from their experiences and share it with others; this would make future operations in emergencies much quicker and smoother.

Rather than appointing dedicated KM personnel, the organisation decided to hold short time-bound meetings run by middle managers, at which workers who had participated in relief operations were asked to share three or four good or bad points taken from their experience. These were recorded – and then immediately written back into the strategy and policies for dealing with future relief operations. People were willing to participate in this knowledge sharing because they could see the benefits for their future work. The requirement to participate was also quick and easy, thereby fitting with the culture but still producing significant individual and organisational benefits.

We can see from this example that the cultural approach to KM is not divorced from the implementation of KM tools and techniques. Indeed, the selection of appropriate tools to match the culture and their ease of use for both contribution and later reuse, are important factors in influencing people’s acceptance and willingness to share knowledge in the first place. The lesson for many law firms is to think about the cultural aspects, the language of KM and the way it is implemented from the outset.

Karen Battersby is course director in know-how management at Nottingham Law School. She can be contacted at kbattersby@centlaw.com