Knowledge Repositories. “No one goes there any more; it’s too crowded”

Yogi Berra: “No one goes there any more; it’s too crowded”

The success of any knowledge repository  within an organization depends (largely) on the information contributed to the system by employees, project teams, communities, departments. However, the truth is that knowledge repositories in most organizations end up rarely being used.

Contribution to knowledge repositories remains minimal — although employees are required to contribute lessons learned to the knowledge repositories and also consult the repository regularly. In reality, with passage of time, as less people use the repository, the information becomes stale and irrelevant — presenting another reason for employees not to use the system. And, not surprisingly, soon the word spreads that  the repository is outdated and does not include the information they are looking for. That reinforces the  famous quite from Yogi Berra: “No one goes there any more; it’s too crowded”

Employees could have gripes that the knowledge repository  is not user friendly, lacks certain features & capabilities. Those are often the right reasons for people not using the knowledge repository but not the real reasons. The real reason is that the knowledge repository is NOT part of the day to day work process of an average employee in the company. it is at the periphery, something that needs to be transacted with ‘after work has been done‘ or during appraisal cycles.

Knowledge Repositories need to be treated like living ecosystems, living things, like a garden with continuous need for tending, monitoring, careful purging and at times a full over haul. Then only will the garden bloom with flowers that provide value to the whole ecosystem.

Till then the adage  “No one goes there any more; it’s too crowded” will continue to hold true for knowledge repositories