Policies and procedures for knowledge capture

The words 'knowledge capture'conjure up some images of restraint and painful extraction. It does not have to be like that. Capturing knowledge can be a painless system of sharing ideas and remedies for business challenges.

There are three parts to the process of knowledge capture -

1. Acknowledging that most business knowledge is created in the heads of employees, not just the managers'
2. Facilitating employees to recognise the value of their knowledge and to share it in a retrievable system
3. Getting over the psychological barrier of employees seeing their knowledge as a bargaining point that elevates their personal worth

Bottom-up knowledge drain

Peter Dorfman, president and founder of Knowledge Farm, a content management consultant, says: "Top-down knowledge management has had limited success. KM will begin to show significant ROIs when the process is inverted. Centralized knowledge administration clearly produces higher-value knowledge - but centralized authoring retards growth."

What Peter is saying is that management should design the system to encourage input from employees, because it is employees who feed in (or 'author') the knowledge.

Grassroots driven

Although managers may be the people who accumulate business information into reports for the CEO or Board, the greatest value from knowledge capture is through its application at the grassroots of the company - right where it is applied. Procedures generated by employees, with ratification by other employees and managers, is far more likely to drive production improvement than procedures handed to them as an edict 'from above'.

Building up pride

The other benefit of a bottom-up system of knowledge capture is that the ideas usually work. Procedures to run a machine are honed from a wealth of knowledge about how this machine operates in real time, right here on this floor, not as it was expected to run when set up in the testing laboratory.

Operators gain a sense of pride in being able to define how 'their' machine must be treated. By opening the knowledge capture to ratification by their peers, operators are likely to strive for best practice. Build-in key performance/production indicators and human nature will dictate that the production line will want to improve on the numbers.

Pick the best for your business

Knowledge capture is not just about numbers and information; it is about people sharing ideas. To make it work you have to deal with the people first and then create a mechanism for them to do that sharing. Do not let a proprietary system impose an unsuitable structure on your knowledge capture. Consider whether a customised solution might better suit your needs.

Do not think that once you have done the business over for knowledge capture that the job is done. Knowledge is always changing and businesses have to grow from new knowledge. Make sure the knowledge capture system you have designed allows for amendments and expansion. Encourage a culture that recognises knowledge is never static, and that employees are expected to keep contributing because their ideas ARE valuable.

Click here to find out how a troubleshooting database can become a dynamic tool to leverage production.

Edutech KM Ltd

PO Box 25-241, Victoria Street, Christchurch;
phone: 64-3-337-0234
fax: 64-3-337-0235
info@edutechkm.com
Copyright to Edutech KM Ltd 2008 Privacy Statement