At LinkFacts we are deeply convinced that ideas, insights and innovations are driven by knowledge and information. Knowledge is the most precious resource of humanity as a whole but even more important here, the biggest driver for business success.
Of course, you understand what knowledge means, but may ask yourself, what is specifically meant here? The short answer: any connected pieces of information that are relevant and useful for your business. The long answer would point to the most prominent use cases for knowledge mapping: research, forensics, investigations, audits, asset management, org-charts, due diligence, project dependencies, risk dependencies, reference management, taxonomies, standard operating procedures and many more.
Like most businesses and organizations, yours most probably manages finances, assets, projects, risks and confidentiality, in some way. Maybe information access is controlled and documents are traced? But more often than not, the most important off them all – Knowledge – is left unattended to its own fate. It is not captured, not managed, not protected and not It is often left unavailable, hidden in some place or gets even lost for good.
The reasons for ‘knowledge blindness’ are both simple and legit: most managers are more focused on the next quarter’s results than on the next year’s opportunities, they value tactics over strategy, they spend the lion share of their energy on delivering and very little on learning and innovating. Urgent issues get precedence over important topics. This is a hamster’s in the wheel trap!
As you would repair a broken window, fix a flat tire or a dripping bath tap, you should start thinking deeply about the cost of unavailable, inaccessible, evaporated or lost knowledge. Because the consequences of ‘knowledge blindness’ are manyfold and the effects are huge:
slow on-boarding and flat learning curve of new employees,
inefficient communication of strategic decisions and best practices, and thus bad alignment of your team’s effort.
missed or lost opportunities
priorities and plans that either do not work at all or perform poorly compared to better alternatives, if essential knowledge would have been available in the first place.
So what can you do?
The following 3 steps may seem obvious:
Treat knowledge as a jewel and put Knowledge Management on the top of your agenda.
As of today, start seeding and harvesting the fruits of already existing knowledge and make it accessible to your coworkers.
Start capturing, managing, and sharing essential knowledge in a structured and systematic way throughout your organization!
How to start the knowledge management journey?
At LinkFacts, we have developed the toolset to help you exactly doing this, namely, start building evolving knowledge trees from loosely structured pieces of knowledge.
At its heart, the LinkFacts platform is collaborative, flexible, and easy to use due to its entirely visual approach to knowledge.
And most importantly, we are prepared to help you identify and implement your use cases with the highest returns at minimal cost and effort. We will guide you through the first steps in one or several short and structured opportunity assessment workshops with one single aim: grab the ‘low hanging fruits’ first.
The invest is minimal and the anticipated outcomes will either be a rapid return on invest or even a real game changer for your whole business.
To get started, can you free up half an hour for this really important topic?
If yes, let us have a short and free discussion about Knowledge Management in your organization and how we can help to improve it.
