The beginning - Discovering the need for Knowledge Management

I think of Knowledge Management as simply a term that describes the processes I use to examine and control the connections between the information my company creates and uses to operate. Knowledge Management happens every day in every business. Some businesses are very formal about it with documented processes and procedures. Others are very informal with all procedure and process information being communicated verbally.

My first business managed knowledge primarily on an informal basis for the first decade or so of it's existence. The only documented information was the information generated by completing projects. This information was stored in hard copy or digital folders by project. Rudimentary cross reference information was maintained that grouped projects by location and client. Functional duties were shared as each situation dictated and specific position responsibilities were only loosley defined.

This operation was successful as long as there were only a handful of employees. Production could be monitored by the principal to ensure quality. Training occurred only as result of being shown how to do a certain task enough times to ingrain the requirements.

As the company began to grow, the most apparent problem was clearly the lack of a systematic training process. Technicians were shown how to do something once, or a couple of times, and expected to know how to do it next time it came up. If they did not remember how to do the task they would ask someone else. The person showing them may not fully understand the process themselves so a 'propagation of misinformation' began to happen. Without the principal(s) being involved with every step of a process it was not done to the company's standards.

This was the first time we truly recognized the need for some sort of knowledge management. In this partiular case that meant we needed to create a training process that produced documented, application specific, reference material that could be easily located when it was needed.

Out next step was to take inventory of our company knowledge and determine how much of it was formally defined and how much was retained in the heads of the employees.