A lot of organizations have an approach for identifying and recording lessons discovered, probably as element of a post-project evaluation or related method. Unfortunately, lessons learned reports have a tendency to end up on a shelf gathering dust, or lost in the un-chartered corner of a fileserver somewhere. Let’s get actual. How numerous persons will actually trawl diligently via a quantity of lessons learned documents in order to glean some important point? The reality is, if you can motivate personnel to initiate any sort of “studying prior to performing” activity, then you?re undertaking fairly well.
Keep in mind the last time you packed your bag in preparation for a business trip?
All those things you need to don’t forget? tickets, passport, currency, itinerary, contact, driving license, power adaptor, Ipod?
We handle to bear in mind the items we will need for our organization trips with out going through every past suitcase-packing knowledge in our minds, one particular by a single. Somehow, we sustain a meta-level list in our memories. And yet, when it comes to lessons learned, we anticipate people in our organizations to work thought a pile of lessons learned reports in the hope that a crucial insight will leap out at them?
We will need to discover approaches to package expertise into quickly accessible “knowledge assets” – structured with a buyer in mind.
The methods below are taken from the finest-selling fieldbook “Understanding to Fly – Sensible understanding management from leading and mastering organisations”, written by Chris Collison and Geoff Parcell. They never require sophisticated, bespoke technologies just a wilingness to believe-via and structure what has been learned.
1. Identify a client for this understanding. Have a clear customer – current or future – in mind when taking into consideration the creation of a information asset.
2. Get clear what your knowledge asset is really about. What is the scope of your information asset? A information asset desires to cover a distinct region of organization activity.
three. Determine a community of practice relating to this subject. The neighborhood will be the source of the understanding initially, the users of the information in quick term, and the people today who have an on-going duty for validating the future contents of in the information asset. This is crucial ? or there is a genuine risk that you will finish up with an electronic time capsule – a snapshot in time of the way points applied to be done – rather than the current, prized know-how in your organisation.
4. Collate any existing material upon which you can base your knowledge asset and look for general recommendations. Supply some context so that men and women can comprehend the purpose and relevance of the expertise asset. Are there common guidelines that you can distil out of this material?
5. Develop a checklist illustrated with examples and stories. The checklist must inform the user of the knowledge asset:
“What are the questions I will need to ask myself?”
“What are the actions that I want to take?”
Illustrate it with examples, stories, photos, digital photographs, models, quotes, video and audio clips if probable.
six. Contain Knowledge Management System to persons. Produce a hyperlink to the person’s individual home page or e-mail address wherever you mention them in the text. Contain a list of all the people today with any connection with the content. Use thumbnail photographs if you have them readily available.
7.Validate the Suggestions Circulate the guidelines around the community again, and ask “Do the guidelines accurately reflect your understanding and practical experience?” “Do you have anything to add?”
eight. Publish the know-how asset. Shop the understanding in a space where it can be accessed by its community. Normally this will imply the organization intranet.
9. Initiate a feedback and ownership method. Encourage feedback from customers, so that they pick up and do away with any invalid recommendations. Instil a sense of obligation that “if you use it, then you ought to add to it”.
Over time, you will create up a series of information assets which relate to the crucial practices in your organisation ? the regions which can bring competitive benefit. The creation of these tangible information assets gives a concentrate for the communities of practice linked with each and every one particular, and eventually will give credibility to your know-how management efforts.