A positive corporate culture is critical in building the trust needed for successful knowledge management to occur.

The IBM Institute for Knowledge-Based Organizations recently conducted a survey of 138 employees from a U.S. pharmaceutical company, a British bank and a Canadian oil and gas company and found that the "magic ingredient " for knowledge sharing is trust. Trust has two components:

• benevolence-based trust - the receiver believes that the information giver will not hurt him/her; and
• competence-based trust - the receiver believes that the information giver is knowledgeable on the subject.

The study went on to find that weak personal ties actually led to more valuable and useful knowledge than strong personal ties, which may seem surprising at first. However, people with strong ties generally are connected to the same information networks, while those with weaker ties may have connections to different social networks and are exposed to different types of knowledge and ideas. In either case, the ties need to be trusted.

"We all have our own personal networks," said Mike Behounek, director of knowledge management at Halliburton. The trouble is, these networks are random." Halliburton did an interesting study that mapped the personal networks of a group of employees to see where they went when they needed information. One of the key findings from this study was if just three key people were unavailable due to vacations or travel, much of this informal information flow could come to a screeching halt.

"People only go to people they trust for information," Behounek said. "If there is no trust, they won't go anywhere." One of the ways Halliburton increases the level of trust in the answers provided through the portal to communities of practice (COPs) is to post photographs of the 16 full-time knowledge brokers online. "A face is very important," Behounek said. These knowledge brokers will verify answers to questions made by field personnel by contacting SMEs, or subject matter experts. Once the question is resolved, the knowledge broker ensures that changes are made to user manuals or online resources, then gets the word out to the rest of the COP members. "The remarkable thing about this is the speed that it happens," Behounek said. Issues that used to take weeks or months to resolve now are finalized - with a reliable, verified answer - in hours or a couple of days at the most, or about the speed of gossip.

Meta-data builds trust in data

"Nearly 50% of all data warehousing efforts fail," said Kurt Nyffeler, upstream E&P solution architect at RCG IT. "These failures are due to a number of reasons; most are related to a lack of acceptance by the very users the data warehousing effort was targeted to benefit."

Nyffeler said local databases compiled by "power users" often compete with enterprise-wide data repositories. "These users trust their personal information sources because their loving hand built them step by step; thus they know exactly what information is and isn't there. Any data warehousing effort must be able to compete on a data quality and integrity level with these users, for without their buy-in, success will be exceedingly difficult."

The key to solving this problem is to build trust by having adequate information about the data contained in the repository, otherwise known as meta-data. Ralph Kimball, considered one of the founding fathers of data warehousing, once wrote, "Meta-data isn't important - it's everything!" Meta-data can include data from the repository itself as well as knowledge stored in the brains of its stewards and users, which can be federated, or linked, to become a cohesive source of reliable information about the content without a lot of fuss.

Nyffeler suggests the following components of a trusted data management foundation:

• A federated meta-data repository;
• Appropriate ways for users and administrators to access, manage and update the meta-data; and
• Encouraging users to add value to the meta-data to keep it accurate and evergreen.

Knowledge is more than data

Knowledge is more than just data, information and meta-data in a repository. It also includes experience, values, context, insight and intuition. This very human combination evaluates and filters the data and information to give meaning and understanding. How does one capture all of this wisdom? Any attempts to document it would be costly and cumbersome, which would be an obstacle to the knowledge flow rather than an enhancement of it. "It's not just about getting stuff into and out of a database," said Myrna Binamira, knowledge director at Accenture, "it is about exploiting knowledge in behavioral terms. To manage knowledge effectively, the focus will have to be on the people, their values and their culture. Everyone needs a set of core values with which they can identify, and these are things like trust, commitment and respect."

Who do you trust?

There is a lively online conversation on the importance of trust in knowledge management at the KnowledgeBoard Forum (www.knowledgeboard.com). Over in the KM & Trust SIG, they've been talking about the importance of fun in building trust. SIG leader John Moore wrote, "Of course there are some people who seem to have a lot of fun at the expense of others and aren't creating trust. But ... I believe that when people have more honest and open relationships, then there is likely to be more playfulness and creativity. I also think that many people confuse solemnity and seriousness. You can be serious and have fun; solemnity kills creativity."

Chris Macrae, editor of the Emotional Intelligence SIG, wrote that there is substantial research that shows that one of two cultural sets of emotions flow across an organization:

• positive ones - trust, openness, happiness, love, fun; and
• negative ones - distrust, politics, knowledge hoarding, stress and hate.

He cited a study at Yale University that showed how upbeat moods boost cooperation, fairness and business performance. Laughter, in particular, was a powerful tool in contagious positive emotion. "Laughter offers a uniquely trustworthy sign of friendliness. It signals trust, comfort and shared sense of the world," Macrae wrote.

Recipe for success

So measure out heaping portions of love and laughter, stir in communities of practice and full-time knowledge brokers, add meta-data and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally. Garnish with trust, and serve up a tasty knowledge management project.

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