We recently asked KMI Instructor John Hovell why Knowledge Managers should practice Organization Development (OD) methods for a story we are doing, and he provided us with 
a new "Top 10" list...

FYI: John and Dr. Sharon Varney are teaching our next OD Certification class, Mar 18-20.  Details here...

10: Employee engagement continues to be a hot topic for KM. OD offers numerous tools and approaches to deeply understand what engaged individuals, groups and teams in your organization can look like.

9: KM and information management are so often blurred together and confused. OD brings techniques to “bracket” and “set boundaries” and increase clarity. 

8: Don’t do KM for the sake of doing KM, do KM to improve an organizational situation. OD does the deeper dive to understand what’s underneath the org situation. 

7: We talk about culture in KM quite a bit - in OD we often reframe "culture" as "group dynamic" and then work with the similarities and differences to shift the culture. 

6: KM often aims for organizational learning - OD looks at group dynamics that are enabling and disabling org learning. 

5: KM is interested in improving processes, OD deeply studies why the processes are the way they are.

4: It's often hard to get buy-in for KM.  OD offers tools to reframe buy-in and learn how to intervene with the resistance to move KM forward. 

3: KM desires improved collaboration - KM techniques can help - OD techniques can get underneath what's truly enabling or blocking collaboration.
 
2: KM is often about changing the organization, OD over-arches change management even more directly than km does.

1: You are the most untapped source of knowledge - OD will offer "use of self" also known as "self as an instrument."
 

It’s a relatively well-understood concept that the more knowledge someone has, the better they can perform. This idea is especially true in the workplace. The professional knowledge an employee has will have a direct impact on their role and performance within the company.

If an employee or even multiple team members have knowledge gaps, this can lead to inefficiency, less productivity, and overall lower job performance. In some cases, knowledge gaps can lead to mistakes
that end up costing the company a lot of money.

Knowledge management practices, however, help employers stay on top of discrepancies between what their employees know and what they need to know or learn to help the company succeed. By identifying these gaps quickly, it can help keep things in the workplace running seamlessly and avoid any costly mistakes made due to a lack of knowledge. 

Why Knowledge Management is Important

While your company might go through a rigorous hiring process to ensure you are bringing on well-trained and experienced employees suited to the job, it’s natural for knowledge gaps to form over time. This is especially true today with our rapidly advancing technologies. It’s common for an employee to have the skills they need one day and be behind the next.

This isn’t the employee’s fault, however, and should not be treated as such. Instead, it’s the company’s job to ensure their employees have the opportunities they need to continue learning and growing so they can succeed in their role and also help the company grow.

A company is only as good as its employees. So if you want your company to succeed then you must make the effort to enable your employees to succeed as well, which means helping them fill knowledge gaps as they arise.

Knowledge management is important because it improves productivity and employee experiences, and it helps companies learn from their past mistakes so they can do better moving forward. In contrast, knowledge decay can hamper innovation and negatively impact profitability.

Knowledge Management Best Practices to Address Gaps

For knowledge management to truly be effective, your company must be proactive in identifying and addressing knowledge gaps by following knowledge management best practices.

1. Clarify Objectives

Any time a company develops a new program or strategy, it is important to first sit down and clarify the objectives for the process. It will be easier to stay on track and achieve the desired results if you clearly lay out your goals for the strategy first and what you hope to achieve.

Consider where you need to focus your knowledge management efforts and what your needs are when it comes to knowledge gaps. Asking questions can help you establish a better knowledge management plan that is specifically suited to the needs of your employees and your company.

2. Conduct Gap Analysis

Gap analysis is a method used to compare entities to identify differences that might signal where there are discrepancies or potential risks. This method can be used in various ways within an organization as a form of risk assessment, but it can also be used to identify knowledge gaps and what is causing them.

The three main elements of gap analysis are:

●      Analyzing performance: This first step involves assessing the current state of performance within the company, which can help you identify areas of deficiency or underperformance.

●      Analyzing potential: This next step is about identifying where there is potential for improvement.

●      Establishing a plan: Last, once gaps are identified, you will need to analyze them to determine how best to fill them.

When you use this method for knowledge management, the best way to fill gaps is often through training or providing resources and opportunities for employees to be proactive about advancing their knowledge and skills.

3. Evaluate Current Processes

Continuous process evaluation is crucial for many reasons to ensure the success of a company, but it plays a particularly important role when dealing with knowledge gaps. You might think that evaluating your employees directly is the best way to identify knowledge gaps, but it is often more helpful to first evaluate your business processes.

If a process within your business is not achieving the desired outcomes, then you will have better direction with regard to identifying the specific gaps your company needs filled. For example, if after evaluating a process, you realize that the issue is it takes up too much time, the answer might be you need to adopt a new tool or technology to make that process more efficient. In this case, you would fill the gap by upgrading to that new technology and then training your employees so they have the knowledge they need to properly use that technology.

One of the best ways to evaluate processes to help identify gaps is by using process mapping. By mapping out every step of a process you get a clearer picture of how everything works or isn’t working so you can more easily identify the issue and find a solution.

4. Leverage the Right Tools and Technology

Another crucial knowledge management best practice is leveraging technology. Having the right tools can significantly boost your knowledge management strategies.

Knowledge management tools are designed to serve a range of different purposes, including document management, information storage, file organization, content management, and knowledge sharing. Artificial intelligence (AI) is commonly used in knowledge management tools as it can help with automating knowledge acquisition and better decision-making.

When surveyed by Verizon about how to overcome business challenges, a compendium of experts including business coaches, entrepreneurs, and owners notes it’s important to “embrace new ways of working to keep employees happy.” This includes using tech tools such as knowledge management software to improve their uptake.

Some common knowledge management tools used today include:

• Document360
• ClickUp
• Guru
• Confluence
• Notion
• Trainual
• Slite

These are just a few examples of the wide range of tools available today. It’s best to first evaluate your processes and identify the gaps in your company before you can decide which tools are right for your company’s specific needs.

Wrapping Up

After you’ve developed a quality knowledge management strategy and have implemented the right tools and technologies, another important part of preventing knowledge gaps moving forward is building a strong knowledge-sharing culture within your company.

Foster collaboration and open communication where employees feel comfortable speaking up for their needs. This requires a top-down culture supported by management teams that can guide employees and help them get what they need so they can perform better at their jobs.

In the end, knowledge management works best when everyone is working and collaborating together to achieve success as a whole rather than only focusing on the success of one entity.

Organizational knowledge is broadly classified into explicit and tacit. While explicit knowledge is tangible and is captured through processes, documentation, books, videos, etc, the fact is that this forms only a fraction of any organization’s knowledge while the rest of the knowledge bound to peoples’ experiences, intuition, insights, expertise, and personal conclusions is tacit knowledge. 

Recognizing the importance of this tacit knowledge and capturing it in a methodical way to make it explicit is a challenge for most organizations. The tacit knowledge may seem too fluid and inconsistent, but its fluidity is what makes it a powerful innovation tool. The conversion of tacit to explicit knowledge known as externalization is critical for an organization’s long-term success.

One of the most powerful tool for capturing the tacit knowledge is storytelling. As per Davenport and Prusek, Quite often a good story is the best way to impart knowledge.

Let’s discuss below some of the reasons that make storytelling a powerful knowledge transfer tool.

Contextualization – Tacit knowledge is all about experiences and interactions in specific situations. Storytelling is the best medium for any individual to describe narratives that include the background, environment, and emotions associated with a particular situation. This helps in capturing the nuances and subtleties that are often implicit in tacit knowledge. Storytelling allows a seamless leap from information to knowledge as best practices and lessons learned. 

Ideation leading to Innovation – Ideas pave the way for Innovation. Employees have hands on experience with processes, clients, products, and customers. When they collaborate to share their stories while collaborating formally or informally, they create a new paradigm by introducing new ideas with potential for improvement and innovation.

Transfer of Wisdom: Tacit knowledge often involves practical wisdom and judgment that is honed through experience. Through storytelling, individuals can pass on this wisdom by sharing anecdotes, case studies, and examples that illustrate the application of tacit knowledge in real-world situations. These experiences comes in real handy when dealing with complex clients and develop relationships with customer leading to project and organizational success.

Cultural Transmission: Tacit knowledge is often closely tied to an organization’s culture. Through storytelling, organizational values, traditions, and unwritten rules can be conveyed effectively, preserving the cultural aspects of tacit knowledge.

Organic way to learn – The wider purpose of any KM framework is to equip employees with knowledge for greater good of the organization, and the medium of learning is vital. Various studies have proved that story telling is most effective in imparting and capturing of knowledge. Tacit knowledge from experienced members and outgoing employees can be embedded in narratives to help inexperienced employees learn and upskill.

If the question is why stories work so well in knowledge management, then the answer–simply–is that “our brains seem to be wired to easily and almost automatically organize information into stories” (Reamy, 2002).

Knowledge management extends beyond information management and has a significant impact on the organizational innovation quotient, customer services, and sales and delivery processes. Consequently, it plays a crucial role in determining the overall success of an organization and its ability to thrive in a competitive business landscape.

While no universally applicable knowledge management model can be implemented across all companies, each organization needs to develop and adapt its model based on its specific requirements and goals. However, certain fundamental services are common to all knowledge management models. The below article discusses the basic menu that every KM practice serves...

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When you are asked what the KM team does or what it can offer to clients, here is a menu of services that a KM team can provide (non-exhaustive). The overall knowledge management strategy and services are always tailored by the knowledge managers basis the goals, priorities, and needs of the organization. However, the list below provides a quick glance at the scope of knowledge management that goes much beyond bringing knowledge to one place for easy access to the organization. 

Knowledge Management (KM) serves as a powerful catalyst, not only for consolidating knowledge but also for fostering collaboration, innovation, and the acquisition of valuable tools and insights. It empowers individuals to transform knowledge into actionable strategies, ultimately enhancing their professional lives. KM represents a cultural shift that emphasizes the significance of collective knowledge sharing and idea exchange.

Through its services, KM focuses on the profound impact that its adoption can have on growth, employee job satisfaction, service delivery, customer experience, and ultimately, business profitability.

Let’s take a look at some of the key services offered as a part of KM strategy:

CapabilityDescription / Offerings Knowledge Planning
Touchpoint with KM sponsors, SMEs, and leads to understanding their specific goals, requirements, and timelines. Develop Knowledge strategy, plan, roadmap, and project plan to map to the service requirement.
KM Platform Management
and Tracking
KM platform development roadmap. Develop a continuous improvement plan for enhancement. Conduct feedback tracking, metrics, and reporting to measure and track the KM strategy progress.
Content Management
Manage content lifecycle (capture, structure, reuse, and improve). Develop strategies to improve the adoption and awareness. Incorporate feedback mechanisms and track improvement via metrics
Collaboration
and Community Building
Launch collaboration platforms like wikis, discussion forums, and Communities to enable people to collaborate and innovate.Design and spearhead campaigns to facilitate the flow of tacit and explicit knowledge.
Innovation and Cultural Shift
Stay updated on both internal and external trends and introduce new practices and initiatives to enable people to perform their jobs faster and better. Create visibility for the skills, and expertise of people from across the organization and provide opportunities for them to collaborate to help solve key business problems and share their experiences with wider teams.

Lessons Learned are a rich source of knowledge. When applied in the right context they yield a valuable source of information that can become handy first-aid to dealing with some tough water logged situations. So what comes to your mind when someone speaks about Lessons Learned?

The best way to define something is to look at the Gold standard and below are three successful examples that most practitioners quote.

1. US Army (Center for Army Lessons Learned) or CALL leads the Army Lessons Leaned Program (ALLP) and delivers timely and relevant information to resolve gaps, enhance readiness and inform modernization.
2. BP or British Petroleum LLP (Lessons Learnt Program): A key aspect of Lessons Learned is Change Management, Crisis Management and linkable goals to organizational profits; ethical governance and reporting and driving knowledge driven culture. If you study the success factors closely, you would see that it’s the adaptive learning organization that leadership has signed a petition, which makes it the gold standard in Knowledge Management.
3. Hewlett Packard (HP) is one organization that comes to mind when we think of Innovation; where ideas win on merit and a perfect example of a Professional Services firm, where LLP has sustained because of an intensive knowledge sharing culture. It is important to understand that it's not just those winning moments but failures; and it's their Knowledge Capture and Reuse Program that makes tacit to explicit knowledge drive Innovation.

Before we go on to understand the benefits and process for driving a Lessons Learned program, the bigger question is: What are some of the ‘Causes for Failure?'  This is better understood through understanding some of the ‘Behaviors’ - and I present just three below.

1. Nurture Intrapreneurship Allowing anyone who is not directly responsible for P&L to be credited with their insights that contribute to the firm making a profit. This is a tricky especially given global workforce, different cultures and employees of varied experiences we need to establish a framework that rewards teamwork and encourage risk-taking behaviors so even junior employees feel empowered.
2. Develop a questioning mindset: It’s not just the CEO or the leadership but imperative that every field worker or client facing executive asks the question about value-addition, What did we learn from last time and how do we apply it next time are two key checks that the process has to capture in documenting Lessons Learned.
3. Practice Knowledge Harvesting right way: Every Lesson Learned is contextual, yet there are some basic elements such as Problem/Success, Impact, Recommendation, and finally Category, that make this an evolving loop and accessible to a wider network. It's important that the ones using it Rate it and Review it, and it will enhance the quality of the artifact. It’s an agile process and has to be merited that future projects use the knowledgebase and it will evolve.

Below are the some of the Benefits of starting a Lessons Learned Program:

1. Helps reduce organizational spending by not re-inventing the wheel every time you start a new project. We ensure everyone understands and applies these recommendations.
2. Creating a Leaning Environment ensures tacit knowledge is shared, impacting Cost, Quality and Timeliness - three important measures of a service being delivered.
3. Contributes to an organizational culture around after-action reviews, and ensures strong governance around creating long-term business benefits.
Knowledge Dissemination reduces risk of project failures by ensuring any pitfalls that are experiend are shared. The art of storytelling is the key to having everyone's trust involved.
4. Impacts Customer Success from field agents to leadership - everyone benefits from referring to codified knowledge. It's a cyclical process as at times even the customer is involved in sharing feedback, and if analyzed, such feedback can spark innovation.

So what are the key ingredients of a LLP:

1. Mission & Vision alignment is key
2. Focus on building adaptive Learning Organizations
3. Recruit an Organizational OCM Coach
4. Inform Modernization over IT Modernization
5. Drive a sense of urgency with team collaboration

In-Summary

In his Blog on the Lessons Learned Process, author Stan Garfield presents some effective Tools, Methods and further examples of successful LLP Programs.

Dave Snowden says “We need to learn lessons continuously, not just document lessons learned.” It is imperative that in scoping to create a sustainable Lessons Learned System one can forget the focus is on People before Technology.  It is this focus that is key to practice the right behaviors of Nurture Intrapreneurship, Develop a questioning mindset and Practice Knowledge Harvesting right way and more than make it impactful.

Finally, it’s for every organization to realize that the benefits of a LLP can be many however at the core we talk about the five ingredients that make it impactful.

Lastly, ensure Lessons Learned are not a post-mortem review of a project failure but are agile based on everyone in the project team doing retrospectives and meetups through the life cycle of the project from the planning phase that make it an evidence based tool for yielding project output, gaining customer trust and improving future project delivery.

Disclaimer: These are purely my own views and experiences as a seasoned KM practitioner in driving employee engagement and operationalizing the KM strategy through helping employees Connect & Collaborate.