An economical headstart to maximize your ROI on Knowledge Management
Are you considering investing in Knowledge Management (KM) tools and software for the immense benefits it offers to your organization? Sadly, it's not a step in the right direction if your employees and teams resist knowledge coordination in day-to-day operations.
Imagine expecting a non-swimmer to navigate the vast ocean with just a life jacket. Preposterous right? An organizational culture devoid of knowledge coordination disrupts organic knowledge sharing and cannot utilize KM tools to their full potential.
A shared-learning culture improves knowledge coordination to enable the mere tool which then executes the business process that you envisioned.
Smart businesses have figured it out. So, even when the pandemic was busy swallowing businesses, a PWC survey found that chief human resources continue to allot 44% of their workforce priorities to maintaining organizational culture.
But, it is never too late to transform. These crucial yet simple steps will boost knowledge coordination at the workplace and prime your employees towards embracing the KM tools your business needs.
Understand what is your knowledge
Obtain a solid understanding of all the business processes to identify what is the 'knowledge' of your organization. What are the things that must be created, stored, and retrieved with ease, and what are the things that do not belong in your records?
Identifying these knowledge clusters will provide you with an overview of your repository and sharing patterns akin to a dark maze that needs illumination. The devil will always be in the details, like the lousily kept archive, broken coordination mechanisms, long-overdue administrative impasses, inefficient communication platform, etc. But you will realize that a scattershot approach to knowledge coordination is at the heart of frequently arising bottlenecks.
Think of this exercise as a due diligence of your business to reveal knowledge gaps that must be bridged for all stakeholders to have an easy yet productive day at work.
Identify the problem
Once you have managed to organize the missing links, it is now time to prioritize and start troubleshooting. A decent SWOT analysis will guide you in designing an actionable plan.
Take the bull by the horns and revamp faulty and outdated processes. Your employees tackle multiple frustrations like duplicate efforts, compromised competitiveness, and deteriorating customer experience, which sabotage your corporate morale.
While identifying specific knowledge gaps you might also discover hidden pressure points, often found during CRM execution, that can be made more intuitive using specialized KM software. There are a plethora of industry-specific options, designed to simplify processes like training, project management, CRM, library/archive, company Wiki, etc. Indulge in a responsible and informed buying experience to find what speaks best to your organizational needs.
Bring in the big guns
If you keep topmost management aloof of business constrictions it won’t pay off in the long run. Especially when it is blocking a mindset shift, imperative to the workplace.
Share solutions, insights, and your vision of a knowledge coordinated workspace, across the boardroom. Aligning senior management with your plan for a shared learning culture will alert everyone towards upcoming change.
Be vocal about its benefits
Your employees will be receptive and even excited about knowledge sharing when you show what’s in it for them. Communicate clearly that the benefits of company-wide shared learning are there to aid employees first. Profits only accrue over time as a consequence of business running like clockwork.
Show how they can strike a work-life balance by redirecting their misplaced efforts for crucial tasks. For example, help the support staff visualize serener days powered by a collective CRM space. They would not have to face the wrath of a disgruntled customer on hold for 15 mins, while painfully scouring through lengthy documents to find a small piece of information.
Ritualize documentation
Once your team gets habituated with documenting everything, from daily operations, customer queries to how bland the coffee was that morning, you can use those details to implement solutions throughout the day.
And yes, don’t forget to replace that old coffee machine and treat your employees with an espresso shot to die for every morning.
Willingness to share
Step into their shoes, realize how hard it is to share their mojo with other team members who were effectively competitors until recently. Unless you can replace competition with collaboration, any tool you hope to fix things will utterly fail and disappoint you.
Great leaders are resourceful facilitators with the ability to identify and unite unique skills and characteristics to achieve their vision. This can be achieved by critically examining hierarchy and workflows in an organization.
Often employees are unintentionally pitted against each other because of restricted access to knowledge across various departments. They are left to stumble upon or worse, dig out their own solutions for problems that have been addressed by other employees in the past. These short-lived victories help them stand out at the cost of creativity and billable hours. Still, they are too valuable to be shared with other co-workers. Eventually, rampant knowledge hoarding becomes a chronic ailment for an organization.
Bring visible changes by starting small, like making voluntary expert forums for employees to contribute on various subjects to be documented for practice and analysis. Cross-departmental/functional assignments must be encouraged for experimenting on new projects and to learn from the best minds of various departments. Casual forums to share best practices can also be initiated to engage and bring the best out of employees. Such platforms will soon embed cooperation and responsiveness into the very fabric of your team.
Always keep the room dignified
Welcome constructive criticism while being wary of tricky situations. Employees not used to open and transparent ways of working might struggle initially when their work is suddenly open to multiple feedbacks, interpretations, and opinions.
Trampling on the psychological safety of vulnerable knowledge sharers can create an irreparable creative echo chamber. Thus, it is important to nurture an environment where people are not penalized for unpopular ideas and the aura is respectable, professional, and dignified.
Give credit where credit is due
It is not always about being paid, but about being valued.
Reward employees for sharing, collaborating, and guiding their coworkers. Recognize their efforts by vocal announcements or creative tokens of appreciation, etc.
I knew a tech startup client that designed an ingenious Gratitude Portal for their intranet, to incentivize workspace altruism. Employees used it extensively for giving shout-outs, via points awarded to colleagues who helped them. This collegiality dashboard visible to all, inspired a humanizing “we-feeling” culture.
Build a system where individual contributions do not get lost under profit margins and client scores. For example, if Jack from sales supported Ana from marketing in building an advertising campaign for the next product launch, then be sure to congratulate Jack. You know the campaign would not be a success without him sharing his consumer insights and statistics.
Hiring Experts
Finally, do not ignore the professionals who know the trick of the trade, i.e. converting individual knowledge to organizational knowledge.
Depending on the bulk of knowledge that needs managing, you must hire experts who will assume the responsibilities of making, maintaining, and updating your knowledge base that is always accessible, authentic, usable, and relevant. The last thing you need is a blame-shifting mess that might arise merely because inexperienced personnel mismanaged or worse, lost vital knowledge.
You and your customers will revel in this rich transition as it will refine your team’s overall adaptability and decision-making. Acquiring all soft skills pivotal to knowledge coordination, your organization’s collective creativity will achieve new heights with or without any KM tool you introduce.