Train workers to manage

The single most important asset of any company-knowledge-defies quantification on any balance sheet. When in the hands of those who need information, knowledge can enable productivity. When hidden away, an organization's opportunities can slip away unseen.

Numerous business authors have identified the effective flow and application of knowledge as the key to increasing competitive advantage in today's hypercompetitive environment. To survive, companies must be able to respond to changing customer demands and shift strategies almost monthly. To accomplish this, companies must develop new skills in their workforce and, most important, retain the scarce resource of valuable employees.

Capture 'what you know'

"If we only knew 'what we know'" is the frustrated cry of many corporate leaders and their staffs. Critical knowledge is often locked in the heads of a few people, or scattered in pockets around an organization. And to make matters worse, this type of knowledge is usually not the sort corporate training programs are designed to transfer.

Most traditional training efforts revolve around "explicit" knowledge — information the majority of workers need to know. Explicit knowledge — which includes rules, policies, procedures, and generalized skills — is easily quantified.
The missing piece, however, is the more specialized, highly contextual, experience-based knowledge. It's neither abstract, nor self-contained. Instead, it grows out of a particular activity and context. By definition, tacit knowledge is continually being reconstructed, extremely pertinent to an individual or small group at defined moments in time, and is acquired through observation, language, and participation.

Both types of knowledge are equally important and, at any given time, critical to the success of an organization.

Sharing critical knowledge

In "Corporate Memory," Annie Brooking recognizes that critical knowledge is dependent on business context and it's important to know who possesses this type of knowledge. Her examples of critical knowledge are listed below:

How to do a particular job, such as how to remove the wings from an aircraft or how to clean out a boiler
Who knows what in a company
Corporate history; why the company works the way it does
Particular customer accounts
Geography, country, and its business customs
How to put together a team that can achieve a particular task
How to approach a particular problem that's difficult to solve

Methods of sharing critical knowledge include:

Case studies. These are excellent vehicles for distributing experiential knowledge. Not only do they provide a valuable reference for internal users, but they also can be used in marketing as examples of successful projects.
Mentoring programs. These programs spread the wealth of knowledge possessed by high-level members of an organization to a younger, less experienced work force.
On-the-job experience. There's no better way to learn than by doing. Even a bad experience can teach us a lot about how not to do a particular activity.
Brainstorming. Put together a diverse group of people from various areas of an organization and you have the perfect recipe for the cross-pollination of ideas and experiences.
Internal infrastructure. Intranets and knowledge portals can provide access to important information and allow organizations to "know what they know." Intranets lend themselves well to a range of learning styles and fit well with experiential learning concepts.

Reprinted with permission from Bond BeebeStrategic Solutions, LLC, 7315 Wisconsin Avenue, Suite 200, Bethesda, MD 20814, (301) 272-6090, www.bbcpa.com/tech.htm.

To learn more about knowledge management, contact us about our new Harvard Knowledge Management Package, now available at special prices for MACPA members. You can reach us at (410) 296-6250 or (800) 782-2036.

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