Knowledge Sharing Manager: Whats in a name?

Extract from 10 questions: Dianna Wiggins, presently Sr. Knowledge Management Specialist at DeVry Inc

Knowledge management can be a hard sell. One of the first things we did at McDonald's was to change my job title from knowledge manager to knowledge sharing manager. People get defensive about having their knowledge "managed," but when you say "share." they think, "Oh, she's going to help me share my knowledge. I can handle that." It's not threatening to them, and there's an implication that something will be coming back their way that's going to make their life easier somehow.

The folks at McDonald's knew it was going to take some work and some trust building to make inroads in this area. My first question to people was always, "Tell me your pain." One of our first steps was to choose 20 key stakeholders throughout the restaurant operations division and walk them through a structured audit process, spending about three hours with each person. Then we put that whole audit process together, which mapped out the direction we had to go and the recommendations we had to make to move toward a desired outcome. It's not an overnight thing. It's a process.

Continue reading: 10 questions: Dianna Wiggins: she's between jobs right now, but the president of SLA's Illinois chapter is learning and sharing as much as she did when ... An article from: Information Outlook, by Forrest Glenn Spencer (Author)