Achieving Success With Knowledge Management

History

Management consultants first developed the idea and terminology of KM. When the web became accessible, they saw the potential for intranets to make information available across workplaces. When they created helpful tools like dashboards, expertise locators, and best practice databases, they suddenly realized their knowledge was worth something, which they could sell to large and disorganized companies.

In 1987, McKinsey first used the term Knowledge Management for an internal study on information management and utilization. KM then appeared publicly during a Boston conference hosted by Ernst and Young in 1993.

Benefits of Knowledge Management

Adopting effective knowledge management practices can give your business a tremendous competitive advantage. Here are some benefits:

Enhance Team and Staff Coordination

It ensures proper communication and collaboration among team members so that tasks run smoothly with no redundancies. Plus, it allows employees to understand how their work impacts the company’s big-picture goals.

Boost Team Efficiency

Through knowledge management, your employees can access ‘best practices’ documentation, communicate efficiently with one another, and utilize tools and technology to reach their objectives.

Knowledge management serves as both a guide and a map for your team, ensuring they have a clear direction for where they want to go and how to get there. Without it, there is a risk of losing sight of goals and how to attain them best.

Increase Retention of Knowledge Inside Your Business

Another area where KM can be beneficial is retaining knowledge. A system to capture and store information can ensure that your business retains valuable knowledge even when employees leave or retire.

It’ll help fill in the workflow gaps, especially if you’re onboarding a new employee, and ensures new hires have everything they need to start being productive from day one.

Offer More Value and Create Better Customer Experiences

Good knowledge management not only helps your business but can also be of tremendous benefit to your customers. Firstly, you can create and deliver content for self-help by managing customer-focused knowledge. It allows users to use your products or services without contacting your team and quickly troubleshoot any issues they might encounter.

Furthermore, since an extensive collection of knowledge is available to and accessed by your internal service and support teams, they are more prepared to handle customer inquiries quickly. Ultimately, the fewer difficulties users encounter in their engagements with you, the more contented they will be.

Achieve Growth Through Learning

Learning is essential to achieving growth in any business. Companies can ensure that their employees constantly learn and develop new skills by investing in knowledge management. Knowledge management systems can facilitate this process by providing access to resources that enable employees to remember more about their roles, tasks, and the industry.

Types of Knowledge

Business knowledge comes in 4 forms.

Explicit Knowledge

Explicit knowledge can be documented, communicated, explained, understood, and applied. Examples of explicit knowledge include:

• Customer data
• Step-by-step instructions
• Employee survey responses

Tacit Knowledge

Tacit knowledge is best absorbed through observation and refers to ideas and insights that are hard to express in words. Often, these are taught through video demonstrations and recorded discussions. Examples of tacit knowledge include:

• A salesperson’s expertise in approaching and interacting with a potential buyer
• A method used by illustrators for creating branded visuals
• The hidden skills your employees have to increase their effectiveness and output

Implicit Knowledge

Implicit knowledge is a combination of explicit and tacit knowledge. Typically, it is used unknowingly, without conscious thought.

For example, most people would understand that the phrase “turn the computer on” means pressing the power button. However, those with minimal experience may require these explicit instructions.

Tribal Knowledge

Tribal knowledge is a type of implicit knowledge that is developed among the members of a team. This knowledge is gained through informal conversations and exchanges and, when documented and shared, can provide significant value to the group.

Core Components of Knowledge Management

A comprehensive knowledge management plan is vital for your team’s success. It should include the following elements.

People and Culture

The collective knowledge of your workforce is an excellent source of the knowledge base for your organization. They provide the skills and abilities needed to complete activities, allowing your company to function at its peak potential. Knowledge management seeks to harness this expertise to maximize team productivity.

For knowledge management to be successful, a collaborative team environment is necessary. Team collaboration fosters unique company initiatives that set you apart from competitors.

Structures and Processes

To ensure successful knowledge management, your team must have a reliable system. Start by establishing clear content hierarchies and structures to access key information quickly. It’ll help ensure your collective knowledge is always readily available.

Knowledge management involves developing methods and tools to identify, store, distribute, and enhance knowledge. Creating a well-planned approach to these activities is essential, or your KM efforts could fail from the start.

Tools and Technology

Investing in tech to increase the efficiency of your knowledge management projects is essential in today’s business landscape. While the ideal options for you may vary, here are some of the most beneficial tools to consider integrating:

• A specialized tool for managing and storing knowledge
• Communication and collaboration tools
• Tool for customer service and support
• Tools for collecting and combining data

To ensure efficient knowledge management, the tools used should work together seamlessly to prevent bottlenecks and preserve data. Otherwise, your team could suffer from decreased productivity.

Effective Knowledge Management Process

To have an effective knowledge management strategy, companies need to identify the existing knowledge they possess, determine how to use it for greater benefit, and develop a plan to implement this. Here’s what an effective knowledge management process looks like.

Discovery

Every organization has a wealth of knowledge, from employees to data drives. It encompasses various things, such as staff education and skills, the expertise they develop with experience, and data that can be used when analyzed correctly.

A company should recognize all sources of knowledge and focus on the information that is easy to overlook as part of the discovery process. An in-depth comprehension of how and where data circulates within the company can make this process more manageable.

Collection

Accurate data collection forms the basis of subsequent operations. Misguided decisions will result from a lack of understanding of the organization and its capabilities.

Companies must audit their employees’ expertise, documentation, and external sources of information. Automated polls, document scanning, and metadata technologies are a few tools that can help with this purpose.

After implementation, companies often revise internal procedures to include capturing institutional knowledge in their daily operations. They could do this by providing continuous feedback to their workers or by developing more detailed post-employment processes.

Assessment

Verifying data accuracy, usefulness, and currency is the next step after collecting and organizing it. It involves a detailed examination of the gathered information.

Teams can use knowledge management tools to organize, assess, segment, and store a comprehensive database of information that can help boost company performance and provide staff with the necessary knowledge. It simplifies the process of sharing vital data throughout the organization.

Sharing

The goal of knowledge management is to provide employees with the resources and information they need to perform their jobs efficiently. Hence, after creating a vast body of knowledge related to your business, you must devise a strategy for sharing it.

Organizations should prioritize knowledge-sharing initiatives to foster a learning and development culture. Leaders should create an environment where team members are incentivized to share their knowledge and acquire new skills from each other.

Application

It’s when organizations start to experience the advantages of knowledge management. Utilizing newly learned expertise in their work brings many benefits, such as improved productivity, accuracy, decision-making, and more creative workers.

Creation

Knowledge management is a continuous process requiring more knowledge and should not be viewed as a one-time event. A single assessment and implementation will not generate the desired outcomes. Knowledge management is an ongoing process allowing a business to get the most out of its expertise.

Organizations should strive to create new knowledge by discovering a more efficient tasking method or finding better ways to collect business performance data so that future employees can use it.

What Are the Challenges in Implementing Knowledge Management?

Here are some common difficulties that come with implementing knowledge management:

• Encouraging employee involvement
• Gaining support from high-level management
• Experiencing technology burnout
• Ensuring people have access to the information they need
• Staying informed of current trends