Last week I spoke with two organizations who had “KM problems”.  In both cases they found that associates were not filling out all the information into their system of record.  What resulted was an inability to look back at older cases and extract “knowledge” about the process to help train new associates.  It’s a common problem — associates were never motivated to fill out forms and stuff SharePoint with documents.  They were motivated to bring open cases to closure efficiently. Their respective approaches to the problem was to get new tools or to figure out new ways to mandate compliance.  I told both companies that their approach will not work and I explained why.

...It’s somewhat obvious to me when I  see the problem from the outside.  But one of my clients could not understand why a management edict in the form of “Thou shalt upload all documents to SharePoint in a timely manner” would not work.

Gil was actually blogging about a TEDxBoston presentation - so go read (and watch) that for the context of this quote. However, the point he makes above I like to simplify into what I call the WIIFM ("What's In It For Me?") gap. Its critical to examine this point from all levels in an organisation - corporately, through the management levels and finally the individuals involved. This is a three way gap between what the organisation wants as a whole, what the departments or internal groups involved want and what the individuals who will be affected want.

This perspective actually dove tails neatly into a couple of different change management models I use, one based on innovation theory and another based more pragmatically on addressing sponsorship 'holes' in the organisational structure.