Knowledge Assets In Times Of Change
Tapping into and building knowledge can provide the competitive edge -
Failing to safeguard it can increase in operational cost and risk.
In a service business, how you cultivate, foster and leverage the knowledge, skills and expertise of employees can mean the difference between business success and failure. To gain competitive advantage in a fiercely competitive marketplace requires your company to build & retain knowledge to master your internal business processes. This applies as much to company-specific knowledge and institutional best practices as it does to expertise and ideas drawn from the industry and other professional disciplines.
Mastering corporate knowledge is also more challenging now as many companies plan (or scramble) to reduce or eliminate costs by resizing the organization.
The importance of mining your company’s knowledge is far greater now, in times of falling demand and tightening margins, than it was during the preceding few years when all attention was given to keeping up with demand.
Integrate Knowledge Retention into Your Business Planning
Changes to strategies, operations, business processes, the information supply chain, or the organizational structure will impact your company’s ability to compete. To avoid unintended consequences that could prove disastrous, your business plans must be crafted to build and retain knowledge in the company.
Whether you use a sophisticated change management discipline or simply rely on managers to make change happen in the course of their regular responsibilities, the impact of change on your business can be inordinately high unless you consider the value of knowledge as part of the plan.
Companies pursuing cost-cutting strategies like staff reductions, automation and outsourcing should identify core competencies and protect knowledge within the organization. Otherwise, they risk their long-term ability to anticipate and respond to marketplace threats and opportunities.
Build and Guard Knowledge Assets
Knowledge resides within every corner of your company. Employees develop knowledge through their work experience and build upon the expertise and insights they gain from doing their jobs. It is acquired by employees each day, yet most of it is not documented or accessible in any scalable fashion.
During times of change, successful managers and executives recognize that uncertainty causes resistance to grow and, as this happens, the value of knowledge held by employees becomes more difficult to preserve and share. Depending on how employees perceive the changes and the impact on their position and security, their knowledge may become almost impossible to leverage as part of the larger change management process.
When specific knowledge is identified as vital-to-current-business-operations, it must be transformed from knowledge held by individuals to accessible information that can be shared and used across the organization to support ongoing business. It is critical to successful change management that the expertise be shared and used in a way that ensures value is maintained while expanding learning and development in the organization.
Finally, don’t be discouraged by the multitude of expensive and complicated knowledge management designs. There are many low-cost, low-tech methods to begin collecting and securing knowledge today.
How are you identifying, building and protecting your knowledge assets? Your comments, questions and feedback are welcomed by clicking on the COMMENTS link below.
Failing to safeguard it can increase in operational cost and risk.
In a service business, how you cultivate, foster and leverage the knowledge, skills and expertise of employees can mean the difference between business success and failure. To gain competitive advantage in a fiercely competitive marketplace requires your company to build & retain knowledge to master your internal business processes. This applies as much to company-specific knowledge and institutional best practices as it does to expertise and ideas drawn from the industry and other professional disciplines.
Mastering corporate knowledge is also more challenging now as many companies plan (or scramble) to reduce or eliminate costs by resizing the organization.
The importance of mining your company’s knowledge is far greater now, in times of falling demand and tightening margins, than it was during the preceding few years when all attention was given to keeping up with demand.
Integrate Knowledge Retention into Your Business Planning
Changes to strategies, operations, business processes, the information supply chain, or the organizational structure will impact your company’s ability to compete. To avoid unintended consequences that could prove disastrous, your business plans must be crafted to build and retain knowledge in the company.
Whether you use a sophisticated change management discipline or simply rely on managers to make change happen in the course of their regular responsibilities, the impact of change on your business can be inordinately high unless you consider the value of knowledge as part of the plan.
Companies pursuing cost-cutting strategies like staff reductions, automation and outsourcing should identify core competencies and protect knowledge within the organization. Otherwise, they risk their long-term ability to anticipate and respond to marketplace threats and opportunities.
Build and Guard Knowledge Assets
Knowledge resides within every corner of your company. Employees develop knowledge through their work experience and build upon the expertise and insights they gain from doing their jobs. It is acquired by employees each day, yet most of it is not documented or accessible in any scalable fashion.
During times of change, successful managers and executives recognize that uncertainty causes resistance to grow and, as this happens, the value of knowledge held by employees becomes more difficult to preserve and share. Depending on how employees perceive the changes and the impact on their position and security, their knowledge may become almost impossible to leverage as part of the larger change management process.
When specific knowledge is identified as vital-to-current-business-operations, it must be transformed from knowledge held by individuals to accessible information that can be shared and used across the organization to support ongoing business. It is critical to successful change management that the expertise be shared and used in a way that ensures value is maintained while expanding learning and development in the organization.
Finally, don’t be discouraged by the multitude of expensive and complicated knowledge management designs. There are many low-cost, low-tech methods to begin collecting and securing knowledge today.
How are you identifying, building and protecting your knowledge assets? Your comments, questions and feedback are welcomed by clicking on the COMMENTS link below.
posted by M.A. Fairbank at 11:12 AM
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