How to prepare your Organisation for Knowledge Management

First, you should create the organisational conditions and prepare internal structures and communication for knowledge management. Hierarchical barriers should not stand in the way of knowledge sharing. Your colleagues should not feel restricted when they want to share ideas or knowledge. Here, it is essential to create acceptance for every type of knowledge. Show appreciation for contributions from all levels and for the underlying transfer of knowledge. Focus on exchange between the various members of the organisation. As a leader, start discussions on your interactive platform and seek feedback from colleagues. At the same time, provide responses to interesting and value-adding contributions. By attaching great importance to knowledge regardless of position, you remove the first hurdles.

Some of your colleagues may keep their knowledge to themselves simply because they fear harming their own position. The assumption is: if I share knowledge, I give others an advantage. As self-serving as this may sound at first, it is partly understandable. For a long time, unique skills and knowledge were considered essential for securing a good position. Today, however, qualities such as quick comprehension, flexibility and problem-solving skills matter far more. These make it easier to deal with constant change.

Knowledge sharing offers strong advantages in this context. Everyone can constantly acquire new knowledge and fill their own knowledge gaps. At the same time, providing knowledge saves time. Duplicate work is reduced and projects can be processed more quickly, as the required expertise is ideally already stored on your interactive platform. This also means that everyone can work more independently, as they are not reliant on having to request information first. Make these advantages clear to your colleagues: by sharing their expertise, they can react more flexibly to developments and solve problems more quickly. This reduces fears and prevents a “knowledge is power” mentality from taking hold.

For knowledge management to run smoothly, all organisational members should store their knowledge in a structured way. To do this, everyone involved must know how and where important project documents are stored. Only then can other colleagues access the knowledge and contribute their own expertise. Provide colleagues with guidelines on how to use the interactive platform for knowledge management. Training sessions may also be useful to clarify basic working steps. Early questions can be answered here, preventing knowledge from being scattered in an unstructured way. At the same time, this reduces colleagues’ fears of doing something wrong.

As a leader, you play an especially important role in this context. You should lead by example and prepare colleagues for knowledge management. Create incentives that motivate colleagues to follow your lead. Upload documents to your interactive platform and connect with knowledge holders. Read important information in discussions on the activity feed, provide feedback and contribute your own expertise.

What use are the best tools and means for knowledge management if the people in your organisation are not on board to share their knowledge? None at all. For this reason, motivating your colleagues is one of the most important tasks you must fulfil when introducing knowledge management. If you reduce colleagues’ inhibitions early on while simultaneously highlighting the advantages of knowledge management, you will succeed in this task. In doing so, you lay an important foundation for establishing knowledge management within your organisation.