Creating a Knowledge Sharing Culture

Ideas on Knowledge sharing culture

Knowledge sharing is the easy passing of information for the greater good of an organization. This prevents creation of knowledge silos: a few individuals who know and the rest do not. An organization with a knowledge sharing culture knowledge is available to everyone, no matter what their role in the organization is. Everyone shares knowledge formally and informally.

Formal

• Integrate colloquiums in institutional calendar
• Integrate tea times within working schedules
• Include knowledge shared as a performance index
• Discourage closed offices and design open (wall-less) offices to allow interactions
• Require reporting through KM procedures
• Integrate Mentorship and coaching programme with working schedules (provide time and resources for it)
• Develop a team awarding system
• Require proof of knowledge sharing and mentorship for promotion
• Establish an institutional journal and a magazine
• Require every project have a knowledge management plan that guides on knowledge identification, collection, storage, use and sharing before, during and after the project life.
• Require every thematic area and research programmes identify and document lessons learnt, success stories and good practices at least once a year.
• Require deposit of all publications to Library for sharing within and without
• Require deposit of all data and research protocols to KM.
• Require signing an agreement form that all knowledge and data created belongs to KEFRI and shall be deposited to KM Office before release of funds for project/work package/employment.
• Community Information Centers
  • To host demonstration of technologies
  • To conduct translation of technologies and knowledge from official English to local/common languages
  • To host production unit for knowledge i.e. publishing and printing unit, video/audio development unit etc
• Develop a dissemination plaform for all technologies and knowledge and knowledge artfacts
  • Develop ICT system for collection, storage and access of the technology
  • Training of stakeholders on how to participate in collection, storage and access.
• Indigenous Forest Knowledge/Technologies: Identify; Collect; Store; Share; Policy development; IPR; Preservation
• Data management: Identify needs; Identigy gaps; Develop methodologies of filling up the gaps; Developing a policy on collection, storage and preservation; Sharing; Developing appropriate IPR regime
• Establishing an online newsletter and journal
  • Developing a policy on the publications
  • Establishing a system for hosting them
  • Awareness creation

Informal

• Encourage sharing stories on blogs and social media
• Encourage direct horizontal and vertical interactions without requiring protocol
• Encourage informal meetings within and without the institutions
• Provide open café with free tea/coffee for informal meetings

Benefits of Knowledge Sharing within an Organization

1. Build collective knowledge

The collective knowledge of a company can be enormous, however it has limited value unless the knowledge is shared. It’s always encouraging when an individual cracks a problem or improves a process. However, if that same problem is plaguing an entire team and the knowledge isn’t shared, the success is limited.

2. Retain knowledge

Today’s workforce is increasingly transient, often moving from one job to the next every few years. If these employees don’t effectively knowledge share at work, their explicit and tacit knowledge will leave the company when they do.

Add to this the large number of baby boomers who are currently reaching retirement age. These individuals are often long-standing employees and executives, with a wealth of irreplaceable knowledge. If this resides only within their own minds, an organization’s collective knowledge will be crippled by their departure.

3. Increase innovation

As indicated in David Gurteen’s “know-why” principle, the more knowledgeable individuals are, the more they’ll be able to innovate. The value of this cannot be overlooked in today’s fast-paced business world. A knowledgeable, innovative, and nimble team will quickly separate themselves from the pack.

4. Stay abreast of changes

As humankind makes new developments and discoveries, old processes and approaches often become redundant. New techniques replace old ones and knowledge that was once pertinent becomes irrelevant. In this way, a lot of knowledge has a shelf-life. To stay in the game, organizations and individuals need to make the most of the knowledge they have—sharing and absorbing it readily.

5. Help employees feel valued

Creating an environment where knowledge sharing is encouraged helps individuals feel valued and heard. When a person is able to give back and contribute to collective knowledge, they can see how their work is truly making a difference. By giving people a stake in the company in this way, not only do you increase their investment in the collective knowledge and improve employee engagement, you make them feel more appreciated as an individual.

6. Enable better and faster decision making

When customers are facing problems or you have to solve an internal issue, analyze trends, understand competition or plan new strategies, you tend to look for information and resources in order to support such activities. Information overload can make this process difficult.

However, using knowledge again and again in repositories allows decisions to be based on the actual experiences of the members in your organization. All these tasks can be performed efficiently if it’s easy to find what you need and, most importantly, when you need it

7. Make the organization’s best problem-solving experiences reusable

Once you develop an effective solution to an issue and it turns out to be the best one so far, it allows members of your organization to use it in all future situations. Avoiding redundant effort by managing knowledge properly, saves a lot of time and budget – not to mention that it can significantly streamline work and keep employees’ morale up.

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Submited by VictorKamau on 12 Aug 2020