Knowledge management 05: Potential challenges or barriers to implementation a knowledge management initiative among designers and architects.

• Problems in strategy formulation:

 When the condition in a creative office begins to deteriorate the safe response of the designers might be a reversal to the traditional thinking and working methods and to the established and well-known practices. For example, in the context of architectural design, a period of crisis (e.g. a stressful and demanding project) could reveal that the commitment to the initiative of sharing design ideas was not sufficient and the participants returned to deeply ingrained practices. Therefore, in this context the knowledge management strategy should clearly focus on person-to-person communication, on team-working, on the commitment of the designers to the group, and secondarily to ‘knowledge capture and store’ processes through ICT systems. 

Any initiative at the beginning might attract the interest and enthusiasm of the participants but after some time and due to several reasons (fatigue, lack of time and interest, unclear objectives and benefits, etc) might start to stall. Therefore, the KM strategy, one the one hand must gradually become more formal, taking a central part in an wider knowledge management program (figure 01) and on the other must present realistic and clearly defined objectives and benefits.

· Culture problems

A knowledge management initiative won’t simply make designers start sharing their knowledge, design ideas and expertise. After all, one of the most common problems is the lack of trust between creative people. Furthermore, differences in perspective and understanding, personal ambitions and issues of power, skepticism and distrust about the benefits and usefulness of sharing ideas, creates barriers to a successful implementation. The knowledge management strategy has to ensure that the purposes and reasons is understood and clarified by everyone involved. The designers have to be rewarded either financially and/or morally and understand that any possible benefit will affect them positively, both in the individual and the collective level.

· Leadership problems

The top-down structure certainly does not encourage creativity. On the other hand vague responsibilities and the lack of co-ordination and clear guidelines might also jeopardize the initiative. The roles and responsibilities must be clearly assigned to specific individuals or group of designers, while those in turn must be able to combine their job with these new responsibilities.