"Starting KM from scratch, If I had to do it all over again, some tips"

Starting KM from scratch, If I had to do it all over again,
and maybe some tips

January 2025

“KM is fundamentally human work”

If there is one thing my Knowledge Management journey taught me, it’s that implementing KM is not about creating a database, a SharePoint platform, using AI, or even a strategy. It really begins with noticing what your organization is at risk of losing, caring enough to want to do something about it, and patiently helping others see that the knowledge they carry is not just a personal memory but a valuable resource to the organization.

When I first started advocating for KM at the World Trade Organization, I was not sitting in a formal KM role. I was a Senior Statistician in the Economic Research and Statistics Division. At the time, Knowledge Management was not yet a widely used term in the organization, and many colleagues were still trying to understand how it related to their work.

Having joined the organization in the late 1980s, alongside many colleagues from the same period, I began to notice an important challenge emerging. Long-serving colleagues, many with thirty years of institutional memory (like me), were starting to retire. They knew the stories behind decisions, the sensitivities behind processes, and the ‘why’ behind the ‘how. And once they left, there was a growing risk that valuable tacit knowledge would leave with them unless more intentional ways were developed to capture, transfer, and share it.

As a result, I found myself repeatedly raising awareness about the importance of knowledge retention and sharing. For 5 years, I advocated to Senior Management and key influencers that the organization needed to be more intentional about retaining, transferring, and sharing its critical knowledge, and especially the tacit knowledge of our long service experts who were retiring in waves. To this end, although my formal role was in statistics, I began contributing to KM awareness in ways that complemented my broader commitment to organizational learning. I started organizing internal Knowledge Cafés to demonstrate KM thinking in practice. I spoke to people over coffee, in corridors, in meetings, and wherever there was a small opening to explain why knowledge sharing mattered.

It wasn’t at all easy because people were understandably curious about why a statistician was taking such an active interest in organizational learning and knowledge sharing in between her real work. I also had to be creative about explaining why it mattered not just to the Senior folk but also to the colleagues in all levels of the organization. It was slow, relational, and required patience. Thankfully, though, it planted some of the seeds.

What I learned the most

What I learned most from starting KM from scratch was that KM is fundamentally human work. It was really about building trust and relationships, showing curiosity, creating spaces with psychological safety, and strangely enough, timing. I learned from observation that people do not share knowledge just because a system, a MS Teams group or a mailing list exists. Colleagues share when they feel that what they know matters to others, when they trust the people asking, and when they understand how their contribution serves something larger than themselves.

More importantly, I learned through experience that KM needed to be translated into the language of Senior Leadership priorities. I often spoke about Knowledge Retention, Transfer, Repositories, and Collaboration. But Senior Management needed to hear how these ideas connected to organizational continuity, relevance, risk reduction, credibility, and the organization’s ability to serve its Members well.

Later, I understood and learned more clearly from my Swiss mentor, Pavel Kraus, that the KPIs of a KM practitioner are not always the same as the KPIs of executives or Senior Management. KM practitioners may measure knowledge capture sessions or documents produced. But Organizational leaders want to know whether work moves faster, risks are reduced, mistakes are avoided, and expertise is preserved so they don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

Creating an Official Knowledge Management Unit

The creation of a formal division and section to address Knowledge Management did not result from one presentation or one project. It happened because several key conditions were finally present at the same time.

First, an organizational restructuring created an opportunity for a new function to be established. Coupled with that, there was growing recognition that knowledge loss required clearer ownership and a more coordinated response. My years of advocacy, combined with the increasingly visible challenge of retaining institutional memory as many long-serving colleagues approached retirement, helped make the need for KM more visible and actionable. Second, there was persistent advocacy, not just from me, but thankfully and increasingly, from colleagues who were beginning to understand the risk. Third, KM was linked to the organization’s broader mandate and future relevance, and fourth, there were more allies, champions, and senior leaders who were willing to listen. And finally, there was enough evidence, though anecdotal, that KM was not an abstract concept. It could be demonstrated through practical, low-risk initiatives that colleagues could experience and had experienced for themselves.

Our First Priorities after the KM Section was formed

When the Knowledge Management Section was finally created, we made it our first priority to make KM visible, practical, and useful for the organization. For context, I had observed that many colleagues were strongly motivated by achieving excellence in their work. So, if an event helped them do their jobs better, they were often willing to use their lunch break or spare time to attend.

So, one of the initiatives we did was an event we called “Thinkers Thursday”, an internal awareness-raising series that brought staff together to learn, reflect, and exchange ideas. As my organization was not familiar with KM concepts and many staff had other work priorities, we needed lighter, more accessible ways to introduce KM concepts. As a result, we used this event to showcase specific KM processes that would resonate with key organizational activities (e.g. Knowledge Retention, Capture, Transfer and Handover, Lessons Learned, Communities of Practice, Learning in Teams, etc.). In each session, we invited one staff member from one division to showcase a key project of the organization, one external KM expert to explain the KM process related to the project, and another peer staff member from another division to ask relevant questions. Including these 3 roles helped introduce colleagues quickly and practically to basic Knowledge Management terms and concepts. These sessions gave colleagues a practical sense of what KM could look like in everyday work. The big lesson for us there was that the more the topic was critical work related and the more divisions are involved in a project the more engagement and attendance we get from all staff. In other words, the more collaborative and interdivisional the project, the more success it had.

Another useful and appreciated event was ”On the Road to MC12”, an informal lunchtime knowledge exchange that helped colleagues better understand contextual developments related to trade negotiations. A key factor in the success of this second event was the use of the Chatham House Rule. Confidentiality, especially around sensitive issues, was an important organizational value. Applying this rule meant that sessions were not recorded, allowing participants to share contextual insights in a psychologically safe environment while respecting confidentiality.

Another event our KM unit started was the “Presidential Lectures” hosted by the Director-General. This was once again a collaboration between our division and the Director-General’s Office. And given that this initiative involved the Director-General, the more visibility and engagement it received from the staff.

These events, however, were not just learning events. They were attempts to create spaces where knowledge could move more easily across teams and functions, colleagues could learn from one another, and the organization could become more comfortable with informal, human-centered learning and sharing.

The project that most clearly embodied the organizational need for KM was the Knowledge Retention, Transfer and Handover (KRTH) Guide and Toolkit. This project addressed the very pain point that had inspired my KM advocacy: the need to preserve and transfer institutional memory. Through workshops, storytelling, visual prompts, and small-group conversations, we had created opportunities for colleagues to share not only procedures but lived experience. During these sessions, I saw how meaningful it was to create structured opportunities for retiring colleagues to share their experience with newer staff. I also saw how safe spaces, curiosity, and respect could unlock knowledge that would, otherwise, never appear in a formal manual.

A Knowledge-Sharing Infrastructure matters

Looking back, I now understand that a toolkit alone was not enough to sustain KRTH over time. A guide can start the process. But a knowledge sharing culture is still needed to sustain it. For KM to survive, an organization needs enabling infrastructure, committed people, supportive supervisors, internal champions, and policies that make knowledge sharing part of how work is valued. For KM to be sustainable, it needs to be embedded beyond individual initiative and supported by roles, practices, and systems, so continuity is less vulnerable when key individuals move on or priorities shift.

The Power of Informal Networks: The WTO Employee Networks

Another factor that was key to staff engagement to KM events was the informal “pre-KM” work that had been happening long before the term “Knowledge Management” had reached the organization space. In 2012, a small group of individuals, including myself, had taken the intitiative to create opportunities for staff members to come together not as employees, but first as human beings, experiencing common concerns and challenges - family, health, wellbeing, love for music, art, fitness, fun. This small group wanted to bring back the community spirit the Secretariat had during the old days in the late 80s when the Staff Barbecue was an annual event and all staff and their families were allowed one special evening to forget about work for a while and spend an evening meal together. This was then brought back finally in 2012 where over 500 people attended. The success of this “Community” gathering brought about other ideas of staff and their families to come together during lunchtime or after-work hours to play music, host happy hour drinks, share challenges about family members with special needs, exercise, practice yoga and meditation as well as serve in Soup Kitchens together. Aside from the usual coffee breaks during office hours, this fellowship and camarederie broke down walls and contributed to building trust and relationships among staff, not just as colleagues but also as fellow human-beings. This made it easier for staff to meet others they normally don’t work with that it became easier, especially for newcomers to approach colleagues when faced with a work question they need support in. Consequently, walls and barriers went down and facilited information and knowledge exchange across the “house”, an endearing term staff members usually used to refer to the organization.

If I had to do it all over again: A Coaching approach not a Consultant approach, Inquiry rather than Advocacy

If I had to do it all over again, I would still begin with the same deep concern, i.e. the risk of losing institutional memory and the need to protect the organization’s collective knowledge.

I would approach people differently, though. I would be less of a consultant trying to convince others of what KM could do, and more of a coach helping colleagues discover for themselves what knowledge mattered most, where it was at risk, and what they needed in order to share it safely and meaningfully.

Looking back, I realized that I spent a lot of energy explaining KM, defining KM, and sometimes defending KM. I probably used too much KM language. I talked about knowledge retention, transfer, repositories, lessons learned and communities of practice, etc. But what I should have asked more often was: What is keeping you awake? What work becomes difficult when a colleague leaves? What knowledge do you wish you had received when you first joined? What would make your team faster, wiser, more resilient, and less dependent on one person?

The coaching approach would have made a big difference here. Coaching taught me to listen before advising, to stay curious instead of reactive, and to trust that people often knew more than they realize. If I had used that mindset earlier, I would have entered divisions not with a proposed KM solution but with powerful questions. I would have asked colleagues to name their own pain points, their own fears, their own bottlenecks, and their own hopes for continuity. I would have helped them connect the dots themselves, instead of trying to connect the dots for them.

I would also have been more intentional in coaching senior leaders. Instead of trying to persuade them that KM was important because KM professionals said it was, I would have explored with them what organizational relevance, continuity, credibility, risk and service to Members meant in their own words. I would have asked: What would be the cost of not knowing? What would happen if a critical expert left tomorrow? How would we know that knowledge sharing was improving performance and not just creating more documents? These questions would have helped me translate KM into the language of leadership and decision-making.

KM Principles I should have used more

If I had to do it all over again, I would focus more on a few KM principles that I now consider fundamental. First, knowledge lives in people before it lives in systems. Technology can help us store, retrieve and connect information, but it cannot create trust. It cannot make people feel safe enough to share unfinished thoughts, mistakes, context, emotions or lessons learned the hard way. I would therefore invest earlier and more deliberately in psychological safety, trust-building, and informal spaces for conversation.

Second, I would focus more on knowledge flow, not just knowledge capture. In my earlier KM work, I sometimes worried too much about documenting and mapping everything. These were useful, of course. But those tangible tools could be created by colleagues later, and with colleagues’ input. What mattered most was that critical knowledge reached the right people at the right time, in a format they could understand and act on. A captured story that nobody hears, a toolkit nobody uses, or a repository nobody visits were also not really evidence of “KM impact”. I would therefore ask more often: How will this knowledge travel? Who needs to act on it? What conversation needs to happen next?

Third, I would pay more attention to ownership and sustainability from the very beginning. A KM initiative should not depend on the passion of one person. This became an important lesson for me. If the people, policies, incentives, leadership support and infrastructure are not there, even a strong toolkit may need additional structures to ensure long-term use and continuity. I would spend more time developing internal KM champions, clarifying roles, embedding knowledge sharing into performance expectations, and helping supervisors understand that knowledge sharing is not an extra activity. It is part of responsible and effective management.

Fourth, I would be more disciplined about demonstrating value in the language of the organization. I would still care about the KM practitioner’s indicators, but I would not stop there. I would connect KM to the outcomes decision-makers care about such as reducing execution time, avoiding repeated mistakes, ensuring smoother handovers, supporting faster decision-making, and strengthening continuity. I would also ask leaders what success looks like to them and then show how KM contributes to that success.

Finally, I would take Self-KM even more seriously. I firmly believe now that the KM practitioner is the, if not, one of the most important instruments in KM work. If I am reactive, anxious, defensive, or too eager to prove myself, I will not be able to listen well. I will not be able to create the conditions for others to share. Coaching, yoga, reflection and personal resilience would not be “nice-to-have” practices for me. They would be part of the KM method itself. Because if KM is about helping an organization know itself better, then the practitioner must also know herself or himself better.

In a nutshell:

So if I had to do it all over again, I would still start by speaking up about the importance of protecting institutional memory. But I would be more of a coach, a listener, a convener and a mirror. I would focus on providing support colleagues need to come up with their own customized ideas, name their own risks, or design their own way forward. That’s the KM culture I should have promoted, i.e. one where people share not because they are told to, but because they understand that what they know matters, that others will appreciate it, and that the organization’s future depends on it.

Some advice to new KM practitioners, though I get that these might be easier said than done:

1. Start with the organization’s pain points, not with KM terminology. Ask: What knowledge is at risk? Where are people repeating mistakes? Where does work slow down because someone does not know who knows what? Where are staff leaving without passing on what matters? Begin there.

2. Build relationships before you build systems. Have coffee with people. Listen to their frustrations. Understand their language. Use their words, not only KM language. If you want buy-in, do not arrive as the expert with a ready-made solution. Arrive as a curious partner. Ask better questions. Help people see what they already know and what they are at risk of losing.

3. Find small opportunities to demonstrate value. A knowledge café, a lessons-learned conversation, a handover interview, a community of practice, or a simple storytelling session can be more powerful than a long KM strategy no one reads. Let people experience the usefulness of KM. Once they feel it, they understand it differently.

4. Speak the language of decision-makers. If senior leaders care about continuity, show how KM reduces knowledge loss. If they care about efficiency, show how KM shortens onboarding or prevents rework. If they care about relevance, show how KM helps the organization learn faster and respond better. KM is not valuable because we say it is. It becomes valuable when it helps the organization achieve what it already cares about.

5. Finally, take care of yourself. I often say that good KM starts with Self-KM. KM practitioners often navigate complexity, competing priorities, ambiguity, and work that is not always immediately visible. You need personal resilience, emotional intelligence, and the ability to stay curious instead of reactive. For me, yoga, coaching, reflection, and community helped me stay grounded. The KM practitioner is not separate from the KM process. We are one of the most important KM tools in the room.

My greatest learning:

So if I had to summarize my journey in a nutshell, I would say this: I started KM from scratch by noticing a risk, caring about it, speaking about it repeatedly, finding allies, creating small demonstrations of value, and never forgetting that knowledge lives in people before it lives in systems. My greatest learning is that KM is not just a discipline. It is ultimately a way of working and a practice of care for an organization’s institutional memory, its people, and its future.