Background
Hundreds of people have their company and business knowledge inside their heads. What happens, if employees are absent or leaving your company? That knowledge is not or no longer accessible which
can (and probably will) impact hugely your daily operations.
Also when facing business questions your employees need to ask around inside the company which takes time to get to the answer or solution. Expensive time which can be shorted dramatically, if
the knowledge of your work force is accessible.
Solution
- Creation of knowledge management process and department "handbooks" like for example project delivery excellence and customer support excellence.
- Share this knowledge in so called Share-Learn-Unlock sessions.
Result
-
On-boarding time of new employees can be shorted up to 75%.
- Business continuity is ensured when team members are out of office.
- Knowledge was shared helping other teams to grow.
Getting Started
Knowledge management can turn into an endless project with a jungle of outdated information. When you want to get such a project started here is how I in general proceed.
- Identify which internal software tools are in place already. With which kind of software or online tools are people using in their daily business? If a suitable software/tool is available you
will definitely want to use it since people are already used to it and it is embedded in their daily routine.
- Create a small taskforce and choose one team/one department to start the knowledge management pilot with. You can choose this team/department using several criteria like size and
importance to the business. This small taskforce will be responsible for driving the project.
- Brainstorm on the chapters of the knowledge management handbook. You can use techniques like brainwriting to gather inputs. These inputs you can then group into larger overall topics. In
today's digital world you can use online tools like https://awwapp.com/ for brainwriting. I like to method brainwriting, because it allows also introvert and more quiete people to give their
input.
- Assign within the organisation people who would need to fill in the defined chapters. Get that information out of their brains and have it captured online.
- Implement weekly huddles to track the progress and help people get unstuck.
- Once the pilot is done and it is has been rolled-out and implemented into every team/department ensure that knowledge management is a KPI of everyone in the organisation. Appreciate and
honour the efforts made. Create little contest, apply it on a daily dashbaord of how many knowledge has been made productive. You can go wild and as creative as it can get to embrace this
knowledge culture within your organisation.