Pay now or pay later. But pay you will.

Nick Milton has been writing some great pieces on knowledge management from his experience with Knoco.  Today he has Top 7 reasons why KM implementations fail, which I find to be a familiar list:

1. KM is not introduced as a change program.
2. The KM team are the wrong people to deliver change.
3. The KM team preach only to the choir.
4. Only parts of the KM solution are implemented.
5. KM is never embedded into the business.
6. There is no effective high-level sponsorship.
7. KM is not introduced with a business focus.

And for some reason I have connected it with the (unknown) quote, "You will pay now, or you will pay later.  But you will pay."  For me it is linked to planning, if I am not prepared, I am going to spend a lot more time cleaning up the mess that I've created.

Of course, Nick closes his piece with some suggestions for making implementations not fail.

[Photo: "Be Prepared to Stop" by cobalt123]