How many followers do you have on social media? Today, the 'social construct' has made us reason that having many followers on social media is a good measure of knowledge. On the contrary do you relate to your firm's 'social software' as a means for sharing your experiences that is of interest to others such that in-time they can learn from your explicit knowledge, have you given it a thought within your organization?

I am sure many of us are Following our favorite bloggers on professional networks; a place where the leader makes it a point to be consistent to share their thoughts around contemporary topics of interest; share relevant examples to make it relatable. They are moving from being an artist in their realm to becoming a conversational leader. 

Over a period, you as a reader makes it a habit to crave for that daily breakfast post. Intentionally what your mind is teaching you is to practice subconsciously some of their Lessons Learnt; you are now engaged with their 'Content' they are sharing and feel 'Connected'. Did you know you are practicing the 3C's of Knowledge Management, although you're not in sight of your organization?

So, as leaders are we missing out on critical knowledge that can aid in advancing our organizational social capital. If you now connect you know that there is a need to move from just being someone who from being an 'Artist' to becoming a 'Conversational Leader' someone who collaborates and helps their followers to share their experiences in a safe zone and feel acknowledged that truly the network is growing as one tribe.

As defined by educator Carolyn Baldwin, conversational leadership is “the leader’s intentional use of conversation as a core process to cultivate the collective intelligence needed to create business and social value.” 

The next question as leaders are we serving our calling to truly move from predator and sharing our knowledge to enable our followers to truly see us as instructors coaching us to become trainers?

Source: Facebook 'Just for Fun' Fanclub . The bitter truth : You start practicing to truly 'network' rather than 'artwork' something that not only we begin to enjoy but over time others follow us for learning our techniques, our tips and in-time become trainers.

In-Summary: So as leaders let us enjoy wearing our K-Hats and truly ensure we leverage organizational & community resources to produce greater strategic value. We ACE-IT !

A - Start with being an Artist and live our culture contrary to sharing falsehoods
C - We 'Connect' with our teams and truly become a 'Conversational Leader'.
E - We make our teams feel 'Engaged' to encourage critical knowledge-flow.
I - We coach our followers as 'Instructors' and are open to KM 'People approaches'.
T - We as leaders invest in individuals becoming 'trainers' and in-turn our network of followers grows to learn from our art; and ensure "KM is being Followed".

In contrast to knowledge management systems that use information technology (IT) to create, manage, store, share, and reuse knowledge, the healthcare industry faces unique challenges. Those include system complexity, medical errors, significant growth in medical knowledge, and increased healthcare costs. Thanks to knowledge management, experts and hospitals can apply worldwide techniques to satisfy medical needs. Knowledge may be used effectively to help future generations learn from past mistakes and build inventive solutions.

Healthcare is a knowledge-based business. Treating each patient's specific symptoms requires tremendous information and competence. The United States has the most prominent health industry, with 784,626 businesses. Patient care accounts for $1.068 trillion, or 64% of all healthcare revenue in the United States.

According to health statistics, healthcare is the largest source of employment in the country, employing one out of every eight Americans. These individuals must be trained to start a new job or transfer to clinics or hospitals. They must continue to be trained as treatments and procedures improve throughout their careers.

The tools, support, and expertise that health organizations have at their disposal determine the quality of treatment they provide. Using a knowledge management system fosters a culture of ongoing collaboration and innovation in the healthcare profession. Suppose a culture of information sharing is established in the healthcare industry. In that case, employees are more likely to participate in continual learning and education.

Benefits of having a Knowledge Base in healthcare 

Enhance Operating Efficiency

Calls are shorter for hospital call agents who have access to reliable, up-to-date information. It saves time searching and reduces patient wait times. With consistent client experiences, an effective knowledge management system like PHPKB optimizes operational efficiencies throughout customer service (frontline and back-office). A branded dashboard, feedback, and reporting metrics allow convenient management supervision.

1. Using private internal conversation and material exchange assists staff in providing better service.
2. Assists with the upkeep of current compliance forms and procedures throughout the firm.
3. Lowers the total operating costs.

Making Informed Decisions

Healthcare workers are continually bombarded with new information, yet they struggle to locate it appropriately. If healthcare workers can instantly access organized information from anywhere, at any time, it can genuinely save lives. 

The doctor can rapidly search for and identify symptoms, treatments, and other helpful information using innovative and meticulously decision trees in healthcare call centers, which could forever change patients' lives. 

Doctors, for example, may see up to 50 people every day. Individual appointments rarely allow for tracking down and consulting with additional doctors.

Fewer Errors

As employees leave or are laid off, their knowledge of procedures and current best practices is lost, increasing the number of errors. A blunder might result in tragedy or a multimillion-dollar lawsuit in the healthcare industry. 

Hospitals can use healthcare knowledge management technologies to standardize all operations and give easily accessible training. Doctors, nurses, and medical technicians can access procedures anytime, anywhere if the knowledge-sharing solution offers a sophisticated search and mobile interface.

Secure collaboration

Different professionals can learn from each other thanks to a knowledge-sharing system. Medical data from various sources can be converted to an electronic format and used by clinicians to improve therapy. 

Knowledge management aims to standardize all procedures and increase access to professional education. A knowledge-sharing solution is precious in the medical profession, where errors are costly and life-threatening.

On the other hand, the digital transformation poses new risks to patients' privacy, the doctor-patient relationship, and doctor-patient confidentiality. So, how do medical professionals communicate and benefit from one another's previous and current instances without jeopardizing their professional associations? While keeping the patient private, a knowledge management solution allows healthcare providers to document and discuss symptoms and any other information that may be useful.

In this manner, potentially life-saving information is not kept secret while safeguarding patients' privacy.

Creates organizations that are learning

The use of Knowledge management necessitates the creation of a data-driven continuous-learning environment that promotes experience-based organizational learning. In a learning organization, individuals are consistently learning to see the whole together, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are developed, where collective aspiration is set free, and where individuals are continually learning to generate the results they truly desire. 

Over the last two decades, organizational research has identified three critical variables for organizational learning and adaptability: a supportive learning environment, actual learning processes and practices, and reinforcement-oriented leadership behavior. 

Employees can evaluate our successes and failings regularly as we attempt to improve. This process fosters a learning-by-doing culture based on data-driven assessments of performance and outcomes. Learning from mistakes allows you to gain knowledge that you may utilize to improve care and operations over time.

Avoiding malpractice

Medical misconduct is costly in a variety of ways. Health care professionals will be able to participate in knowledge sharing in a way that has never been done before, thanks to a standardized knowledge management system of new findings and direct experiences.

Health informatics and information management systems would reduce fatal misdiagnoses and streamline medical decision-making at this level. A clinician may search for and use the findings of a study conducted worldwide to effectively diagnose a patient who would otherwise have been misdiagnosed and mistreated in minutes. 

This information could be fetched easily by building up repeatable processes and a library of medical information.

Conclusion

Like every other aspect of their culture, the healthcare community is more technologically connected than ever before. Healthcare companies will publish their discoveries on a never-before-seen scale by uniting global medical findings and making them searchable with straightforward tools. Health care systems will combine their results and provide new patient treatment by utilizing knowledge base tools.

Effective knowledge management system for call centers necessitates organization and must be user-friendly while also reducing the administrative burden on asset managers. The tools, support, and expertise that health organizations have at their disposal determine the quality of treatment they provide.

A knowledge management tool can bring together communities of practice, foster public health innovation, and boost the healthcare system's overall efficiency.

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Each of us growing up has heard the famous story of the "Six blind men and an elephant". The moral of the story is that humans tend to claim absolute truth based on their limited, subjective experience as they ignore other people's limited, subjective experiences which may be equally true.

Doesn't this sound relatable to you?

Spear: 'The Leader' finds it difficult to measure tangible business value of KM.
Rope: 'The Champion' is unclear on how to advance a user basis the tacit knowledge.
Snake: 'The HR' feel that the KM strategy is not aligned to organizational culture. 
Tree: 'The KM Team' must provide instant gratification moments each time.
Wall: 'The Users' say that the KM system does not address their unmet needs. 

There is a problem; we can see that! However, most of the time we KM Practitioners fail to get the team together to ensure that we define the same.

The reason is as humans we naturally develop patterns of thinking modeled on repetitive activities and commonly accessed knowledge. These assist us in quickly applying the same actions and knowledge in similar or familiar situations, but they also have the potential to prevent us from quickly and easily accessing or developing new ways of seeing, understanding, and solving problems. These patterns of thinking are often referred to as schemas, which are organized sets of information and relationships between things, actions and thoughts that are stimulated and initiated in the human mind.

As these schemas are stimulated automatically, this can obstruct a more fitting impression of the situation or prevent us from seeing a problem in a way that will enable a new problem-solving strategy.

Design Thinking is an iterative process in which we seek to understand the user, challenge assumptions, and redefine problems to identify alternative strategies and solutions that might not be instantly apparent with our initial level of understanding.

Challenging Assumptions is a sense-making technique designed to break apart a statement and discover where assumptions may be limiting your options.
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Looking at the above graphic you can see how new assumptions have come in that help us form innovative ideas and improve our 'selection-mix' to solve a problem.

• Knowledge sharing is based on mutual trust > Create moments to recognize individuals 
• Culture contains falsehoods > Celebrate talking about Lessons Leant 
• Espoused values differ in leaders > Practice sharing knowledge folklore 
• User's past km experiences is discounted  > Run 360 feedback surveys with such users 
• KM systems do not answer semantic knowledge > Design AI/ML knowledge systems
• Increasing Profit Margin > Define critical information categories
• Bringing down OPEX > Build an Expertise database capture Best Practices 
• Difficult to recognize a novel idea that can become an IP > Link KM to Learn projects 
• Annuity on KM is negligible > Build innovation hubs like Topcoder that pay talent 
• Not visible to external network  > Sponsor conferences to present knowledge 

In Summary: Knowledge is critical to solving business problems, and as leaders we need to ensure that our business goals are mirrored to defining the most critical problems. However, without exploring Design Thinking principles we would fail to 'Ideate' and prioritize the right issues-at-hand, which could stop us from experiencing the true value of KM.

In today’s world, many of us cannot get away from digital devices. We rely on computers for work, mobile phones for social connection, and all kinds of other screens for entertainment and relaxation. For workers immersed in this digital environment, the threat of digital overload is all too real.

Digital overload is an unpleasant and unproductive experience that business leaders should strive to overcome. Fortunately, knowledge management plays a unique role in mitigating factors that lead to overload. To better protect your workforce, a strong knowledge management system is one of your greatest assets.

However, using knowledge management to protect employees from digital overload first requires understanding. Learn how to recognize digital overload, then apply knowledge management in the following ways.

What is Digital Overload?

Let’s start with a clearer definition of digital overload. This is closely related to information overload; however, digital overload is a bit more on the nose considering modern working conditions. When too much information crowds a person, they tend to enter into a state of limited functionality—even a sort of paralysis—in which it becomes difficult to make winning business decisions. Some refer to this state as “infoxication.”

With digital overload, this state is caused by the number of messages, notifications, channels, tabs, devices, monitors, instruments, and whatever other digital tech you happen to work with. Information overload has become increasingly digital due to the convenience and efficiency of digital workflows. These are information systems and management dashboards designed for productivity and oversight and resultantly come with a lot of notifications.

That’s where knowledge management can help. These systems can make information complete, organizable, and searchable across an organization. From there managing digital overload can be as simple as setting filters and customizing dashboards.

The Role of Knowledge Management in Preventing Overload

Knowledge management tools play a significant role in preventing digital overload. That’s because with these knowledge bases come a safe place for employees to turn to when they feel most overwhelmed.

Primarily, the role of these systems in protecting employee health and well-being is to provide resources and information in an organized and coherent fashion, best fitted to the user. In this case, users are employees seeking out solutions to a cluttered digital landscape. The right management tools make it easy to find these solutions.

Routing Resources

First and foremost, a knowledge management system functions to connect employees to resources. This can mean training, reference guides, templates, and much more. In the modern era of comprehensive management platforms, workers are even managing workflows entirely within these systems. This allows for convenient routing to schedules complete with necessary breaks.

A knowledge system can even link employees to resources that help them mitigate symptoms of digital overload such as computer fatigue. Paired with tech advancements like artificial intelligence, these platforms can recommend strategies like stepping away from the computer and going for a walk for employees struggling with overload.

Organizing Info

Additionally, knowledge management systems lend themselves to the kind of digital organization that can improve the employee experience. After an interruption in—perhaps out of a need to seek out additional information—workers require time to get back on task. Well-organized information makes that easy.

That’s because this information comes with all kinds of benefits that combat digital overload. These benefits include:

• Increased worker productivity
• Reduced stress levels
• Enhanced efficiency

Workers struggling to catch up with an overwhelming digital environment need a knowledge management system organized to fit their needs. Fortunately, many of these tools offer customizability and flexibility across devices and networks that can accommodate your business model.

Tips for Using Knowledge to Protect Employees

However, finding and utilizing the right knowledge management platform to suit your digital workflow isn’t always simple. For success, you’ll have to define the specific needs of your employees as well as assess their digital workflow for risks and usability challenges.

As you explore the uses of knowledge management systems in protecting employees’ digital health, consider the following tips:

Prioritize user experience. UX is the basis of a quality knowledge system. In this case, the users are employees. Their ability to navigate a system will make or break its effectiveness.

Provide employee education and resources. A great knowledge management platform is relatively self-explanatory. Still, employees need the resources to learn and utilize them well to avoid being overwhelmed by another digital tool.

Invite feedback in an inclusive environment. Build your knowledge management approach with employees’ digital overload concerns directly in mind by engaging them in the choice and implementation of these tools. This requires an inclusive working environment in which workers feel heard.

Knowledge management can be your most important tool in combating the mental fatigue that comes with too much technology. As workforces rely more on remote employees tied to these systems, it's in everyone’s best interest to choose and manage the right knowledge systems. Use these tips to aid in the process.

Supporting Employee Success

Knowledge management, by nature of its role in employee success, is a crucial part of protecting employees from digital overload. This brain power-sapping condition hamstrings workforces. Fortunately, having the resources you need where you need them is an important aspect of knowledge management that can cut down your time shifting through digital systems.

Find what you need in a complete and helpful picture with the right approach to knowledge management.

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What is the secret to customer loyalty? The answer straight from ~50,000 consumers, per a massive survey conducted by Corporate Executive Board (now Gartner), was: Make it easy to get service.

In order to find the recipe for “ease,” Forrester Consulting asked 5,000 consumers (on our behalf) about their biggest hurdles to getting customer service. The answers (by far) were lack of knowledgeability among contact center agents and inconsistency of answers across touchpoints, followed by the inability of websites to deliver answers. With a common “knowledge and intelligence” theme running across the pain points, the panacea is clearly unified omnichannel knowledge management, infused with AI.

Done right, a modern knowledge management system (KMS) can transform contact centers. Here are sample metrics and real- world examples from our Global 1000 clientele.

First-Contact Resolution (FCR)

FCR is an important contact center metric that significantly reduces customer effort. While FAQs, search, and topic-tree browsing help with simple queries, more sophisticated technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) can help resolve issues of medium-to-high complexity at the very first contact through conversational guidance. When a premier telco client made  it mandatory for agents to use this technology to solve customer problems, FCR improved by 37% and NPS by 30 points across 10,000 agents and 600 retail  stores.

Average Handle Time (AHT)

As you know, AHT without FCR increases customer frustration even more. Happily, a modern KMS can transform both these seemingly conflicting metrics. A premier banking client reduced AHT by 67% while improving FCR by 36% by leveraging eGain AI to guide  customers to answers. In fact, advisors in its contact center used the technology to guide customers through processes such as account opening and other banking transactions while complying with industry regulations!

Annual Training Hours (ATH)

How do you reduce training needs without compromising service quality? Again, KM delivers the answer. A global banking client soared to #1 in customer service NPS and reduced training time by 50%, even as it expanded to 11 countries with mostly novice agents in its workforce! With the same technology, a telco reduced induction training time by 43% and time-to-competency by half. Note that reducing the need for training also cuts shrinkage, which is the amount of time lost due to agents’ breaks at work, sick time, training time, holidays, etc.

Call / Email / Chat deflection

One of the popular metrics for measuring digital self-service effectiveness is the number of deflections from agent-assisted channels. Using contextual self-service, with robust KM as its backbone, a media and legal services giant deflected 70% of requests for email and chat customer service.

Product returns and exchanges

No-charge product returns or exchanges has become standard policy in many branded manufacturing firms, retailers, and telecoms due to customer expectations and competitive pressures. Called No Fault Found (NFF), many of these returns and exchanges are unwarranted where the products were not defective but the contact center could not solve the customers’ problems. NFF costs organizations tens millions of dollars each year, but here’s the good news: KM and AI can address this issue head on—one of our large telco clients has reduced unwarranted handset exchanges by 38% while improving FCR by 19% and call quality by 23% in its contact center.

Dispatch avoidance rate

Depending on the industry, each truck roll or engineer callout for issue resolution can cost from a couple of hundred to a few thousand dollars. With omnichannel AI knowledge deployed in the contact center and on the website, a water utilities client saved ~$5M per year by reducing unnecessary engineer callouts, while improving FCR by 30%!

Final word

Some technologies improve customer service on the margins, some enable incremental improvement, but only a handful truly transform it. Modern knowledge management, infused with AI, clearly falls into the last category. Gain the edge today with knowledge!

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