Winning the Knowledge Game. Smarter Learning for Business Excellence

In modern business there needs to be a strong linkage between individual effort, teamwork and organizational objectives. The more aligned this relationship, the better the chance for ongoing excellence and innovation. In business a range of people management strategies can be used to keep the best talent, including careful recruitment, good training and regular career development discussions. By using these strategies you will help create fertile ground for opening up networks, a flow of knowledge and shared advantage, all of which are essential if you wish to stimulate a work attitude and generate competitive advantage.

There are a number of ways to open up networks and share the advantage of knowledge. Here are five of my favourites:

• Be spontaneous , tell stories over breakfast , lunch or a coffee but do it in a relaxed and friendly way. If you have a tearoom, spend a little money on paint and decorations to give it an informal and inclusive atmosphere. I know a manager who even invested in a mini-refrigerator in the office so people would come in and chat over a cold drink. What a stroke of genius, and it worked!

• Have people brainstorm their ideas on what could be done to free up the level of sharing and exchange in a business. Ask for feedback on the following questions: how can we better transfer what we know or need to know? How can we make knowledge more accessible and more interesting to people? How could we better grab attention and involvement? Which methods and systems are currently in use? How can we use this better? Which practices, rules and behaviours kill off innovation and the flow of knowledge? Where should we start? How will we review progress?

• Create simple ways for people to input their discoveries and questions. This can often be assisted by having peers working together on the material and having third parties review the work. Decide which knowledge is easily recorded and written down (that is, for checklists and quick tips) and that which is more tacit or complex in nature.

• Open up access to the Internet and encourage people to apply what they learn from their discoveries and feed it back into the business. Create home pages which connect people and their wisdom. Place communities of practice, mentors and knowledge archives on the home page. Reduce the emphasis on information and increase the emphasis on knowledge. Where possible, have people meet face to face or use technologies like video and telephone conferencing, web cam and file sharing software to stimulate collaboration. Assist the cause by providing a series of incentives. British Telecom have in the past given a monthly reward system for knowledge sharing, including small monetary awards to the most prolific provider of valuable knowledge on the intranet. Another reward was for the person who answered the most queries in the ˜ask me another folder on the Business Home Page. Yet another was given to the person who provided the most valuable piece of knowledge.

• Encourage people to be actively involved in organizing and presenting knowledge-sharing events. These can range from simple and inexpensive gatherings over sandwiches and soft drinks to major extravaganzas involving holiday resorts or hotel venues . Remember, expense is not the barometer of success and that the creativity, stimulation and mutual support that come from such gatherings are far more important.

We can never fully anticipate what will happen when we ask people to interact and share knowledge. It is imperative that you anticipate any potential conflicts that may occur. Be sure you set workable expectations from the start, but you do not want people to be paralysed by them. All the e- mails , web sites and conversations need to lead to something tangible and worthwhile. Somewhere along the line someone needs to take a stand and summarize what is being learnt and to give feedback on what is not working.

For example, in project teams people can be so nice and polite that they struggle to make headway. A team leader can easily create a nightmare democracy where people are so consultation crazy that nothing ever eventuates. At the other extreme, a process can quickly suffer from a loss of interest and motivation where a specific outcome is driven too hard by one or two key people. Again, there are no simple answers here! It is easy to say ˜take the middle ground but at times such a position may not be right either. You need to read the situation and play the game as you see it.