Knowledge management has often been used to solve organizational knowledge issues, even before social media tools have arrived adding additional power. This interesting information came from IHS Engineering in their article, “Making Knowledge Management a Part of Your Organization’s Culture.”
In organizations concerned with innovation and knowledge-based products and services—often referred to as knowledge organizations—much of the knowledge required to innovate or maintain products is institutional knowledge residing in employees’ minds. What happens when these workers leave the company? This institutional knowledge leaves with them.
But this doesn’t have to occur. Poorly organized resources often end up in a poorly managed file system or siloed into a database that isn’t well-known or accessible.
Organizations that desire to retain knowledge and foster innovation must effect a cultural change to become a learning organization. The key is to modify the organization’s culture into one that promotes sharing, learning and the interconnection vs. the traditional silo mentality that power is knowledge and it is all a turf war.
Melody K. Smith
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