4Knowledge's Sake, 10/12/2023

In every organization there are clusters of employees who hold the blueprints to its day-to-day business processes. They are the company’s librarians and its historians, although you won’t find those titles on their business cards. The inherent problem is that the stockpile of corporate knowledge these individuals possess is typically housed entirely in their minds, or at best on their hard drives. Businesses are therefore faced with this conundrum: what happens when their operating blueprints walk out the door?

In addition to the business continuity risk when critical know-how is lost through employee turnover, there are more immediate ramifications to having a pool of resources who alone understand the minutiae of how a company operates. They are called upon, time and time again, to participate as subject matter experts in projects, deep dives, and to bring new or external resources up to speed on their area of expertise. This would be fine if these individuals did not have important jobs that require their full-time attention as well.

Another seldom quantified impact of having corporate knowledge reside in the minds of key employees is the time it takes to glean and document that knowledge each time it is required. Whiteboarding sessions, current state process mapping, sanity checking: all these take time away from the forward momentum of transformation. There is always the risk that in the rush to understand the current environment, vital information will be overlooked.

Despite these critical implications, fewer than ten percent of global business leaders surveyed by Deloitte felt they had the correct strategies in place to harvest and profit from the power of corporate knowledge.(1) This notwithstanding the fact that the same report lists knowledge management as one of the top three issues influencing a company’s future success.

The reason for this is simple economics. Dedicated knowledge management resources are seen as a cost centre, and one whose inherent value is difficult to quantify. Was bad debt risk impacted when a veteran credit operations manager resigned? Could revenue have been realized more rapidly were it not for the fact that dozens of seasoned employees were tied up in days-long discovery sessions? Would the pitfalls of a transformation project have been foreseen and strategies put in place for their circumvention if the organization simply knew what it knows?

I firmly believe that the answer to all these questions is a resounding yes.

Hardware comes with a manual. Software comes with operating instructions. Business processes need to be catalogued and maintained through a proactive knowledge management practice.

What do you think? Have you seen knowledge management done well, and if so, were the organization and its employees better for it?

(1) Deloitte Insights, The New Knowledge Management, January 29, 2021. https://www2.deloitte.com/xe/en/insights/focus/technology-and-the-future-of-work//organizational-knowledge-management.html