10 reasons to tackle corporate email – reason 1
‘I’m drowning in email!’ you often hear, and ‘we know email is a real issue for us’. And yet email is such a ubiquitous tool that trying to encourage alternative ways of communicating is sometimes like holding back the ocean. In an organisation trying to manage information and knowledge, there are strong reasons to increase the information management activities happening outside corporate email.
The daily interaction of email between employees reveals a rich and varied use. Questions, answers, advice, process, procedure, updates, discussions. Much of that information is knowledge – about what is happening, about how to do an activity, about how to approach an issue. And on the less formal side it is often used just to connect people.
So while formal knowledge management activities often struggle with the behaviours needed to make it happen, informal knowledge sharing and communication is happening. And it’s being captured. It’s just hidden.
If employees are usually quite willing to impart knowledge, opinions and advice in email, why? The tool is easy to use, useful in many ways because of its simplicity, highly visible on the desktop, and it helps people carry out an activity. The ‘what’s in it for me’ factor is high.
But it stands to reason that most email archives slowly become a rich knowledge base of process, procedure and know-how. Rarely is that information available to more people than the author and those they connect with. Over time, even the owner of an email box packed with useful information will find it increasingly difficult to access the high-value information and reuse it.
There are a number of social tools that provide agile and practical alternatives to email. They hit the ‘what’s in it for me’ factor and score points for ease of use. Stay tuned for more details of what they are and how your organisation might use them.
Great insight Leanne
What role to you feel organisational culture plays in encouraging or discouraging the adoption of knowledge sharing in organisations?
Do you have examples of leadership encouraging knowledge sharing?
What role do HR professionals in stimulating a culture of knowledge sharing?
Oscar, I think culture is the most overlooked issue in KM and social media. My experience has been remarkably similar over a number of years: from the roll-out of web services, to KM initiatives, to the implementation of enterprise 2.0 tools.
Culture can actively undermine initiatives, either overtly or more disappointingly, covertly. This can range from ongoing conflict that arises in relation to the use of the tools, or corporate policies that run counter to the behaviours people need to adopt. An example might be a ‘one size fits all’ policy, when what will drive take-up is a healthy sense of individuality. Another might be a culture that doesn’t reward or even countenance anyone sticking their head up and taking a look around, or speaking candidly. Another might be a departmental objective that states ‘play one team’ but all the while managers are cheerfully voicing negative opinions on the merits or wisdom of the initiatives (btw I’m not advocating smokescreens from senior managers, but some discipline around who says what where and when is needed, just as if you were marketing a product externally).
I’ve had clients look at the level of knowledge management and sharing that goes on in professional services firms, and ask me why they can’t reach the same level. I explain the professional services culture and business model that supports it.
On the flip side I’ve been fortunate enough to have a CEO who was my greatest advocate and advertiser. His leadership included talking it up, demonstrating the uses, and actually using it to further his cause and interact with employees.
HR professionals? Good question. I suspect that they need to hold the mirror up to the organisation regarding its culture. Often the link between culture and the way people work is a bit tenuous or not even defined.
It’s such a cliché to say that the imperative for these initiatives needs to be driven from the top, and many social media tools are best driven from the ground up, but unless the culture clearly gives the imprimatur for the activities or behaviours it’s a long hard road!