One of the purposes of Knowledge Managers is to extract information from the heads of the key people using interviews and publish it to the rest if the company for the purposes of training, cross-skilling and continuity.

To do this, you need to understand and make use of the Knowledge Capital Model, information auditing and knowledge mapping, conducting interviews, collation and analysis, knowledge harvesting, collaboration tools, content and document management and using the Internet.

I attended Judi Sandrock’s Knowledge Managers course recently. Quite the eye opener and I must admit that I had the completely wrong perception about knowledge management. The concepts above presented in the course have drastically changed the way I think about this and have adapted my training and consulting approach as a result.

This series is a summary of the 20 pages of notes I took during this worthwhile course.

UNDERSTANDING THE KNOWLEDGE CAPITAL MODEL

The Knowledge Capital Model consists of :

• Personal Power – knowledge that can’t be separated from you, your experience.
• Embedded Knowledge – processes, documents, training materials. How you do your job. The handover document you would supply if you left.
• Social Capital – the networks people have, (it’s not what you know, it’s who you know type of thing). People are very protective over their networks and a high level of trust is required that needs to be built over time.

Your company values will affect how information is extracted in these 3 areas.

Be aware of what your value system is and hire people accordingly. You need to create a value system of abundance and sharing. Cut your losses if you have staff that do not have your values or are in a company that doesn’t.

When it comes to learning and teaching, remember that no matter how much you share, you can never lose your information. On the contrary, the more you share and teach, the more you learn. Sharing forces you to articulate it which expands your knowledge. There are 3 stages of learning – storming, norming and forming.

• Storming – is the worst part, irritation by users, hate the facilitator, defensive.
• Norming – they relax, start smiling at each other.
• Forming – delegates are sharing and contributing.

There are 3 phases of life – learn, do, teach. Address people in each category accordingly.

Generally you have 3 months to entice someone to stay with you when you employ them. After that they will leave physically or emotionally. A good induction process facilitated by the Knowledge Manager can go a long way in making a good impression.

Be careful what you reward for and remember where the enemy is. The enemy is not inside, it’s outside, your competitors. If you pitch teams against each other for monetary reward, it will be impossible to get information out of them for the good of the company. Unite teams, don’t divide them, (don’t think Bulls and Sharks, think Springboks).