Drive Efficiency, Increase Productivity, and Retain Key Information through Knowledge Management
“Knowledge has become the key economic resource and the dominant—and perhaps even the only—source of competitive advantage.” – Peter Drucker, American-Austrian Educator
The need for Knowledge Management in an organization is made evident by the stories of struggle we often hear such as new employees not knowing where to go for guidance or seasoned team members retiring and leaving “big shoes to fill.” Although these narratives are common, organizations that have effective knowledge management practices in place will reduce the strain that these struggles can place on an organization. In the competitive business world, and especially in Federal agencies, knowledge management has become more essential for the sustainable development of organizations.
What is Knowledge Management?
Knowledge Management is the process of capturing, sharing, storing, and effectively managing the knowledge and experience of employees to increase an organization’s overall knowledge.
The primary goal of Knowledge Management is to improve efficiency, increase productivity, and retain critical information within an organization. Knowledge Management is important to organizations for five key reasons:
- Better Decision Making – Faster and higher-quality decisions are enabled through streamlined knowledge and information flow and by learning from the successes and failures of peers and predecessors.
- Reduced Risk – Risk reduction is achieved through standardizing processes and procedures, and preventing knowledge loss due to retirement or attrition.
- Team Performance & Collaboration – Improved efficacy and efficiency of operations is achieved by connecting people to each other and to the knowledge and information they need, when they need it.
- Innovation – The ability to locate and use shared knowledge has a direct affect upon the ability to create new knowledge and ideas.
- Increased Productivity – Reducing search time empowers team members to act quickly, encouraging them to contribute back into the community of knowledge sharing and focus on higher-value work.
- Increased Client Satisfaction – Teams are able to provide faster answers or shorten the time it takes to improve a product or service.
Getting Started with Knowledge Management
Management Strategies has supported several knowledge management initiatives in Federal agencies. Typical pain points that we help our clients overcome include a lack of: enterprise search capabilities, knowledge management standards, inter-office knowledge storing and sharing, overall knowledge management vision and strategy, and overall training and skills development. Our solutions often include one or several knowledge management initiatives such as: designing new, or improving existing, knowledge management systems, mitigating risks posed by a key person as sole knowledge owner, centralizing libraries, improving change management, creating a knowledge map, assessing knowledge bases, and standardizing knowledge management processes.
How Our Work Supports Federal Knowledge Management Initiatives
Management Strategies is proud to support knowledge management efforts across several Federal organizations including the U.S. Department of the Treasury, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. If you are interested in learning more about how we can support your organization with knowledge management, please contact us at info@managementstrategies.com.