August 3rd, 2009
Organizational knowledge
Organizations have many moving parts. There are groups focused on finance, sales, production, research and the like. Over time each of them face issues and develop responses. How effective the responses are tend to define how successful they are in addressing their mission. Unfortunately, in many organizations that knowledge is somewhat like what the Las Vegas advertisements say - “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.” Organizational memory is often overlooked during the mad dash to address issues, create products or services.
How can organizations find ways to store data and information in ways that allow busy people to find what they need and use it again without also requiring them to drop what they’re doing, spend hours searching and in the end, cause them to decide its better to “waste the time” to develop a new approach rather than trying to learn from the past.
One of the many challenges is that data and information are stored in many different places. Here are a few:
- Calendar entries may contain contact names, telephone numbers, email address and important tidbits about major decisions
- Documents in many different formats might contain historical information that can be used to understand many things including the flow of product creation or the development and resolution of a customer issue
- Email messages sent to product groups, management teams and the like would help shine a light on when and how decisions were made. These messages might also point out which teams or individuals made commitments allowing management to determine if they lived up to their collective word or not. Privacy laws in some places can complicate organizational knowledge sharing a great deal.
- Presentation materials, also in many different formats, might contain product or service information that might explain the selection of a specific product or service. It might also help someone understand how decisions were made within the company.
Another challenge is making sure everyone knows about this repository, knows how to use it and is incented in some way to share what they know.
While I was with Open-Xchange, I had the experience of working with a system, cleverly named “Open-Xchange” that had a feature called “InfoStore.” This tool made it possible to find and use information in many, many different formats and yet access to this information was tightly controlled through the use of organization, group and individual access rights. After having the chance to play with their newest, hosted version of the software, I can see that the folks over there have improved the tool a great deal since I moved on to the Kusnetzky Group.
What does your organization do to collect organizational knowledge and wisdom, store it and then make it available to the appropriate people. What tools are you using? Who set it up? How is it being funded? How are people incented to take part in this project?
Daniel Kusnetzky is a member of the senior management team of The 451 Group. He is responsible for research and publications on a broad array of technology topics. He examines emerging technology trends, vendor strategies, research and development issues, and end-user integration requirements. You can follow Dan on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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