by N.Balajhi
Knowledge is central to the success of a business. But then knowledge acquired (recruiting people) does not automatically translate into knowledge shared or in use. People, the carriers of knowledge, rarely volunteer to share their knowledge to the greater good of the organisation. Some people (viz., owners) treat this as a betrayal. This kind of thinking hardly helps the situation and knowledge further retreats into the shell.
Knowledge acquired is not knowledge shared and used
Knowledge gained from schools pares in comparison to knowledge gained out of experience. It takes quantum leap with exposure to work environment, people, situations, challenging positions, problem solving, failures etc. A person starts at say K0 and travels upwards to Kn. This gain in knowledge helps people to establish themselves firmly in an organisation and determine their career advancements, emoluments etc. Asking an employee to share his knowledge for the common good, without proper systems to facilitate it, is tantamount to asking him to lower his guards without corresponding security. Just like a company that wants to grow, every individual wants to grow. How many companies are willing and volunteering to share their knowledge for the greater good of the industry or economy and run the risk of blunting their competitive edge? There may not be an agreement to that effect, one may argue, but the case is similar when the context shifts to employees and an organisation. An employee cannot be expected to share knowledge voluntarily if knowledge assisting and supporting systems are not in place.
Knowledge captured is not knowledge used
"We have a KM system in place and recently bought a KM Software to take care of it"
You may have heard those words from many CEOs and managers. The truth is you cannot buy a knowledge management system. KM software is not the be all and end all of a KM system. It is just a part of a KM system. It serves a business mainly as a means of storage and retrieval. To store, something has to be entered. Even in the case of 'explicit knowledge', if completely captured in the software, it has to be used by people.
If making one share knowledge is challenging enough, making another to use that knowledge is equally difficult. Quite a few things like ego (I can do better than him), lack of trust (What if he is wrong?) and lack of training & sophistication (How to use that software? Looks too cluttered. Where is what?) can come in the way of using knowledge in the public domain of an organisation.
Any business organisation that wants to harness its knowledge assets must successfully jump over these two challenging hurdles viz.,
Making people to share knowledge
Making people to use the knowledge shared by others
To prepare to overcome these hurdles read the article 'When people will share and use knowledge'?