"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages." - William Shakespeare

Ever wondered who the actors of a PLAY are when you are deploying a successful KM strategy? If you thought that it is only the Leaders who are the producers and who own the budget, then think again!

Today, there are the three categories we can put these ACTORS into:

1) Decision Makers : These are the stakeholders who are accountable and own the change at an enterprise , department, or team level. For example, the Leadership Team and their regional or geographic teams if KM is distributed model.

2) Influencers : These are key experts whose span of influence ensures the KM strategy is aligned to the culture of the firm. They are consulted with and at times responsible for coaching / mentoring the team implementing the change. For example, the HR collaborating with the Users who are early adopters of KM.

3) Implementers : These are the key to executing the change and are custodians of driving the outcomes and always ensuring that they advance those unclear on their KM needs to become believers. For example, the Champions working with the core KM team AND in-turn KM tram working with IT teams.

Past studies would tell you that Knowledge Management is an organizational need and yet it is inherent that most organizations discount how their KM strategy is aligned to the business strategy. One reason that comes to mind is how do we combine the culture + systemic design + user needs and equate it to designing KM systems around our business outcomes.

"The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions."
- Leonardo da Vinci

In the beginning of this article, we bucketed our actors into three categories. If you look at the above graphic, what does it call-out? We can further group the characteristics into the below. It tells you that before you build a KM system what becomes vital is to ensure you have agreed on a set-rule based policy of advancing KM within your organization; that encourages only certain behaviours that ensure knowledge is created - shared - used and harvested. It tells you that we also need to ensure we imbibe practices that encourage us to move from our Fixed Mindset to truly contributing to advancing information that is actionable and helpful to those in need of it, which is Knowledge.

Behaviours

• We ensure at an individual level we are clear on the user's unmet needs and ensure our KM team and Champions are working together to even challenge their own 'Fixed Mindset'. We need to provide them with the right budget approvals, empowerment to be decision makers in this journey as entrepreneurs and ensure they are rewarded for the softer aspects that lead to creation & sharing of intellectual capital.
• As leaders, we combine our own ‘Believer's Mindset’ and ensure through sharing of our own failures of adopting KM we encourage exploratory learning within our teams. We define how we want Knowledge Management to truly differentiate us.
• Ensure our teams have a 'Founders mindset' (social construct is not missing) to coach their teams and top-down we ensure workplace collaboration rather than advancing secret mission evangelists who are stand-alone heroes.

Practices

• It is important that workplace policies are aligned, and the HR manage knowledge gain-loss throughout the employee life cycle, including ensuring every event includes knowledge sharing to begin, which slowly encourages other leaders to come forward and avoid high-performance distance within their teams.
• Core KM team has a mix of diversity for ensuring there is no brokerage mindset within the champions and other influencers who are driving KM based on only how they are rewarded.

Knowledge

• Our systems need to be designed around epistemology of practice ensuring the IT team is not only considering the 'New Ways of Working' but ensuring that the right touchpoints are catered to codify the knowledge as it flows through the organization.
• Ensure ICT is at the core so we can ensure that everyone in the organization experience contributes to building an intuitive driven performance management system that advances how knowledge is truly an intangible asset that is a key differentiator.

In summary, we need to ensure we go beyond and ensure all our metrics are based around measuring employee engagement and employee effectiveness where the employee is not necessarily only the end-user consuming the knowledge.

So, let us all sign the petition to ensure we are clear on the critical KM touch points and partner with HR / and others based on the role they are playing for increasing adoption. 

Every business is looking for ways to improve its internal policies and management of information. Each team has its team members and each of them comes with a set of values and knowledge that enrich the entire team process. Moreover, if you are active in your domain, you have already implemented some working policies and habits. Team members are probably already exchanging information in a variety of ways, so things are already moving. But how do the entire business and every individual team manage the information they come across or share?

Well, if your business does not have a knowledge management (KM) strategy implemented, building one as soon as possible is important. As the business will slowly grow, its employees will interact with more and more information on the products or services you offer.

At the same time, they will acquire more knowledge. But it is wise to think ahead about what will happen if one of the employees resigns. What happens to the knowledge they have on your business that must be passed on to the people they come in their place? A KM strategy helps you handle and manage efficiently all the knowledge that exists in the company. Here are the best practices for designing an effective KM strategy. 

Aim to Understand the Culture that Already Exists 

Until a KM strategy is built by a company, it has already started being active in its chosen domain. This means that even though you might not have many employees, they are already collaborating and working together. How do they do this? How do they share information and knowledge? It can be through emails, instant messages, Slack, Skype, Trello, or other apps. Are there any weaknesses in this process? Which are the strengths? These are some of the questions you need to ask yourself when trying to understand the culture that has already started to form within the business. It is essential to do this because you can build the entire organizational culture on what already exists. 

This is essential for designing a KM strategy because it has to take into consideration the cultural and organizational elements of your business. One of the roles of KM strategy is to address these weaknesses and hot points that already exist and to minimize them. Writers who write my assignment on organizational culture and management say that even though many of the risks you identify now will come only in the future, having a strategy to solve them is essential. 

Look at the Needs 

A KM strategy should be deeply linked to the organizational goals you have already set. If your business does not have any goals, it would be wise to set some SMART ones. They will help you measure your progress, but also work towards achieving the same things.

Every team that works on some products or services has needs. Your KM strategy should address these needs, especially the ones you think will exist in the future. And more importantly, this strategy should be aligned with the organizational goals. There are many activities you will perform to manage the knowledge within the business and these activities should be aligned with your goals for the future. 

Make Knowledge Sharing a Habit 

One of the most important things when working in a team is to share information and communicate effectively with your team members. In a team, a team member’s tasks could depend on the progress of other team members. Moreover, there can be more experienced members that could teach valuable skills and share essential information with their colleagues.

When everyone is informed and has access to the information they need, it will be easier to do their jobs and be productive. How is this sharing of knowledge already happening in your business? What do team members appreciate the most about the work of another team member? It is important to show everyone in the company the benefits of sharing knowledge. If this process is valued, the business will grow healthily. 

KM Strategy that Considers Knowledge Retention 

Many things need to be included in the KM strategy and one of them is that that addresses knowledge retention. Knowledge exists in many forms, such as documents, tools, apps, and many more. But the ones that acquire and use this knowledge are the employees. It is wise to assume that not all employees will stay with your company forever and many of them will resign sometime in the future. This is one of the natural things that happen in the working market and you need to be prepared for it. The employees that will retire or resign will leave with a lot of essential knowledge that needs to be passed on. So, it is important to understand what is the important knowledge in the organization and how to keep it. Knowledge retention is essential and it should not be left out. 

Understanding the External Relations 

A business is indeed working with its employees to deliver certain products and services. But external collaborators such as customers, other companies, or freelancers are also interacting with you. How is this process going? What knowledge is shared among the two parties? How can your organization or business help another one? External relations are efficient because they can help a business grow tremendously, but they can also help a business assess the knowledge it does not have and find ways to acquire it. 

Ending Note 

Designing an effective KM strategy is not an easy job, but it is a strategy that is much needed in every organization and business. As companies grow from year to year, the policies and processes within the business develop even more. It is essential to have a KM strategy that addresses future risks and needs, underlies how the sharing of information and knowledge is done, and also the organizational culture, goals, and knowledge retention. 

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In every organization, leaders are appointed so that they can give professional guidance to their teams. They take the responsibility of providing practical knowledge to their peers and assist them in their tasks. When a team is assigned a project, then the leader is held accountable for the faults found in them.

However, a leader can only fulfill such a role if they have the inner ability to learn new information. This knowledge can be earned from books, daily life, videos, or work experience. However, by just storing it in your brain, that information is useless because it didn’t become a part of their actions.

The Need for a Personal Knowledge Management System

Personal Knowledge Management is the process of drawing important conclusions or lessons from the knowledge that you’ve learned from past experiences. Thorough understanding and implementation of those lessons help the leaders to become proficient in their work.

Hence, came a personal knowledge management system that provides an organized method for storing tips and lessons learned. Marking pieces of text in books, bookmarking blog posts, or writing notes are just some of the ways of using a personal knowledge management system.

Here are a few reasons why such a system can prove to be beneficial for you.

1.   Find Hidden Lessons in Your Past Experiences

You may think journaling is a waste of time, but it proves to be a great tool, not just for jotting down your feelings but also to note down the challenges faced over the years and how did you overcome them. Just remembering about what happened at a specific incident wouldn’t help you to analyze what mistakes you made and what lessons did you learn. 

When you write such processes that occurred in your life, it can help your mind to find hidden patterns that you weren’t able to find before. This is where a personal knowledge management system can aid you in writing down your emotions and experiences. So, whenever you revisit them, you can look at those memories from a different perspective.

It’s a good idea to note down all of the events that occurred during work daily. Make a separate page to write down important information, advice, or practical knowledge that you have learned during the day.

For example, an employee learning about digital marketing services for their next online campaign can write down their thoughts, ideas, and strategies by using a personal knowledge management system.

2.   Keeps Track of Your Performance

One can only know how much ground they have covered when they’ve made a record of all of the achievements and failures they’ve faced along the journey. How can anyone learn from their mistakes if they aren’t identified?

A personal knowledge management system can help you to form a written record of your progress at the workplace. It can help you to spot mistakes you’ve made before and learn from them. So, whenever you’re going through a similar phase, you can revise to find the solutions to your problems.

It’s also a good motivation booster because one can become aware of the achievements they’ve made throughout their work life. If a leader continues to concentrate on their failures, then it can cause them to lose confidence and remain in constant anxiety. So, they won’t be able to face new challenges.

By learning about your accomplishments, it can give you the strength to face the challenges ahead during your leadership journey.

3.   Enhances Creativity

Making your knowledge management system can help to feed your creativity. By noting down important details while researching through different mediums, you’ll try to match concepts. As you’re matching them, you’ll be able to find out new solutions to problems.

4.   Promotes A Collaborative Company Culture

When a leader practices a new skill or technique, all of the followers begin to follow the same technique. Similarly, a business leader who follows a personal knowledge management system will attract all employees to adopt a similar system.

Through the creation of a knowledge management system for your team members, it can enable them to share important concepts or lessons learned during their work time or research. This creates a collaborative learning environment as an employee tries to help their partner in the completion of their tasks.

Leaders can share insights that could help employees to perform better in their tasks. Overall, appointing a system of personal knowledge management can help leaders to boost the productivity of their teams.

Develop Your Personal Knowledge Management System

Now that you know the importance of a personal knowledge management system, you need to know how to make a personal knowledge management system that suits you best. It isn’t limited to the use of a journal for writing down your thoughts. Below are a few ways to make a proper knowledge management system.

Journal every day:  Try to write about your experience throughout the day in your diary or a digital notepad, also include lessons learned. It can prove to be a useful inventory when you revisit it.
Make use of Notes-taking apps or Memos: There are various notes taking applications available that can help in making quick notes about any important information you’ve heard or read.
Apply to an Online Course: These online programs such as Getting Things Done and Building a Second Brain can help you to acquire skills for learning new information and managing it in a better way. You’ll also get the chance to interact with a learning community that is pursuing the same goals.

Wrapping Up

Your skillset can grow only when you know how to apply the lessons learned from your past experiences. To remember the lessons of leadership, it’s essential to record the mistakes you’ve made and how did you rectify them.

This needs to be updated regularly with new information that you continue to find. As leaders, you’re responsible for assisting your teams in major projects. Through the implementation of a personal knowledge management system, you can simply store what practical teachings you know and have learned.

This storage will prove to be a valuable asset for you in expanding your brand and becoming an excellent leader.

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Knowledge Management as the System That Helps People in an Organization to Share, Access, and Update Business Knowledge or Information    

Knowledge management is a system that enables people to access, share, and update information and any business knowledge in an organization. It includes subjects in information systems, management, business administration, information science, and library. KM promotes the integrated approach to capturing, evaluating, and sharing information. 

Many organizations, including non-profit organizations, have set aside resources for supporting internal knowledge management efforts. This post describes knowledge management in terms of its principles, benefits, key examples, and key types.

Principles of knowledge management

One of the best ways through which a message travels is through language. An organization must choose the best knowledge management strategy to ensure that information is gathered and communicated well. The message needs to be disseminated in a language that all the parties understand and appreciate. 

Without language, people cannot communicate what they know. For people to expand organizational knowledge, they must develop languages to describe their work experience. 

Just like life happens, knowledge must happen too. Knowledge seeks community and this explains why the internet is relevant as a rich source of information. It is difficult to isolate the aspect of knowledge neatly. In the world of knowledge, people can hardly pay attention to one factor when seeking and sharing knowledge.

Knowledge is dynamic and constantly changing and as such, it does not present a single solution. People in an organization may design the best knowledge management approach today, but that approach may be rendered irrelevant or obsolete in the future. 

Knowledge fades away with time and therefore, people should let go of old ways and embrace new ways of doing things. They must contribute to the evolution and vitality of knowledge. The knowledge definition determines its management.

Benefits of knowledge management

Knowledge is an important asset in any organization. Therefore, it should be well documented, accurate, and easily accessible to all. Effective knowledge management enables organizations to save time in recreating the existing knowledge. 

When information is easily accessible, reliable and free from errors, it minimizes the need for employees to interrupt each other with chats and emails. The support employees spend less time addressing common and repetitive questions. Thus, they can get more time to deal with other important work-related matters.

Through knowledge management, people can quickly and efficiently get the information they need. Additionally, when employees gather and share information, they can avoid making mistakes from time to time. Common mistakes can be avoided when people learn from previous mistakes and failures.

Information is used in making decisions in organizations. Quality decisions require access to reliable, timely, and accurate information. Effective knowledge management enables people to make informed decisions. When employees share lessons learned, experiences, and their research outcomes, the details can be critically evaluated and information used to facilitate proper decision-making.

Knowledge management overcomes the limitations associated with passing information through word of mouth. Information can be shared between various parties without distortion. 

Shared and documented processes ensure that everyone agrees with the information being shared and they follow approved procedures. Knowledge management improves communication within an organization because everyone is required to participate in information gathering and sharing. 

Examples of knowledge management systems

Knowledge sharing in an organization is easier with a reliable platform that can meet various needs at the organizational and departmental levels. Examples of knowledge management include:

• Social networking. Social networking enables people to join groups, connect and discuss common issues of interest. It influences organizational knowledge and the way it is generated and shared. Social networking can support knowledge management systems to identify and transfer knowledge.
• Content management. Content management systems store video, audio, and other types of media in addition to documents. The content management process entails organization, creation, storage, workflow, editing, publishing, and archiving of the content.
• Intranets. Intranets are private computer networks aimed at providing access to information and enhancing social networking and collaborations within an organization. Intranets provide a user interface including standard look, navigation, web pages, and search. They can help to standardize the KM environment by allowing for consistent navigation and search.
• Databases. A database enables people to gather, analyze, store and interact with data. Databases enhance the ease of access to information and maintain data security. However, they are costly to design and can sometimes be volatile and prone to security threats.
• Data warehouses. Data warehouses pull data from various parts of an organization and are useful for data reporting and analysis. They store current and historic data and transform it into valuable information. Data warehouses require a high level of maintenance and are complex to manage. 

Types of knowledge management 

One of the common types of knowledge management is explicit knowledge. Explicit knowledge is reduced and presented physically in writing. It is documented and codified in a physical format and therefore rigid in presentation. Explicit knowledge is easier to share and is regarded as contemporary to tacit knowledge. Examples include reports, graphs, charts, tables, slides, worksheets, and more.

Another knowledge management is implicit knowledge. This is the knowledge that is applicable in real-life situations. Implicit knowledge is gathered and used to solve problems. For example, when the information presented in a graphical format is used for planning and forecasting, it can be classified as implicit knowledge. 

Tacit knowledge is mutually understood and does not require disclosure before it is understood. It is not applicable in a specific situation, neither is it structured. Tacit knowledge has cultural affiliations and is informal. 

Features of tacit knowledge relate to the things employees learn but cannot be easily incorporated in an orientation or training program. When a customer service staff learns how to deal with stubborn customers through experience, this can be termed as tacit knowledge. 

Conclusion

Knowledge management is the basis of information access and sharing. The information gathered must be timely, reliable, and accurate to facilitate effective decision-making. Knowledge management should be a responsibility of all people in an organization and it must influence the organization positively. It should support an organization to realize goals and enable it to be competitive in the industry. 

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Information is crucial to the success of a business. Without proper management of information, there won’t be synergy among the staff, which could hurt its success. We now live in an era where staff cooperation is needed more than ever, especially as there are various means of communication and information gathering. These different means of gaining information or communication don’t translate the data into helpful knowledge. Also, it doesn’t guarantee that the knowledge gained will be shared appropriately. Knowledge management comes in here, so this post is just for you.

This post will arm you with the necessary knowledge you need to have about knowledge management and how to determine the right knowledge management strategy that will suit your business.  

What is Knowledge Management

Knowledge management is the creation, use, sharing, and management of information in any organization or business. This process involves the employees of a company and their customers. It is geared towards using knowledge to improve a company’s competitive advantage and allow it to be dominant in the market. In essence, knowledge management is making appropriate use of a business’s information.

The main areas of knowledge management are;

• Knowledge accumulation
• Knowledge storage
• Knowledge sharing

Benefits of knowledge management

• It makes it easy to access knowledge and information
• An efficient workplace
• Quicker informed decision-making
• Optimized collaboration
• It improves idea creation
• Efficient knowledge and communication network for business
• Boosts information and knowledge quality
• The improved training process for employees
• Boots employee focus and morale
• Security for business information
• Faster, better decision-making

Types of Knowledge Management

The types of knowledge management are;

Explicit Knowledge
Implicit Knowledge
Tacit knowledge

1. Explicit knowledge

Explicit is the knowledge reduced to a physical form through writing. It is the knowledge that has been codified, documented, and shared in that manner. It is the knowledge that is rigid in form. In summary, it is knowledge with a formal structure. Examples are instructions, reports, charts and other diagrams, worksheets, FAQs, office slides.

2. Implicit Knowledge

Implicit knowledge is, in essence, applied knowledge. It involves learned skills and the application of explicit knowledge to a scenario. Implicit knowledge is knowledge gained then applied to solve a problem. It consists of putting explicit knowledge to practice. For instance, using a strategy slide which is a form of explicit knowledge to a situation, would be categorized as implicit knowledge.

3. Tacit Knowledge

Tacit knowledge is a mutually understood knowledge. It is the information that doesn’t need to be disclosed before it is understood. It doesn’t exist in a structured format, nor is it applied to a situation. It is knowledge known without being taught. This type of knowledge is informal, and it has cultural ties—for example, understanding body language.

Examples of Knowledge Management Strategy

Documentation: This strategy revolves around centralizing manually or, better still, digitally the business documents. These documents can be stored using a manual filing cabinet or a digital one. This system has the following advantages.

Document retrieval becomes easy, and it is easier when stored digitally.
It adheres to the ethics of running a business.
It helps improve workflow.
It secures document longevity as there are backup processes.
Sharing document becomes easy.

Disadvantages

The document might not be protected adequately from outsiders. For instance, if an employee exposes the password to access digital files, the company can be adversely affected by the compromise.
Documentation can be time-consuming.
The document must be appropriately organized and structured for ease of retrieval, the.
There must be a continued update of documents, or the knowledge contained becomes obsolete.

Intranets and Collaboration Environments

These are private computer networks put on easily accessible and searchable communication platforms. The advantages of this strategy are;

• They encourage cooperation among employees.
• Knowledge flows freely among employees.
• It improves internal social networking among employees.
• Innovation levels rise due to the level of cooperation among employees.
• Organized communication lines that help connect all teams.

Disadvantages;

• Free flow communication can breed distractions.
• Outsiders can easily access it.

Determining the right knowledge management strategy

In determining to use a knowledge management strategy or whether your knowledge management strategy is the right one, consider the following and use it as a guide to inform your decision.

Product Improvement

Knowledge management is not done for its sake. It has to establish something, and one of those things is whether the knowledge you have gotten from customers and other sources has caused you to notice problems with your products. Detecting these problems is a precursor to their Improvement. If your strategy is not giving you knowledge of customer experience with your products and their performance in the market, you should be changing your knowledge management strategy.

Customer Service: Assisted Service

Are your support personnel getting information from their customer service sessions, and how have they used that information? This is what should echo in your mind with your knowledge management strategy. The info gotten from customers through customer service sessions with them should translate to how you can help them. This knowledge of how to help them must also be shared and reused by your customer support. This suggests that there is room for collaboration in your customer support.

Customer service: Self Service.

Businesses now offer customers the ability to attend to some issues by themselves. Companies achieve this by giving customers the necessary direct knowledge. The information needed here is whether businesses share self-service knowledge on time, if customers find the knowledge enticing to read and if customers find the knowledge useful. To be sure of the impact this self-service has on a customer, businesses should provide ways to get feedback from their client. If your knowledge management does not allow you to know how impactful your self-service is, it needs to be fine-tuned or changed.

Impact on Business.

Your knowledge management must have a positive impact on your business. It would help if you got sale figures that would impress upon you the strategy you would take to improve sales. Your knowledge management has the ultimate goal of improving your business and your chances to compete in an already competitive market. If you can’t achieve this, then your knowledge management strategy isn’t as beneficial to you as it should be, and as such, you have to make changes.

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