Every organization has a unique wealth of knowledge - they just might not know how to use it. Here's how to make the most of your organizational knowledge.
All organizations make use of a wide variety of different resources along the way to achieving their objectives.
Some resources are tangible and material; they might run out, but they can be restocked.
Some - like time - are intangible and finite, but easy enough to track if you have the right systems in place.
However, other resources are intangible but also difficult to define, and thus difficult to track, store, and leverage. Organizational knowledge is a prime example of this.
Properly managed organizational knowledge can unlock incredible benefits, improving operational efficiency, contributing to sustainable workforce development, and long term growth.
But information as a resource is often not paid enough attention, and through neglecting this sphere, companies lose a chance to accelerate their success.
Let’s explore the phenomenon of organizational knowledge in more detail.
Organizational knowledge is all the knowledge of business value contained in an organization. It includes information of different kinds, like intellectual property, manuals and handbooks, lessons learned, technical support, and others.
This information is collected from many individuals who produce, consume, and share it during the work process - so, in a way, it's like a company's collective wisdom, used to support organizational functioning.
Organizational knowledge can exist in different forms. It’s typically categorized into the following types - explicit, tacit, and implicit.
This is the most tangible form of knowledge that covers all data processed, structured, and interpreted, like documents and handbooks, reports and user guides, company policies etc. This type of knowledge is easily articulated and recorded and can be stored in a physical form, so it’s also easily accessible.
To work with explicit knowledge, you can use:
Explicit knowledge is specifically important for the onboarding process, as it helps new employees understand all the processes and procedures. It’s usually straightforward and doesn’t require explanation.
Tacit knowledge refers to abilities and wisdom gained through years of professional experience. This is knowledge of subject matter experts who transmit it through training and mentorship. It’s subjective and physical, and can be applied “here and now”.
However, sharing this type of knowledge can be challenging: what is easy for a person who’s been doing something for years, is not so easy for someone who’s never tried doing it before. Explaining how things work, experienced people often miss something out because it’s obvious to them – and yet, it’s usually not so obvious for the person who’s just learning.
Tacit knowledge gives you a competitive advantage, as it’s often inaccessible. Having people with unique skills and abilities, you create organizational knowledge that is specific for your company.
Even though sharing tacit knowledge is hard, it’s not impossible. You can do the following:
The form of knowledge is mostly intuitive. It can be a natural gift, or it can be acquired in specific situations, often without the learner’s awareness. For example, you can learn how to do a specific task in the best way possible by trying out different methods.
Implicit knowledge can include the behavior of senior employees, understanding of some organizational processes, or even the nature of interactions among employees. It is typically transmitted socially, often through observation. To share it, you can use the following strategies:
You may feel that definitions of tacit and implicit knowledge are the same thing, but they're really not. The best way to explain the difference is to say that while tacit knowledge is gained through professional experience, implicit knowledge refers to the application of tacit knowledge (which, like we said, can be an intuitive process).
Organizational knowledge is a valuable business resource and, as any resource, it can and should be used wisely. Organizational knowledge is power and by utilizing it, a company contributes to its long-term success – and here is why:
The more facts and other data you gather, the better decisions you make. Historical data, input from the team, and subject matter opinions can inspire you to take risks or, on the contrary, be more cautious in a particular situation.
By collecting and sharing information, you can easily help someone who needs it immediately to solve their problem. They do not have to go through the dark.
We often procrastinate because we are afraid to make a mistake. Knowledge, however, helps us feel safer. You can check out how something was done earlier, or ask for advice, or make a research and look up some facts, and that will make you prepared.
Gaps in knowledge lead to repeated mistakes and wasted time. But effective knowledge management helps companies grow. Instead of wasting efforts trying to figure things out, employees spend their time on meaningful work.
This, in turn, reduces the chances of employee turnover and increases employee engagement (because employees are satisfied with their work as it’s well organized,) encourages innovation (because people have room to experiment,) and improves customer satisfaction (because product or service delivery is faster), which helps you build a people-first culture and has a positive impact on your business growth.
When people have information at their fingertips, they can work without interruptions and delays. They do not have to reinvent the wheel, and they can easily avoid any chance of doing the same work twice.
As we can see, a smart utilization of organizational knowledge gives you multiple benefits, helping you transform your workforce – and ignoring it can jeopardize business operations and communication, which are vital for your business success.
To make the most use of organizational knowledge, you’d need to apply a certain approach that would let you wisely accumulate and share it. Such an approach would include four basic steps, such as:
The first thing to do is to start gathering any information that might be useful for your employees. Basically, capturing organizational knowledge means summarizing your team members’ experience. No matter what type that knowledge belongs to, you should extract it so it exists in a more or less tangible form.
Chris Bednar, a records manager at Bain & Company who specializes in information management, offers the following ways of capturing knowledge:
A good interview with a knowledgeable person, according to Bednar, will “remove the fluff and realize a more complete and honest presentation.” By asking the right questions, a good interviewer can get to the core of things, revealing all the important specifics and even reasons behind a person’s decision.
That’s why some companies, like IBM and BASF, have even hired professional journalists to understand what decisions their employees made that led to successful (or unsuccessful) outcomes.
And, of course, any interviewer should remember that while people are typically willing to share their success stories, they will not want to disclose things that went wrong, so it might take a little imagination and patience to build a good conversation.
Here are some tips for a good interview:
The primary source of passing organizational knowledge on is through books or paper documentation – and this is why it makes sense to capture the knowledge by writing it down. You could ask employees to share their knowledge by presenting research or even by writing a story. To make that research as useful and memorable as possible, the writer should:
Experience, complex ideas, or even processes can be explained via video. Unlike written communication, video records can be more complete and dynamic – and, for this reason, memorable. Visual images, sounds, and even gestures can help convey important information in a very accessible manner.
Once you've captured valuable information, it’s important to make sure it’s documented. Documentation refers to maintaining physical records of information, processes, or procedures, either written or visual. Of course, writing research or recording step-by-step instructions, which we mentioned above, already involves documenting – however, in this section, we want to discuss how to make documentation particularly effective.
The best practices for documenting organizational knowledge gained are:
Standardization means consistency. It’s a good idea to create a glossary of key terms and make sure all stakeholders are familiar with them.
By storing all important information in one centralized hub, you enable easy access and prevent possibilities of a potential loss. Besides, it’s much safer to keep information in a particular location, especially classified documents.
Any information can get outdated, so it’s important to track changes.
Organisational knowledge management refers to all the aspects of working with information, including capturing, documenting, and sharing. Since it’s managers who run organizations, it’s their responsibility to create, identify, structure, store, and share information, to ensure team effectiveness.
The key components of knowledge management are:
What are the goals of knowledge management in your organization? What knowledge needs to be extracted and stored for future reference? Are there knowledge gaps that need to be filled? By answering these questions, a manager sets a direction for working with valuable information.
How is organizational knowledge going to be captured, documented, stored, and shared? What systems and tools are you going to use (data analytics tools, cloud-based platforms etc.)? Technologies can help you catalogue, retrieve, and disseminate information in real-time.
Unified processes ensure that information will be managed thoroughly and consistently.
Creating knowledge and utilizing it is not the job of one employee. It should be a theme of your workplace culture, something all the team members contribute to. And it should start from above, as a part of managing human capital, - if top managers encourage information sharing and, what’s even more important, lead by example, it helps create a certain cultural pattern within which people are motivated and rewarded to disseminate knowledge.
Data and knowledge might get outdated and irrelevant. Regular audits and employee feedback can help ensure that they remain up-to-date.
Knowledge sharing involves the dissemination of information among individuals, helping them benefit from each other’s experience and insights. It improves collaboration, makes teams more resilient, and increases creativity. It should be more than just a practice – it should be a company value, emphasized during the onboarding process.
To manage knowledge sharing, you can do the following:
Information is a resource, and even though it’s quite accessible, especially nowadays, we still need to learn how to use it properly. It's important because leveraging organizational knowledge can lead your company to growth and innovation: it will ensure better communication and collaboration, optimize all processes by improving efficiency, and help your team make better decisions.
