Promoting the explicitness of implicit common knowledge

by mlockt21 on 2011-07-15 11:50:37

Classify and梳理hidden common knowledge, establish hidden common knowledge sharing tools, build a governance system, and promote the explicitness of hidden common knowledge.

The president of General Motors, Sloan, once said this: "Take away my assets, but leave my talents, and I will return all the lost within five years." In Sloan's view, talent is a kind of wealth that surpasses any asset of an enterprise. However, this most precious property in the enterprise is very easy to lose. The loss of personnel, especially the loss of core value employees, not only causes the loss of human capital for enterprises, but also leads to the loss of technical capital and customer capital. Bosses all understand this point, and are not stingy about spending big money to retain core value employees, but it is often difficult to prevent the resignation of core value employees. Then, as the leader of the enterprise, how should we try to retain the huge knowledge value generated by employees working in the enterprise? Knowledge management has become inevitable.

AMT Consulting has been constantly conducting in-depth research on corporate knowledge management in recent years. The scope of knowledge management is very broad. From the differentiation of the inherent attributes of knowledge, it can be divided into explicit knowledge management and implicit knowledge management. Explicit knowledge refers to knowledge expressed in written words, charts, and mathematical formulas. Implicit knowledge refers to knowledge that has not yet been expressed in language or other forms, such as the knowledge we possess while doing something. It is not complicated to retain the explicit knowledge of employees because it has already been documented. However, a large part of an employee's knowledge is highly implicit, and it is difficult to retain these equally valuable implicit knowledge. Because this knowledge is deeply embedded in the minds of employees, such as some experiences and skills, and intuition or judgment about things, they are very abstract and cannot be directly accumulated like explicit knowledge. Therefore, to successfully accumulate implicit knowledge, it must first be documented and made explicit, converting it into visible and easily shared explicit knowledge. This is the key to retaining the intellectual property of employees.

Classify and梳理implicit knowledge

The first step in making implicit knowledge explicit is to classify and梳理implicit knowledge, identifying which implicit knowledge can be accumulated in business work. At the same time, classification and梳理must be carried out according to the actual business type of the enterprise. For example, if it is a project-based enterprise, its implicit knowledge can generally be divided into two major categories: project-related and function-related. The method of梳理project-related implicit knowledge is to start with the basic tasks of the project, systematically inventorying all the necessary knowledge according to the stages, categories, and types of implicit knowledge points in the tasks. As for function-related implicit knowledge, it is梳理mainly based on functional differentiation. The process of梳理implicit knowledge is a challenging task that requires a lot of time and effort. During the梳理process, as many knowledge points as possible should be梳理, but perfectionism should be avoided. Moreover, to better promote the梳理of implicit knowledge, the personal participation of senior enterprise management is often required.

Establish implicit knowledge sharing tools

The second step in making implicit knowledge explicit is to establish implicit knowledge sharing tools. The previous step solved the problem of what implicit knowledge points there are, but these knowledge points will not be made explicit just by梳理them; they still exist in the minds of employees and remain undocumented. To make these knowledge points explicit, effective tools must be used. There are many implicit knowledge sharing tools. Here, I will simply introduce the three most commonly used tools seen by AMT Consulting and the application methods of each tool:

The first tool is "After Action Review (AAR)." AAR is a rapid reporting method or tool (as shown in Table 1). It provides teams with the opportunity to reflect on a project, activity, matter, or task by examining the gap between plans and reality, analyzing the reasons, helping the team gain lessons from past successes and failures, and improving future performance.

Table 1 AAR Form

AAR Name

List of Participants

Template Filler Filling Time

AAR Record

Key Work/Activity Expected Objective Actual Achievement Gap Analysis Improvement Suggestions

After knowing what AAR is, how do you use it? First, there are two triggers for AAR: time trigger and event trigger. Time trigger means that when a project or activity has passed a certain time cycle, AAR is conducted. For example, after the first phase of a project is completed or after a quarter of the project has passed, AAR is conducted on the work and results of the current phase or the previous quarter of the project. Event trigger means that after some major problems in the project or activity are resolved or after the project or activity ends, AAR is conducted. For example, after...