All entries for Friday 24 April 2009

Tacit to explicit

One of the greatest challenges of any KM policy is how to transform all the huge amount of tacit knowledge that is part of an organisation in explicit knowledge. People want write manuals or fill in systems. The most practical way to do that is through communities of practise or creating in-house training. Based on what I have seen over this years, if a company wants to to somehow make people write down or fill useful information of some sort that has to be connected with some bigger aspect (some prize or being considered a natural part of some other activity). A few years ago we had a structure to allow all projects conducted on the company to leave some kind of information. We managed to have over one hundred projects properly completed on our database. Quite a good number. We did that by establishing that in order to be appreciated over one recognition program we had, all information had to be filled. Some other people also filled because they believed on the idea (and we set example, doing the same on the projects conducted by us). The problem, looking back, was how useful, how frequently those information was used and valued on other initiatives.

But the challenge of making people share and use the available knowledge by turning tacit to explicit persists.

: 24 Apr 2009 22:34 |  Tags: Explicit Kbam Knowledge Management Tacit |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Knowledge Audit

Have you ever performed a knowledge audit on yourself? That is a concept I came accross while working on the mini-project for KBAM. Like many other concepts, is common sense the idea that I should think and know about what I should know. But have you ever done it consciously? Well, for all of us MBE students the answer is yes. At least it should be because every time we are doing a mind map and planning an PMA or the project we are doing some kind of Knowledge Audit. We are identifying what we know, what we need to know and how to do it.

BEsides that, recently I did a different and more complex version of the Knowledge Audit. I was talking to some former colleagues and to some people from the company I worked for and they enquired me if and when I was returning. I knew this question would come so before hand I gave some thought to the the question. And one of the things that came to my mind is that in order to know that, I needed to know what I wanted, what I was looking for. That was something I already knew (see the entry about my personal vision and mission for that answer). Them what I had to think was, what do I needed, what was missing, what were my improving points in order to get to this level. That was basically a knowledge audit with a slightly different connotation. What I needed to have and know here was more closely related to professional experience (a form of knowledge) them to formal academic knowledge.

I think constantly performir personal, honest, realistic audits is a valuable experience to any human being. And I`m not talking about academic or professional experience, more important them all that is making a personal audit, reflecting were I am, were I d like to be and what I need to get there as a human being. 

: 24 Apr 2009 04:38 |  Tags: Analysis Audit Gap Kbam Knowledge Mbe |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem