Informatization and Social medialization of societies and economies have resulted in an abundance of knowledge. The amount and speed at which knowledge is being created, refined, re-packaged, disseminated and is becoming obsolete is truly mind-blowing. Organizations and individuals, thus, often have access to more knowledge than they can realistically process with their existing capabilities.

Knowledge abundance has its advantages and disadvantages, some of which are given below (note: knowledge is different from information and is taken here as “relevant and objective information that helps in drawing conclusion” source: https://keydifferences.com/difference-between-information-and-knowledge.html):

In terms of advantages, knowledge abundance can help in reducing risks (by virtue of having a lot of knowledge), improving quality of decision making, inducing proactiveness of thoughts and actions, making better forecasts for future, anticipating impending crises, developing innovations and creating income-generating opportunities, just to mention a few.

Some of the disadvantages of knowledge abundance are: confused decisions or decision inertia (not knowing what decision to make), taking more time in processing information to make decisions, becoming knowledge-obsessed, and missing on opportunities by waiting for more knowledge (thinking there is still more knowledge that we don’t have yet).

Particularly, with 24×7 online connectivity and spread of knowledge (often due to push knowledge campaigns) by various actors in the society through multiple online-offline outlets and platforms, people are becoming overwhelmed by the amount of knowledge they have access to resulting in yet another phenomenon which we call here as knowledge fatigue.

We define knowledge fatigue as a tendency to feel exhausted and/or tired with the availability of or access to a large amount of knowledge, which impedes judgement or makes it difficult to choose, understand, assimilate and process the rightful/useful knowledge in a timely manner for personal and professional use purposes.

[Caveat: Please note that knowledge fatigue is little different from information fatigue – which is the fatigue caused by information overload.  Information fatigue could happen due to information that may or may not be based on facts. Here, the scope of knowledge fatigue encompasses knowledge that is broadly reviewed, approved and accepted as authentic knowledge. Examples of such knowledge are knowledge that is codified in the form of published journal articles, books, industry standards/guidelines, authentic publications of all sorts, policy documents and tacit knowledge based on years of experience and learning, just to mention a few.]

Knowledge abundance is increasingly becoming a common occurrence across every profession and aspect of life, and project management (PM) is no exception. Despite being a niche discipline, a vast amount of knowledge about various PM standards, tools, techniques and accounts of project delivery experiences exists. In addition, given that PM is used almost in every industry and business sector, there are variations of how PM is used and hence a large amount of tacit and codified knowledge exists about such variations too.

The situation is challenging for project staff to be able to cope with the existence of so much knowledge, which could potentially lead to knowledge fatigue. Often reported project failures is a stark reminder that despite the existence of a vast amount of knowledge, the use of PM knowledge is not very efficient and effective, possibly contributing to project failures. Then the question is: how do we deal with knowledge fatigue? To answer the question, below we present some of the strategies that may potentially help to alleviate some of the fatigue related to available knowledge and improve knowledge-use efficiency in PM.

1. Define relevant knowledge standards

PM knowledge has been formalized through various standards and guidelines. People working in PM need to develop competencies and gain knowledge based on such globally recognized standards to work competently. Moreover, given that PM is an integrated approach, so people are expected to have quite a lot of knowledge of various components and inter-linkages among the components as codified in the standards to work on projects. Adding to the complexity, often it happens that in addition to following the standards and guidelines of PM bodies, organizations have their own tailored PM standards for the management of projects.

Project staff, thus, have to digest and be competent in a significant amount of knowledge to be able to effectively work on projects, which could cause knowledge fatigue. Moreover, knowledge is a moving target, so knowledge keeps getting multiplied and refined. The addition of new knowledge or refinement of existing knowledge on an ongoing basis implies people need to keep upgrading their knowledge as well. Simply it means, a lot of knowledge to cope with.

Organizations can help by defining the PM guideline standards that are closely aligned to globally accepted PM standards to reduce the amount of knowledge that staff may need to possess to work on projects. Using such an approach will be beneficial for all stakeholders in the process. People will be less affected by knowledge fatigue as they don’t have to deal with multiple reserves of knowledge and it will also be less painful when they switch jobs (as their existing knowledge would be likely compatible with potential new employer’s knowledge standards). Organizations will benefit as their PM standards will be aligned with globally accepted standards, which will make it easy and less costly to upgrade their standards based on changes in globally accepted standards. PM bodies will benefit, as it will help the standardization of PM guidelines across industries and economic sectors.

2. Define the scope of knowledge requirements

Another strategy that could help avoid knowledge fatigue and improve knowledge-use is to define the scope of knowledge required for people working on projects. Defining scope of knowledge required will help people understand the expectations and be able to make themselves equipped with the required knowledge competence. People will know the specific knowledge needs and hence won’t feel burdened by so much knowledge all around them. Additionally, when people are equipped with the required knowledge (by virtue of knowing the scope of knowledge requirements), they will be more likely able to contribute with ideas, experience, and problem-solving suggestions which will improve project outcome.

3. Distill and disseminate knowledge on need-basis

24×7 connectivity has changed the way people work in organizations these days. Knowingly or unknowingly people tend to get access to a lot of knowledge. If not totally impossible, it is extremely difficult to control access to knowledge. Such a scenario can help or hinder the work, depending on how knowledge access is put to use. The knowledge access could influence people’s behaviors, impair judgments, facilitate or contaminate decision-making processes, and interactions, just to mention a few.

To deal with the situation, organizations can distill and disseminate knowledge on a need-basis keeping in view organizational and project context. This way, people will focus on the knowledge provided by the organization as a primary knowledge, not be overwhelmed by access to a lot of knowledge, and hence less affected by the knowledge fatigue. However, it does not mean that people are not allowed to access other resources of knowledge beyond organizational provided knowledge sources. What it means is that the onus is on organizations to build a robust system of knowledge provision so that people don’t have to look for or rely on knowledge from outside the organizational boundaries for the performance of project work.

4. Build a centralized knowledge pool that attracts followers

It is quite a common scenario that organizations do not have well maintained centralized knowledge repositories due to a variety of reasons including (but not limited to) lack of dedicated staff to manage the knowledge repository, lack of knowledge update, lack of expertise in knowledge management and lack of interest among people to access the organizational knowledge repository. The situation leads to people accessing multiple sources of knowledge which may cause knowledge fatigue. Resultantly, people may not be able to process the relevant knowledge in a timely manner.

The organizations, thus, need to carefully consider how to build knowledge repositories that attract followers. One strategy could be to study and analyse why some internet-based knowledge repositories are liked, followed and accessed more than others. Such an analysis could provide clues and ideas on building a centralized knowledge pool that has a higher chance of acceptance among staff and hence less likelihood-ness of people becoming overwhelmed by the abundance of knowledge that is available otherwise.

5. Crowdsource knowledge by installing knowledge gatekeepers

The key to the success of establishing and maintaining the centralized knowledge pools is to keep them knowledge-fresh and relevant. Installing gatekeepers that can bring in new knowledge will help keep the centralized pool knowledge access-worthy and potentially attract followers.

By taking a crowd knowledge sourcing approach, organizations can appoint gatekeepers from various functions and departments so that knowledge from multiple sources and perspectives get integrated into the organizational knowledge pool. If the knowledge pools are able to cater to the knowledge-needs of people on an ongoing basis, it is likely that people will become loyal followers and less affected by knowledge fatigue due to the abundance of knowledge.

Concluding thoughts:
Knowledge has become the most critical asset for, both, individuals and organizations alike. The access (or otherwise) to useful, relevant knowledge in a timely manner can be a difference between boom or bust outcome for any entity. Good thing is that the knowledge is available and available in vast quantities. The problem, however, is that the abundance of knowledge could impair the ability to access useful and relevant knowledge in a timely manner, thus diluting the utility of available knowledge.

Another issue is that the abundant knowledge could cause fatigue resulting in a lack of motivation to sift through the available knowledge to find useful knowledge and act. Such a situation could badly effect the performance and creation of value. Given that project work is constrained by several elements and focused on value delivery, the existence of knowledge fatigue could cause damage to health of projects. Keeping that in mind, we have presented few strategies to deal with knowledge fatigue. Obviously, these strategies are based on early thought and non-exhaustive in nature. In addition to these, organizations can employ individual focused strategies to help improve chances of dealing with knowledge fatigue within their system.

Authored by:
Professor Jiwat Ram
© 2020 Jiwat Ram, All Rights Reserved.