Introduction

When implementing a new program in your organization, it is important to determine one or more ways to measure the success of this program. It is simply not enough to say that a program is successful. You need to provide concrete examples to illustrate how this program has improved the performance of your organization and helped your organization reach its strategic goals.

But what do we measure when looking at knowledge management? How do we measure the program’s success? Let’s look at some techniques.

Plan to Measure

When implementing a knowledge management approach, you need to plan to measure the success of the initiative. Here are some tips for starting the measurement process.

Define Your Goals

When you are measuring the impact of the knowledge management program on your organization, you need to start at the beginning. A great way to begin is to revisit the original goals of the program. What was it that you set out to do? Clearly defined goals help you to establish processes and procedures for measuring success.

Know Who Will Be Assessing Your Measures

Different people in your organization will have different beliefs about the success of the program. For example, employees will want to see how this approach has benefitted them, while managers and senior staff will want to see an improvement on the bottom line. Keep these perspectives in mind when measuring for success. Address each party to illustrate the success they would like to see.

Define Your Measures

Now that you have a clear idea of your goals and who will be assessing your progress, define how you will measure the success of the program. Make sure that your assessment of the initiative’s success is valid and reliable.

Define Your Data

You will also need to decide what data will be collected, who should collect this data, how the data will be collected, and when and where the data will be collected.

Analyze the Data

During this process, you will need to look back at the goals of the initiative. Does the data show if the goals were or were not achieved?

Evaluate Your Measurement Process

When measuring results, periodically check to make sure your measurement process is still providing an accurate depiction of the program’s influence within your organization.

What to Measure

To decide what to measure, first decide the purpose of your measurement. For example, if the purpose of your measurement is to determine whether or not your knowledge program has increased productivity, you could measure this by getting feedback from employees, customer, and management. When you measure, there needs to be a clearly defined purpose for why you are measuring. Haphazard measurements lack focus and tell you little about the success of your program.

Ways to Measure

There are many ways that you can measure your program’s success. Let’s look at a few of the most common techniques.

Existing Organizational Measurements

If your organization has existing tools for measuring success, assess them and see if you can use them. The advantage of using existing tools is that these approaches have been accepted and tested within the organization and employees should be familiar with using them.

Balanced Scorecard

A balanced scorecard is a performance measurement technique that focuses on matching an organization’s strategies to specific measures. Its aim is to give an organization feedback on how successful a strategy is. Developed by Robert Kaplan and David Norton, it focuses on four perspectives: financial, customers, internal business process, and learning and growth. Notice that all but one of the measurements listed are intangible. The balanced scorecard approach moves away from traditional accounting to encompass the intangible assets of an organization, which makes it a good fit for measuring the success of a knowledge management initiative.

Let’s have a closer look at the four perspectives. It is best to frame these concepts as questions in order to focus what we are trying to measure and to enable us to see and create value. Additionally, when we answer the posed questions, we can compare the four perspectives in the effort to see which assets give us the most value.

• Financial: How is our financial health? How do our shareholders see us? How can we improve our bottom line?
• Customers: How do customers see us? Do we meet their expectations?
• Internal Business Processes: What do we need to do to succeed? Which processes have the greatest impact on our customers and our bottom line?
• Learning and Growth: How can we use learning to improve in the above three areas? How can we leverage learning to grow, create value, and improve?

Knowledge management fits into the fourth category of the balanced scorecard. If you look at the first question posed in this category, it becomes very apparent that learning and growth (knowledge management) has an enormous influence on the above three perspectives. This perspective is listed last because the ability to meet the objectives in the other perspectives depends on the organization’s ability to learn and grow. Thus, learning and growth are performance drivers. They are harder to measure but have a direct impact on outcomes like financial growth and development.

Employee Feedback

Since people within your organization are the driving force behind the knowledge management process, it is important to get feedback from them. Design surveys that measure people’s opinion of and attitude toward the knowledge management program. This information will be highly subjective, but it will give you insight into what people are thinking about the program and how they are feeling about it. This will help you understand their attitudes and the behavior that follows from these attitudes. For example, if you receive negative feedback from employees, it may be time to think about revamping your initiative, developing a new strategy, or adjusting components to your existing strategy.