This post is on the TWB Corporate Blog as well as the TWB Alumni Blog:

To possess knowledge an organization must have internal and external information exploitation capabilities. Internal knowledge capabilities can be defined as the collection of technology mechanisms that enable an organization to process information for decision-making. External knowledge capabilities are the collection of technology mechanisms that enable an organization to access and/or acquire information from outside its bounds to sense changes in its environment.

The challenge of managing knowledge across your team

It is essential for companies to capture the knowledge of employees because of numerous reasons: mobility, shifts, absences, retirements, etc. Concentrating only on electronic content generated by employees (such as presentations, reports, and processes) focuses on individual pieces of information only. Therefore, managers also need to better understand the invisible and yet key relationships that exist outside of the official organization chart. It is necessary to determine what issues existed with the way knowledge is currently generated, shared, moved, and managed within the organization. When an organization’s performance is heavily reliant on knowledge work then knowledge management is pivotal. Knowledge Management is not about managing or organizing books or journals, searching the Internet for clients or arranging for the circulation of materials. It is enhancing the use of organizational knowledge through sound practices of knowledge management and organizational learning.

The Process of Knowledge Management

Typically the knowledge management process involves:

• Capture

• Organization and Storage

• Distribution or, Sharing

• Application or Leverage

Surprising Old School Lessons in Reducing Knowledge Loss

In today’s job market, organizations have come to realize the impact of knowledge loss. More and more of their best employees leave every day. Several methods of reducing knowledge loss have been in practice for some time in the business world. A few of these methods are described below:

• Don’t let your best people leave. This seems like an obvious answer to this problem, yet it is the one that can be easily overlooked. The easiest way to reduce knowledge loss is to avoid losing it in the first place. By retaining people that have the knowledge, organizations can eliminate this. This can be achieved by offering adequate compensation, providing alternate career paths, transitioning an employee to a new position or offering job rotation to enhance skills and industry experience.
• Mentoring and Coaching. Mentoring and Coaching have become very popular methods of training and knowledge transfer in recent years. By matching new or inexperienced employees with more experienced senior personnel, the intangible, tacit knowledge of the organization can be passed on effectively.
• Sharing Best Practices. The sharing and use of best practices has become a staple of successful companies. The ability to use tested and proven knowledge of other organizations has helped others make decisions and improvements with greater speed and reliability. The goal is to begin sharing what works to generate new ideas and to benefit from the successes of others.
• Sharing Lessons Learned. Similar to mentoring and coaching, sharing lessons learned allows organizations to tap the experiential knowledge of its members. Lessons learned are simply statements by individuals or teams, identifying knowledge gained. They are merely opinions on cause and effect. Typically, lessons learned are shared in a larger group setting as opposed to one-on-one sessions between mentor and protégé.
• Documentation. This is likely to be the most tedious method of reducing knowledge loss. Tracking and maintaining information used in decision-making can help an organization retain the knowledge of the decision-maker. Unfortunately, it is easy to neglect documentation, but when compared to the time it takes to rediscover knowledge the amount of time it takes to document a situation becomes insignificant. Documentation needs to be updated and reviewed frequently in a dynamic and fast-paced environment with multiple authors.

Types of Knowledge Organizations

Depending on its proportion of internal and external knowledge capabilities, companies sort into one of four categories.

• A bystander - a company that is an observer of the industry. The firm has low external and internal knowledge capabilities, meaning that it neither collects nor processes much information about the industry.

• An information processor - a company that has good internal knowledge capabilities but lacks adequate external knowledge capabilities. It is constrained by inadequate information from its external environment.

• An information collector - a company with the opposite capabilities. Here the company has good external knowledge capabilities, meaning that it can access and acquire large amounts of information from its external environment; however, it cannot adequately utilize information to gain a competitive edge as it lacks the adequate internal capabilities to process and exploit the information.
• A knowledge power company - a company that has good internal and external knowledge capabilities, or possess knowledge power. It has an adequate internal information processing architecture coupled with good external information collection mechanisms, which work with one another to provide the company with superior competitive advantages.

 Next we’ll see the fundamental structure of the Knowledge Management process