Knowledge Management in Action

Procrastination can and does occur when you feel that you do not know enough about a subject. You pretend to do research. You spend hours aimlessly surfing the net, reading books and journal articles when you could quite simply ask for clarification. Why we don't comes down to a couple of simple things:

Embarrasment:

• We may feel that we should know the answer to the question so fear asking other people because we feel we may be ridiculed.
• We didn't pay attention in the meeting, and admitting that would mean we would lose face in front our colleagues and supervisors.
• We don't know who to ask, so we stumble around in the vain hope someone will ask what it is we are looking for and can offer some suggestions.

And it is the last point that we will be looking at today: Knowledge Management.  

There are many ways of looking at what knowledge is.  The two most common ways are:
Tacit – this refers to knowledge that resides in a person’s mind and can include culture and ‘ways of doing things’
Explicit – this is often referred to as knowledge that has been recorded onto a variety of formats including electronic and paper, and can include items such as procedures and other documents, images, film and video clips.

Whilst a person’s tacit knowledge - the ‘ways of doing things’ can be captured as ‘procedures’ it does not and cannot capture the information and knowledge a person holds in their mind, if that person does not want to share it.  Some people see knowledge as power and will do everything they can to make sure that the information they possess will not be passed on to others who might benefit from it.  If this sounds a little “petty” then consider an organisation or a person within an organisation who has taken the credit for someone else’s work, unfortunately in today’s society this is a common occurrence, and the question I have for you is – would you be willing to share information with a colleague who has passed your information off as their own? I would hazard a guess that you wouldn’t, after all you are only human. 

But what makes a Knowledge Manager? The top skills set for being a knowledge manager are:

• Business awareness (Including – global business awareness).
• Communication.
• IT skills/literacy.
• KM awareness/ experience/ understanding.
• Strategic awareness/ management/ planning.
• Information management skills.
• Leadership.
• Change management.
• Content awareness.
• People management.
• Project management.
• Time management

But why is this important? Well, the baby boomers will be thinking about retiring in the not too distant future, assuming they haven't already cashed in their share options, bought their RV and are spending their kids inheritance.

Questions to ponder:

• Do you have the necessary skills to replace them when the time comes?
• How long will it take you to gain the skills you need to take over when they do decide to hang up their briefcases?
• What are you waiting for?

As all professional athletes use coaches in order to improve their games, most other people think their days of reading and learning stop the minute they leave university. How wrong can you be? Everyone has something to share with you, everyone has a different set of life experiences they bring to the work place. As a knowledge manager you need to be able to disseminate that information and you do that by applying the information you receive to your situation and circumstances - only then does it become knowledge.

So - what are you waiting for? If you don't take the steps today, when are you going to take them? And if you don't know what steps you need to take - why not ask.