How do you build trust in your KM system (to fuel adoption & success)?

  • 3 October 2022
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How do you build trust across your teams in a KM solution, or any other tool for that matter? And once you earn their trust, how do you keep it? We’ve probably all grappled with this challenge at one time or another. If folks don’t trust the system, chances are pretty slim that they’ll even give it a shot, let alone spend enough time learning the tool and using it enough to build behaviors that become habits.

Lucky for us, @Dana Tessier (Director, Knowledge Management at Shopify) has a ton of experience and wisdom around building and sustaining trust in KM systems, and shared her insights with us last week at Knowledge Fest.

 

After sharing her story, reflections, and best practices for building trust among teams in a KM system, Dana fielded questions from the live audience. Here are a few additional questions that came in that we didn’t have time to cover:

  • @Gary Morin asked: “You mentioned knowledge was 96% up to date before Guru, but "over 90%" after. Was there a bit of a drop? If so, thoughts on why?”
  • Pierre Miroite asked: “Do users think of updating the cards they share by themselves (to avoid knowledge to be outdated and to keep the trust)?”
  • An anonymous attendee asked: “What common missteps have you seen or experienced that lead to system mistrust?”

What additional questions do you have about building and sustaining trust in your KM system? What insights and examples can you share from your own experiences?

Let’s keep the discussion going! Tagging in a few others who joined the session live: @Rob Mueller, @Abbey Florence, @Naomi Beemsigne, @Lindsay McEwen, @Elias Huchim  

2 replies

Paul_Wickes

How do you build trust across your teams in a KM solution, or any other tool for that matter? And once you earn their trust, how do you keep it?

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Shared this video w/ my team☝🏿
Well done, @Dana Tessier!

Dana Tessier

Thanks for starting this conversation, Chris! I look forward to hearing from others in the community too - do you feel your knowledge management system is trusted? Why or why not?

 

Another big thank you to those who attended the session and asked questions!

  • @Gary Morin asked: “You mentioned knowledge was 96% up to date before Guru, but "over 90%" after. Was there a bit of a drop? If so, thoughts on why?”
    • We have a lot of knowledge in our Guru collections and things change quickly and frequently here at Shopify. 100% up-to-date content was not going to be possible for us in the long run, and we have seen dips in our trust score over the years. We have seen some encouraging success when we have tied knowledge maintenance to individual job expectations as well as team expectations. 
  • Pierre Miroite asked: “Do users think of updating the cards they share by themselves (to avoid knowledge to be outdated and to keep the trust)?”
    • We have some very active and engaged users who do keep their knowledge updated, and we have some who need the occasional nudge to keep their content up-to-date. There are teams who noticed that the more up-to-date their cards were, the less unnecessary escalations they receive and so this also helped with their motivation to keep content up-to-date. 
  • An anonymous attendee asked: “What common missteps have you seen or experienced that lead to system mistrust?”
    • For a system to be trusted, we need to understand how it works, who takes care of it, and what to do if things seem a bit off. Transparency, accountability and actioning feedback are very important to achieving longterm system trust. Knowledge management is not a “build it and they will come” type of thing. By communicating the “why” of the system, as well as how it works, where the content comes from, how it will be maintained, and other important details, this will help users follow along and build trust with the system. 

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