The knowledge that your company has internally is incredibly useful if applied and shared among your staff. With this knowledge you can improve your sales and employee satisfaction and reach a wider customer base. But the key is sharing the knowledge sources you have. You do not want to make the mistake of withholding knowledge in your business, or limiting knowledge to only a handful of people. If only three people have knowledge on a certain topics and one quits, and another retires, then you are left with only one. You want to establish efficient ways to share your knowledge within your company.
Knowledge Sharing
You might already conduct staff meetings as a place to share knowledge but you should not limit yourself. Try holding brainstorming sessions where your employees are free to share ways they think the company could improve. Hold an innovative workshop where employees can share ideas about how to improve practice. You should also create a knowledge bank where information is held and steps for administering tasks are held. This can be placed on a private company network where staff can post new suggestions or ideas regularly.
Knowledge Management
Technology, when used to share knowledge within a company, must be carefully managed and channeled. You might want to designate the role of knowledge manager and assign it to a senior manager. You can also offer incentives for employees that post new suggestions in order to encourage knowledge sharing. And of course, never underestimate the importance of training in order to share knowledge within your company.
Creating a Knowledge Strategy
Of course your company will want to get the most from the knowledge you have. And to do this you need to create a strategy for discovering and sharing your knowledge. You should write out the guidelines that can be applied throughout your company. In order for your company to enjoy an effective strategy, your senior managers must commit to the strategy and must familiarize themselves with the benefits associated with it. You can talk to them about how to use the knowledgebase software and how to collect it, and then appoint one manager to be the knowledge manager for your company. When you are creating your knowledge strategy you need to consider the current level of effectiveness your company has with using knowledge. You also need to analyze the internal processes you have for collecting and sharing knowledge. Ask yourself if you currently have successful ways of generating ideas and if your staff is aware of what is going on. Make sure that you integrate this knowledge strategy into your business strategy, because it is a continuing process that should be central to your business goals. It is important that you identify how valuable your knowledge is to your company. Try and figure out what your company can gain financially from your knowledge. You might be able to develop a new product or license intellectual property or even gain a bigger market share. Whatever you decide be sure that it fits within your business plan.
Gaining and Managing Knowledge
There are many ways in which your company can gain and manage new knowledge. Information technology is one of the biggest tools you have at your disposal in this regard. Some systems are time consuming and others are complex but there are sure to be a few that fit within your business and can improve your business without being too time consuming. You might consider a database or a data warehouse. Your company might prefer to use data mining techniques or use reporting and querying tools. Whatever you decide make sure that it fits within your company’s business plan and goals.
Author Bio:
David Miller is an educational researcher, involved in the fields of teaching and online learning. He is associated with prestigious universities and many leading educational research organizations. As an ed-tech veteran, his area of research also includes new technologies for online training such as Online Survey Software. Currently David is experimenting with flipped classroom models and ProProfs.
