Every organization holds a stock of knowledge: the experience of its people, the lessons of its projects, its best practices. Yet much of it is lost when people leave or experiences are forgotten. Knowledge management is the art of preserving, growing and sharing that stock.
Knowledge management is not an IT system to be bought off the shelf, but a combination of people, processes and tools. It usually follows a cycle: identifying important knowledge, acquiring or creating it, organizing and storing it, sharing it, and finally actually using it at work — the stage that creates value.
Explicit and tacit knowledge
- Explicit knowledge: what can be written down and documented — procedures, guides, reports.
- Tacit knowledge: what lives in people’s experience, intuition and skills, and is hard to pass on in writing.
The concept of tacit knowledge is attributed to the philosopher Michael Polanyi. Examples include the experienced technician who can tell from the sound of a machine that a part is starting to wear, or the trainer who knows how to rephrase an explanation on noticing puzzlement on trainees’ faces. Such knowledge is not fully transferred through documents, but through shared experience and joint practice.
The SECI model: how knowledge is created
Researchers Nonaka and Takeuchi described how knowledge circulates and grows through four processes:
- Socialization: passing on tacit knowledge through shared experience and observation, as when a new employee shadows an experienced colleague.
- Externalization: turning experience into written or visual knowledge, through dialogue, examples and models.
- Combination: integrating written knowledge into broader guides and references.
- Internalization: turning written knowledge into practice and personal experience by applying it.
These processes repeat in a spiral that widens from the individual to the team and then to the whole organization, with each cycle generating new knowledge.
Practical methods
- Lessons learned: a short session after each project or significant event — what did we plan, what happened, why, and what will we do next time?
- Communities of practice: groups of people who share a common professional concern and deepen their knowledge through regular interaction.
- Mentoring: connecting experienced people with newcomers.
- Knowledge mapping: identifying critical knowledge and who holds it, to reveal points of vulnerability.
- A knowledge repository: an organized space where documents and experiences are easy to find.
These practices do not require complex technology: their success depends on dedicated time, on leaders who set an example and on a climate of trust in which mistakes can be discussed without fear.
In international standards
Clause 7.1.6 of ISO 9001 requires the organization to determine the knowledge needed to operate its processes and achieve conformity of its products and services, to maintain it and make it available to the extent necessary, and, when needs change, to consider how to acquire additional knowledge. The notes to the standard point to internal sources, such as experience and lessons learned from failures and successful projects, and external sources, such as standards, academia, conferences and customers. ISO 30401, for its part, is dedicated to knowledge management systems.
Worked example: a training centre
A long-serving trainer at a training centre is preparing to leave. This trainer designed the centre’s main programmes and knows how to adapt them to different audiences. The centre maps the critical knowledge the trainer holds, then puts the SECI model into practice: the trainer co-delivers sessions with newer colleagues (socialization); structured interviews with the trainer are turned into a trainer’s guide full of examples and tips (externalization); the guide is merged with other trainers’ materials into a single programme reference (combination); finally, new trainers deliver the sessions using this reference, with regular feedback (internalization). A lessons-learned session follows each cohort, and the trainers meet periodically as a community of practice to discuss difficult cases. In this way, the expertise does not walk out of the door with its holder but becomes part of the centre’s knowledge stock.
Towards a learning organization: first steps
A learning organization turns its experiences, successes and failures alike, into lasting learning that changes how it works. A few simple steps help set out on this path:
- Identify the critical knowledge whose loss would threaten the continuity or quality of work.
- Choose one simple practice, such as lessons-learned sessions, and apply it regularly.
- Link knowledge sharing to everyday work rather than to separate initiatives.
- Recognize those who share their expertise and make this part of performance appraisal.
- Check periodically that shared knowledge is actually used and kept up to date.
Learning also extends beyond the organization’s boundaries, through professional networks and associations that enable experience to be exchanged between organizations and experts.
Knowledge is the only resource that grows when it is shared.
Common mistakes
- Reducing knowledge management to a digital platform full of documents that nobody visits.
- Documenting everything without distinguishing critical knowledge from the rest.
- Waiting until the expert leaves before thinking about transferring their knowledge.
- A culture that punishes mistakes, so failures are hidden and nothing is learned from them.
- Measuring success by the number of documents published rather than by their effect on solving problems and improving work.
- Leaving knowledge management to the IT department alone, far from those who hold the expertise.
