Gathering Company Knowledge

Every company produces information through the course of daily operations that can be used to improve productivity and efficiency. This information is the core of your company knowledge. If stored and indexed correctly this information can become a powerful component of your innovation strategy.

How is this information collected in your company and what do you do with it? How high is your barrier to entry? Do people write down phone numbers on sticky notes (low barrier) or enter them into a complex company database (high barrier)?

Where you set this barrier will directly affect the integration of the collection and use of data into your company culture. Set the barrier too low and secondary processing will be required (i.e. someone will need to enter the phone number into a system from the sticky note) before the information can be shared. Set the barrier too high and people won't use it on a consistent basis (i.e. pausing a phone conversation to load a database). The goal should be to keep the barrier as low as possible and still be able to access and process relevant data immediately after it is entered. Ride the line between a process that easily fits into the workflow habits of your company and at the same time stores and processes information to give you the picture you need of how your company is operating.

The KM Executive suite was first developed as a tool for documenting and innovating procedures based on interaction with the people that used the suite. In order to ensure this interaction it became apparent that the suite could not operate in a different sphere from daily operations. If someone is required to write, review, or comply with an operational document they need to be able to do that using the same tools they used to perform their normal operational functions. More importantly, people need to be able to record observations about a process into a tool that will not require additional processing. Emailing a co-worker about an idea to improve a process is not a bad thing, but that email needs to be processed by someone on some level to become part of an innovated process. In other words the tactical work of the organization needs to mesh with the operational work to maximize efficiency in the innovation process.

KMX considers how the tactical and operational tasks of your business are separated and the time you may be spending getting these two functions to talk to each other. Explore how the KM Executive assignments, forms, and documents can be combined to eliminate this wasted time.