The same goes for knowledge management initiatives and programmes. If you have knowledge projects running and you can not answer the question ‘to do what?’, you better abandon them.

Asking the question ‘to do what?’ is more or less the same as asking ‘why?’. I have asked this question again and again in organisations (and if you invite me to come over to your organisation, I will ask you as well). When senior executives and knowledge professionals ask me ‘how do we improve our knowledge sharing?’, my immediate response is to ask ‘to do what?’. You might call it a reflex. ‘How do we capture people’s knowledge?’. ‘To do what?’. ‘How do we get people to contribute their knowledge to the content management system?’. ‘To do what?’. ‘How do we get people to use the intranet?’. ‘To do what?’. I guess you get the picture.

Focus on the specific outcomes

The reason for doing this is to get a clear focus on the specific organisational objectives and outcomes to which the initiative is expected to contribute. I have seen too many knowledge management initiatives fail simply because management looses interest after a while when they get the impression it is not generating tangible value. The more specific you can describe the expected outcomes and results, the better you will be able to measure them, even if it is only indicative. Asking questions like ‘how do we get people to share what they know?’ are way too general. They are similar to questions like ‘how do we get people to improve the world?’. Ask the question ‘to do what?’ and you will get more specific objectives.

The answer will be different for every organisation and every project. Knowledge management is highly contextual. What will work for your call centre might not work for your assembly line or warehouse. What will work for a publisher might not work for a telecom operator. Even more challenging, what will work for your sales department in Amsterdam might not work for your sales department in Singapore or Dakar.

Whatever knowledge project you wish to succeed, get as specific as possible and constantly ask yourself the question ‘Knowledge to do what?’. Describe the tangible outcomes and desired behaviours of people. Do not use knowledge jargon or you will end up in conceptual debates. Instead, use clear language, describe the problems or opportunities you wish to address and let people know what is in it for them.