Knowledge Management

Knowledge management: a definition

Knowledge management (إدارة المعرفة) is capturing what an organisation knows, organising it and making it available to whoever needs it, so that the knowledge does not remain confined to particular individuals.

Capturing, organising and making available are the three actions the definition names, and the clause after them states what they are for. Knowledge that is confined to particular individuals reaches the organisation only through those individuals: while they are present, and when someone knows to ask them. Knowledge management is directed at that confinement, so that what the organisation knows is held by the organisation and not by one person within it.

Explicit and tacit knowledge in knowledge management

Knowledge management deals with two kinds of knowledge, and the challenge differs between them.

• Explicit knowledge. It is already written down: procedures, policies, contracts and reports. Its challenge is organisation and access.
• Tacit knowledge. It sits in people’s heads: why a decision was taken the way it was, how a particular supplier is dealt with, and what exception was agreed verbally. Its challenge is that it is written down only through deliberate effort.

For explicit knowledge, the question is not whether the knowledge has been recorded, since it exists in writing from the start. The question is whether the written material is organised, and whether the person who needs a procedure, a policy, a contract or a report can reach it.

Each example of tacit knowledge is something the work relies on that no document records. The reason behind a decision is known to those who took it. The way a particular supplier is handled is known to the person who deals with that supplier. An exception agreed verbally exists only in the memory of those who agreed it, because it was never put in writing.

Because tacit knowledge is written down only through deliberate effort, it does not reach a document as a byproduct of doing the work. Someone has to set out to record it.

Tacit knowledge is the kind that leaves with the employee, and it is what can make a single resignation disrupt an entire process. Explicit knowledge remains in the organisation’s documents when the employee who wrote or used them leaves. Tacit knowledge has no such record, so when the employee who holds it leaves, it goes with them. Where a process depends on that knowledge, one departure can disrupt the whole process, and not only the part of it that the departing employee performed.

Where the need for knowledge management appears

The need for knowledge management shows in three situations:

• At the end of the service of an employee who alone holds operational knowledge.
• In employee onboarding, where months of asking questions can be cut short if the knowledge is written down.
• In succession planning, because transferring a job title without transferring the knowledge does not transfer the ability to perform the role.

The first situation concerns knowledge held by one employee alone, and that knowledge is operational, meaning the work depends on it. When that employee’s service ends, the knowledge leaves the organisation with them.

During onboarding, a new employee needs knowledge that colleagues already have. Where that knowledge is written down, the new employee can find it. Where it is not, the new employee has to ask for it, question by question, and those months of asking are the period that written knowledge can shorten.

Succession puts a new holder in a role, and the successor receives the title of that role. The title does not carry with it the knowledge of how the role is performed. A successor who takes over the title without that knowledge holds the role in name, but does not yet have the ability to perform it.

Why documentation efforts in knowledge management stall

Attempts at documentation stall because they start with the tool and not with the question. A documentation platform set up without an answer to what is documented, who is responsible for updating it, and when it is reviewed can fill up in its first month and then go out of date. People then stop referring to it, and it becomes a burden rather than a reference.

Each of the three questions settles something the tool cannot settle by itself. The first decides the content: which knowledge the platform exists to hold. The second names the person who keeps each item current. The third sets the point at which the content is checked again.

Starting with the tool means choosing a platform and filling it before any of these answers exists. The platform then holds content, but nothing decides which content belongs there, who keeps it current or when it is checked.

Where that decline happens, it follows a sequence. The platform fills up in its first month. Its content then goes out of date. Once the content is out of date, people stop referring to it. A platform that people no longer consult has stopped serving as a reference, and what is left of it is a burden.

An outdated document is worse than no document at all, because a person who trusts it bases a wrong decision on it. The person who trusts it takes it as current, and the decision they reach rests on content that is no longer correct.

How knowledge management differs from document archiving

Archiving keeps the document, for reference or for compliance. Knowledge management keeps what is needed to do the work, including what was never written in a document at all. Archiving asks where the file is. Knowledge management asks how this work is done, and why it is done this way.

The two differ first in what they keep. Archiving starts from a document that already exists and preserves it so that it can be found again, whether to refer back to it or to meet a compliance purpose. Knowledge management starts from the work, and keeps whatever doing the work requires.

The words “including what was never written in a document at all” place tacit knowledge inside knowledge management. An archive holds only what has been written down. The reason behind a decision, the way a supplier is handled and an exception agreed verbally lie outside an archive unless someone has made the deliberate effort to record them.

The two questions also differ in the kind of answer they call for. “Where is the file?” is answered by a location. “How is this work done, and why this way?” is answered by the knowledge itself, including the reasons behind the method.

This is an explanation of the concept, not legal advice.