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When kindly answering some questions for KMOL, Luis Suarez stated that having the right culture in place is (almost) a requirement to kick off a knowledge management programme. He is not alone. I used to agree. In fact, at Abbey National, I managed a Cultural Change programme aimed at creating the right culture for the KM programme to succeed. Rightly or wrongly, maybe that is why I now believe it is possible to “do” KM without having the right culture.

First of all it is important to reflect on what the right culture is. Is there such a thing? I think so. It is hard to describe it, though. It is, most often, something that you feel.

I remember when I joined Headshift being (positively) shocked by everybody’s willingness to know about all projects and clients. Also, the commitment to help colleagues, the effort put into contributing ideas and thoughts to other projects, the openness of internal communication, the ease of it all. That certainly felt like the right culture.

If pushed to describe the right culture, I would probably use words such as “openness”, “availability”, “flexibility”, “pro-activity”, “transparency”, “creativity” and “trust”. Above all “trust”.

I have been asking myself the same philosophical questions for a while: “Is the right culture a cause or a consequence of good, effective knowledge management? Is it an input or an output? An ingredient or an end product? What comes first: the culture or the knowledge management programme?”

The different roles I played, in different organisations, have led me to believe that - and I totally agree with Suarez here - the right culture would ideally be in place. Not just for the sake of the KM programme, though. Ideally the right culture would be in place so that the whole organisational activity runs smoother and changes are embraced more easily and enthusiastically.

However, and again Suarez is spot on, creating the right culture is something that takes a long time as it requires changing behaviours engrained in the social fabric of the organisation.

It is not an option, in my view, to say “I will not do KM while I do not have the right culture in place”. This, for me, is a poor excuse not to do it and may lead to a long, potentially fatal, wait.

Instead, organisations should see the KM programme as a great opportunity to shape the organisational culture into what is perceived to be the best one for their strategic intents. Planning a KM programme with cultural change concerns in mind is slightly trickier but can certainly be done. I have done it myself.

How? Small steps, most of them logical and obvious, such as:

• change performance appraisal guidelines so that knowledge sharing is taken into consideration
• find out about someone’s knowledge sharing habits not by checking the amount of posts on the intranet but by asking their peers (check for quality of contributions and willingness to help, for example)
• use knowledge audit questionnaires and interviews to gather data (obviously!) and to, simultaneously, emphasise the behaviours expected from staff
• have idea banks but make the idea cycle completely open and transparent so that ideas are owned and worked on by all those interested
• review the way the organisation rewards and recognises new ideas, new business, good results, etc..

By doing this, organisations will be kicking off their KM programmes whilst tackling the organisational culture at the same time.

This will help organisations:

• get the first results sooner
• strengthen the message and the approach
• save money.

Every organisation wants to have the right culture. Unfortunately, few organisations have it. Addressing the culture first is going to take a long time and, as Suarez says, organisations cannot afford that sort of time nowadays. So my advice is: “go for it”. Tackle the organisational culture as part of your KM strategy.