Rituals: 3 powerful questions for better KM practice
This blog is about the role of the KMer, social capital development, change management and the need to understand rituals.
I have argued in the past that there are 5 key components that exist within the "total Knowledge Manager" or Knowledge capability expert:
KM/KC Leadership
Human Capital, Intellectual Capital and Social Capital developer
Functional expertise
Advocate for the common wo/man
Strategic partner
Looking at the second point, especially looking at Social Capital development, there needs to be an interest in the creation, adoption and acceptance of commonly accepted policy and practice (rituals).
For this to happen it means that KMers or Knowledge Capability experts have to collaborate with HR - HR being the gatekeepers to commonly accepted HR policy and practice in organisations. This is contentious within KM circles, with many, for some unknown reason, not being willing to work with HR colleagues. No problem, consider the following common KM change management challenges:
create a knowledge sharing culture
improve knowledge sharing
breakdown traditional silos
To address these challenges you will need to change or enable behaviours within the community. To achieve this, when you break it down, you are going to be changing or creating rituals: social conventions through which the community regulate social behaviour. Now, ask yourself, can you achieve widespread adoption of new behaviours without the cooperation of HR colleagues? More than this, what are the short/longterm consequences of not collaborating with HR - what resistance will you meet in the future for a failure to collaborate (consider the influence and interest of HR in the context of developing policy and practice)?
Moving forward, to contribute to the development of Social Capital in your organisation you are going to have to explore the rituals that currently exist and the ways in which they need to change in order to improve the contribution (impact and results) of the individual to the wider community.
For KMers, it starts with a need to ask a better question, accepting that you already understand "why" you are attempting to change/enable behaviours in the first place (the title of this blog is misleading, because the three questions that come next are actually enabled by this first question):
Ask not, "how do we (KM) improve knowledge sharing?" (internal focus)
Ask instead, "what does is a good knowledge sharing experience look like for this community?" (forces community engagement to understand need)
From here it is about creating practice (rituals) that allow people to identify with a group, with their actions signifying membership of that group.
...we have a deep tendency to like people who are like us, and shared social conventions are an excellent way of creating similarity. 'In a world in which people preferentially trust, trade and interact with those perceived as being similar, it makes sense to do what others are already doing.'(Dan Jones, New Scientist, Jan 2015, p. 39)
Ultimately, it is the exploration, design, development and maintenance of social conventions, rituals, that will determine whether you will develop sustainable solutions for common KM challenges.
Take a look at the rituals in your organisation and ask yourself these three powerful questions before you begin any type of change program (or use them purely as a reflective tool to assess existing practice):
How do our rituals define us as a group or community?
How do our rituals reflect our group or community values?
How do our rituals demonstrate a shared commitment to the wider group or community?
Too many Knowledge Manager or Knowledge Capability experts fail to explore these situational factors (starting conditions) that impact their change programs. These Knowledge managers are missing the power of rituals within the change process and, in doing so, they are limiting their chances of success.
Change starts with you, are you changing your way of "managing knowledge?"
