KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

Knowledge management excites me for a number of reasons, the most notable of which is the fact that it is an enabling capability for organisations. Knowledge management intersects closely with process and learning, adding value through the embodiment of process and the enablement of employees and customers through the provision of relevant, ready and current content.

Knowledge Management Roles

  • Lead, Enterprise Knowledge Management
    IAG NZ, New Zealand | December 2018 - Present
  • Knowledge and Information Manager
    Auckland War Memorial Museum, New Zealand | May 2013 - February 2015
  • Business Process Practice Lead
    Farmlands Cooperative Society, New Zealand | February 2012 - May 2013
  • Knowledge Manager and SharePoint Administrator
    First National Bank, South Africa | August 2007 - October 2010
  • Content Manager and Materials Publisher
    Insurance Institute of South Africa | October 2003 - February 2006
  • Website and Intranet Editor
    Technikon Witwatersrand, South Africa | July 2001 - September 2003

Examples of Projects Delivered

  • Organisation: Insurance Institute of South Africa 
    Project focus: Information standards, structure and format
    The Insurance Institute of South Africa had a repository of learning content that had been developed using WordPerfect. The software was dated, making the updating of content difficult. The project required the design of a standardised layout for all course collateral in Microsoft Word, the development of content and language standards and the development of a structure, system and related processes for the storage of collateral.
    Role: Lead content manager
    Outcome: Standardised format for learning content, with a system in place, which enabled the consistent management and presentation of content and on-time delivery to students.

  • Organisation: Technikon Witwatersrand
    Project focus: Design and delivery of the institution's first intranet
    The Technikon Witwatersrand had run a basic and very manual HTML website for corporate information, and had no intranet for staff to reference. (Yes, can you believe those were the days?) The rollout of the first database-driven website for the institution had been a resounding success and enabled federated departmental content management. The same design and pattern was used to implement the intranet for Technikon Witwatersrand, enabling content and knowledge exchange across academic departments.
    Role: Content editor and content manager
    Outcome: A database-driven platform (based on ColdFusion) was implemented, which enabled the sharing of Technikon Witwatersrand's internal content, policies, procedures and standards. This was a key enabler for staff and communication across three disparate campus environments.

  • Organisation: IAG New Zealand
    Project focus: Governance, standards and compliance 
    Managing knowledge content without robust, consistent and considered governance is difficult. Managing knowledge bases without governance presents risk, and potentially leads to the wrong information being released to employees and customers. Knowledge management needed to be matured within the organisation, with consistent and robust governance patterns designed and applied across all knowledge bases. 
    Role: Knowledge management lead
    Outcome: The delivery of a governance pattern, processes, content standards and application management protocols, aligned to the specific knowledge repository technology, translating into accessible, managed, inventoried, owned and regularly reviewed content. This translated into lowered content risk for the organisation, as well as the implementation of controls to manage risk proactively.

  • Organisation: Enable Networks Limited
    Project focus: Technology implementation
    Enable did not have an intranet, which meant that sharing information was difficult. The intranet implementation provided a step-change to the organisation, not only in the ability to publish knowledge content that could be shared and searched by customer service representatives when dealing with customers; it also provided a mechanism for organisation-wide communication, the storage of documents and records, and the platform on which a learning management system could be provisioned.
    Role: Implementation lead
    Outcome: The delivery of a SharePoint 2016-based intranet which was a key enabler for the sharing of information across the organisation.

  • Organisation: IAG New Zealand
    Project focus: Content audit and current state assessment
    An area of the business was struggling with their knowledge management. They had a repository in place, but had anecdotal evidence that the content was not being maintained in a consistent way, and that a great deal of the published content was outdated. In order to understand wider issues (process and governance), a full content audit was designed, which included a quantitative review of content, and an associated qualitative review, which looked at user experience, information design, governance, content lifecycle, feedback and processes to support robust content delivery.
    Role: Lead on the design and delivery of the content audit
    Outcome: The piece of work identified not one, but two knowledge bases that were being referenced by the team in question - which presented a significant productivity leak; and the final report put forward 66 recommendations to the business across content, process and governance. The piece of work has been instrumental in driving the implementation of a new, state-of-the-art knowledge management system for New Zealand.

My Favourite Tools, Techniques and Resources

Knowledge management in all of its guises remains one of my favourite domains to work in, and I actively set myself goals to learn more about the domain to help build my own capability in the area. 


Some of my favourite techniques are:

  • Graphic facilitation: a way of capturing key concepts and ideas, as well as representing difficult concepts in a picture format, which simplifies content and helps stakeholders and participants to understand the content, identify gaps and opportunities.
  • Knowledge audits: provides a systematic process to identify knowledge needs, resources and flows, and provides an understanding of where knowledge management can add value.
  • Knowledge harvesting: method to capture knowledge and make it available to others. Knowledge harvesting has proven important in mitigating risk to organisations I have worked for when key people leave, as well as making expertise available to those who need it to reference.
  • Knowledge mapping: is a method that I like to use to discover the location, ownership and value of content, as well as to identify expertise in the organisation, and to highlight opportunities to leverage knowledge that exists. It helps not only to identify where knowledge resides, but also to understand the patterns of knowledge flow in the organisation.
  • Ritual dissent: is one of my favourite workshop methods, which is used to test and enhance ideas or concepts by subjecting them to challenge (dissent) or agreement (assent). I like the method because it forces workshop delegates to employ active listening skills.