Why
and how to measure the impact of knowledge management are questions that never
go away. A savvy reporter called me about this the other day. She said that she
keeps hearing that people don't know how to measure KM. I admit that I find
this upsetting given the amount of time APQC spends helping KMers do just that.
It isn't always easy, but few things worthwhile are.
The
holy grail of knowledge management measurement is to tie participation to
outcomes. The more people participate in communities of practice, share
information, use information, adopt practices, and so forth, the more we expect
to see a correlation with business and mission outcomes. And we do.
But
there is more to it than that.
Over
the years, we have seen three primary approaches for measuring the effects of
knowledge management.
- Of
course, the first is to tie
participation to outcomes, which enables the KM team to know that their
efforts are actually making a difference. We sometimes run semi-controlled
experiments between two otherwise similar groups or regions in order to
determine whether their results differ based on how much KM participation is
underway. Or we can trend one group over time to see how well the correlations
hold up. Or we can do value mapping (what behavior is supposed to be correlated
with what output) and see if those mini-correlations hold. Participation is
also an indication of the health of the KM approach, with low participation
numbers acting as an early warning sign of problems.
- The
second is to quantify the value of success stories to the business. Sometimes it
isn't feasible to measure all the intangible value that comes from KM--the
connections between people, the sense of affiliation and belonging, loyalty and
flexibility--but we can measure the
value of business outcomes tied to specific uses of a KM approach. ConocoPhillips
is doing a great job of this. At some organizations, arguments may erupt about
how much KM contributed to a particular success story, but at ConocoPhillips,
the company lets the participants estimate. End of argument.
- The third approach is related to an organization's need to know where to invest more or less. Executives care about this. Which KM investments are leading to better outcomes? Which are just legacy or busywork? The way to measure this is with correlations, as in the first method I've listed, but also through the use of the Stages of KM Maturity SM. To determine what investments we need to make to move to a higher level of performance, it is necessary to know what gaps are holding us back. That's the primary objective of the APQC Capability and Maturity Assessment, which we developed with our first KM Advanced Working Group. (Note: You can learn more about the Stages of KM Maturity and the Capability and Maturity Assessment in this white paper.)
There
are many other tactics for measuring the impact of KM, depending on your
situation. APQC provides a framework that can be used to develop a meaningful
measurement system. Read some of our past reports (such as Measuring the Impact of Knowledge Management), attend
one of our courses at the next KM conference, or contact us and we'll see what we can do to help. There is
no reason to stay in the dark about how to measure KM.
In addition to the white paper and report that Carla cites, we have some measurement articles right here on KM Edge:
“Can You Measure the Value of Knowledge Management?” http://kmedge.org/features/kmmeasurement.html
“Five Tips for Effective Measurement Programs” http://www.kmedge.org/features/fivetips.html
We also have a list of APQC books, reports, articles, and presentations on KM measurement available at http://kmedge.org/features/kmmeasurementtools.html