Commentary —
Tapping Organizational Knowledge
Organizational knowledge is one of the most valuable, but also most underutilized, resources available to the majority of companies today. Residing in clients, customers, employees, and others such as suppliers, this knowledge is rarely tapped directly, systematically, thoroughly or routinely.
Organizational knowledge differs from normal business knowledge in that it is tucked away in people's heads rather than being tangible in the form of products, services, documents, processes or systems. Access to such knowledge is voluntary and depends greatly upon motivation, available communication channels, interpersonal factors, and a host of other facilitators and obstacles that may or may not be present in each organization. The sad fact is that much valuable knowledge remains with the holder, dormant and unused.
So how might such organizational knowledge be of importance to us?
¥ Cost reduction efforts today are reaching the limits of what current cost management practices can deliver. Continued progress requires that you begin to address cost reduction opportunities in the final, third layer of opportunity —
costs created by obstacles to communication and the inability to use organizational knowledge resources fully
The first step is tapping your own organizational knowledge directly to make such embedded costs visible. Although not always easy to discover, many costs embedded in the organizational, interpersonal and personal fabric can be addressed effectively once they become visible and their sources are understood.
¥ Revenue opportunities are also missed as vital knowledge lies dormant or is communicated inaccurately. Customer and client needs, priorities and concerns are not fully known or understood by most businesses. Presentations, proposals, and marketing programs may miss the mark —
resulting in lost revenue opportunities and creating unnecessarily high marketing and selling expense.
¥ Customer/client turnover can be increased by incomplete, inaccurate or outdated knowledge of clients and customers. Without a steady flow of such knowledge from many sources both inside and outside of the organization, you can unknowingly create dissatisfied customers —
leading to unnecessary client and customer turnover and generating the very high costs of replacing them.
¥ Innovation is fed by vital knowledge about needs and opportunities as well as ideas for addressing them. Substantial portions of such knowledge lies largely dormant because of obstacles to its communication and understanding. Obstacles to communication can be hard to find but, once identified, may not be hard to address in many cases.
In many cases, knowledge items may have value in more than one of these areas. Customer knowledge can touch often touch all four.
For Further Information
How can you tap your own organizational knowledge to obtain benefits in one or more of these vital areas? We have a number of related commentaries that are no longer available on our Web site. If you are interested in obtaining a copy of any of these, please contact us.
— Gerry Allan