Start with a Narrative #EasyKM

Effective Knowledge Management should aim to lower costs and shorten time to execute and solve business challenges.  A narrative approach can  bring relevant and organized highly contextual information to business stakeholders very quickly.  A narrative should be easy to find, well tagged and easy to understand. It should tell a short story quickly that can lead to a project charter or create an opportunity for project or work deflection and cost avoidance.  It can also lead to a pipeline for Enterprise and Solution Architectures which will result in a great deal of cost savings.

Knowledge Management should be tied to business.   Business is tied to people, people are tied to stories..

People->Process->Product->Profit 

The KM team helps determine who, what, when, where, and identifies person/group for solutions.

All of the narratives:

• have a potential saving outcome criteria, defined by the user story, as an initial estimate.
• are self contained and have associated estimated or actual cost savings and are validated through a process with the KM team.
• use a content management or social system to document, share and map information to relevant people and content.

Process
Identify / Collect:

Capture, document and submit stories that convey an activity or activities that create an opportunity for cost savings and/or the business process efficiency or effectiveness.  These stories can also be used to show value in reuse of tools through portfolio management or portfolio rationalization.

Subject (context) of Who and What 

Body 

1. Problem Statement (Where)
2. User Suggestion (Person or group initiating a request)
3. Team Suggestion (KM)

As we are thinking about the narrative, we want to frame it similar to the process of asking 5-why.  Want to learn more about 5-why?

Leads to /or = HOW

Validation/Ranking: 

• Problem Validation – KM team validates narrative
• Criteria for solution – KM team coordinates and proactively define option sets.
• Cost Savings Potential –KM team seeks estimated cost benefits
• Ranking –KM manager ranks narrative to optimize cost and savings benefit potential.

Leads to /or = Value 

Document Outcome / Value Statement:

• Effort to Risk Reduction by taking these actions.
• Effort to Cost Savings / Supports “Flat to Down” efficiency models by taking these actions.
• Opportunity for revenue by way of core, adjacent, trans-formative innovations.

If any mechanism exists to map or tie the story to a revenue generation opportunity, the narrative should seek to show these connections.

 

If you want to learn more about how narratives work.. just ask!