How do you leverage the knowledge that is available in your organization or team?

1. It’s all aboutCommunication A JOINED! story on the power of internal communication.

3. How do I create a mindset for sharing knowledge (because otherwise you will loose it when you loose the people)?

4. How do I make this knowledge accessible to other people in the organization?

6. The message has to be stored on a non direct medium, which is unnatural for the sender to encode (“Write down everything you know about this project you were working on the past six months...”). Finding the right amount of detail is not an easy job.

7. Putting information in the KM database is an extra effort with no added value for the creator.

8. There is a time shift between when the message is encoded (created) and decoded (used) creating misinterpretation and information that is outdated.

9. Whether something is 'knowledge', is defined by the receiver, not by the sender.

10. When people need information, they have a hard time finding exactly the bit of information they need in the huge amount of data. In most cases, one does not even know what he should be looking for or what he is missing (You might find out that somebody else in your organization is working on a similar problem as you are).

12. "We already developed that??" (Eager product manager in a management presentation).

13. "I just seem to lose plenty of time making this geographically dispersed and cross-departmental team work together." (A project manager on his status meeting with his sponsor).

14. "I hate this silo's!" (A young potential trying to ship).

17. Create both push and pull knowledge communication.

18. Value the feedback loop. This is not a technical confirmation that the message is understood, it is about the knowledge itself. Knowledge typically comes from the shared experience of different people, so let people work on it together.

19. Make it easy to change the information: It is not static, so why should the capturing be? “Communication works for those who work at it.” John Powel

20. A story… Sarah is a marketing manager. Let’s have a look at what she needs... She needs to be aware what Tony, the sales manager is promising to customers: If a customer expects a targeted event or service, she needs to know when the contract is signed, not 3 days before the due date. She wants to be able to follow up on her agency that is working on the launch of the new portal website. Did she mention the developers are working in India? She loves to be able to capture all the inputs from here team-members that are working in different physical locations. Sarah also is part of the management team and has to make sure that all the management decisions are spread among the team. She also needs to make sure that all the knowledge about the CRM system development that just finished is stored and available for future hires. Next to that, she has some project on the move on customer experience, is in contact with the legal department and has to get those leads coming in... Sarah will have to spend a lot of time on getting all the information, share all the knowledge she has and communicate in an efficiënt manner to keep all her plates up in the air. “Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.” Anne Morrow Lindbergh

21. What do you want me to do? Let's assume you value your customer, you want to perform at your best. Maybe because you love to please him, maybe because you know that going the extra mile for the customers means more revenue and happy shareholders. Then what do you need? Leverage team knowledge around the company. Learn that copy-pasting is not evil: it is smart and efficient. Manage and value knowledge on people level. Share and monetize knowledge on company level. Make sure every employee knows what to say when she interacts with clients (all employees do!). Internal communication is about leveraging the knowledge that exist in your organization and make sure it gets to all the people. It will however always be the people who make sure it is used to generate better results. They will loose less time with searching information. They will get better results with their new knowledge. They will perform better because they feel valued about their knowledge. You will benefit from it when they leave, but even more when they go that extra mile. So go out and do something with it! “Words should be used as tools of communication and not as a substitute for action.” Anonymous

23. Value the above.

24. Define strategies to capture and share the knowledge.

25. Select tools to make this all come alive.

26. Train people in project management communication (for local and fragmented teams).“The way we communicate with others and with ourselves ultimately determines the quality of our lives.” Anthony Robbins

27. JOINED! is a real life virtual consultant firm.We believe in real life solutions for your problems.Today! Drink a (virtual) coffee with us: filip@joined.be www.joined.be/blog www.twitter.com/Young_Marketeer A warm thank you to Svenja & Ka for their harsh but fair feedback.You should be gratefull to them for making this book easier to read for you! A lot more people for their ideas & motivation!