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Further
Reading ...
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9 Ways To Make Your Website More Presentable - Sanjay Johari
Your website works as your spokesperson presenting the message you wish to convey. Thinking in terms of this analogy often helps you to look at your website from a different angle and make visitor-friendly changes. Imagine a situation - you...
Flipping Fixers: Using Transformation Psychology for Top Dollar - Jeanette Joy Fisher
Satisfying and lucrative real estate investment depends upon your correct assessment of profit potential, of course, but your ultimate success depends on your ability to transform a fixer into a dollhouse. The renovation process involves physical...
Short Selling Strategies - William Cate
Short Selling Strategies Two Dozen Types of Short Sales By William Cate Published August 2002 [http://home.earthlink.net/~beowulfinvestments/] [http://home.earthlink.net/~beowulfinvestments/globalvillageinvestmentclubwelcome/] There are dozens of...
How to Meet Quality Standards with ISO 9001 - Chris Anderson
In today’s hectic business environment, it is vital that we are all on the same page, right? But how do we know if we meet those standards? Business owners and executives can avoid the uncertainty, and that’s where ISO 9001 certification comes in....
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Knowledge Management made Simple
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Written By:
David Brewster
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'Knowledge Management' is Big and Now. The wide coverage of 'KM' in the management literature could easily give you the impression that it is a 'big business' issue requiring expensive, technology-based solutions. In truth, knowledge management is a new name for an old challenge facing businesses large and small.
So what is 'Knowledge Management' and what are its implications for people in smaller businesses?
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To understand 'knowledge', we need first to define its off-sider, 'information'. Information, simply put, is anything that has been documented. Books, manuals, the world wide web, databases, software help files - all these contain information. Information is tangible, but it requires conscious effort to access it.
Knowledge, by contrast, is information that has been embedded in our minds and which can be drawn on virtually instantly. Knowledge gives us the capacity to act - without reference to external information.
Lets look at gardening as an example.
There is limitless information out there designed to make green-thumbs of us. But 'knowing' how to be a good gardener cannot come from a book. It comes from a combination of hands-on experience, information and drawing on the knowledge of others.
Diagnosing the problem with the sick plant in the back corner can be a bit like negotiating a maze. Information gives us lots of potential paths to follow, and may get us there in the end, but we will encounter a number of dead-ends along the way. Knowledge gives us the ability to ignore the false paths and take the shortest route to the answer.
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For business, - continued below ...
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continued ...
the challenge of 'Knowledge Management' is all about trying to capture the knowledge of our people and embed it within our organisation. This reduces reliance on key individuals and makes the business more 'scalable'. It also saves time and effort as identical problems aren't solved and re-solved over and over again.
Knowledge sharing is the ultimate 'win-win'. No matter how many times we share our knowledge with others, we still get to keep it for ourselves.
This doesn't make knowledge management easy to do. There are no short-cuts. It takes time and effort. (That's why apprenticeships take three or four years.)
While technology may have a role to play in enhancing Knowledge Management, it is ultimately a people issue. It needs trust, an open environment and plenty of direct interaction. It needs forums for people to share their experiences and perspectives.
The growth of the Knowledge Management industry has occurred in part because organisations are realising that the knowledge of their people makes up a large part their value. The starting point is creation of the time, space and environment for knowledge sharing to happen. It may be no more than a loosely structured version of Friday afternoon drinks.
(For further reading and five thoughts on how to promote knowledge sharing, visit http://www.businesssimplification.com.au/km.htm)
© David Brewster, February 2002
About the Author
David Brewster runs 'Business Simplification' and writes, talks and coaches on reducing the complexity of business and achieving greater clarity and effectiveness
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| _Additional Resources ... |
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Your E-Business Strategy: Is It Love ... Or Fear? - Steve Shaw
I read recently that every human thought originates from either love or fear. The more I thought about it, the more true it became. I began to apply it to business - after all, every business success or failure originates ultimately from human...
Don't Wait For The Perfect Situation To Pay Down Your Debt. - David Wilding
The number one reason people don’t get out of debt is they don’t try. This may apply to you. You want to, but never seem to do it. You put it off for whatever reason. You want to wait for your life to be just right before you make the attempt....
No-Holds-Barred Conversations with Dan Lok - Part 2 - Dan Lok
Question: How to deal with ultra skeptical offline or be it Internet surfers in order to reassure them and get them to happily open up their wallets? I like that “happily open up their wallets”! Your customer should be happy to open his/her...
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