Knowledge management is an enabler not an outcome. Enabling an organisation to work more smartly, achieve its goals more effectively, to innovate and improve.
Knowledge management processes tools and techniques enable the access to the best practice, knowledge and expertise which will lead to improved quality of care, enables innovation, reduces the risk of adverse events and the ability to learn from them (prevention) and increase productivity by reducing duplication of effort and unnecessary expenditure such as on external consultants when the knowledge already resides within the system or organisation.
The Main Elements of Knowledge Management
- Sharing and Reuse
- Creating & Acquisition
- Capturing & Structure
- Useful links
Please contact the Library for further information about Knowledge Management and the recommended tools.
a. Sharing and Reuse
By learning from others we can short cut the process to making improvements to the way we work or carry out our research. By finding the evidence we enable access to the knowledge base of healthcare, which improves the take up and adaption of sound evidence and reduces the duplication of effort in the development of pathways of care.
Learning from and sharing with others through communities of practice, creating opportunities to hear first-hand about others’ work and ensuring we don’t lose the knowledge from those that leave the organisation: we can gain insights and understanding which will enable us to work more effectively reducing unnecessary reinvention, by taking the best from others work to adapt and apply it to our own.
For example
| What Are We Trying to Achieve? | The Tool |
|---|---|
| Enable improvement and departmental (or organisation) development by using knowledge that is already in the organisation, by identifying who has relevant knowledge and skills in a particular area and making them available to others | River & Stairs Diagrams (Maturity Model) |
| Gain understanding of a situation and avoid “it” happening again through a rapid (10 minutes) process that takes place straight after a milestone, event, incident or even a meeting …. The structured review or de-brief process for analyzing what happened, why it happened, and how it can be done better, by those involved | After Action Review |
| Bring out the key knowledge and experience developed by a project team, and capture it for future reuse and the benefit of future projects. | Retrospective/Baton passing |
| Generate new ideas, innovation and different ways of working by learning from and sharing with others who have an interest in common | Communities of Practice Knowledge Cafes Lunch & Learns |
| Reduce the time and expense lost through the lack of continuity in critical, team, departmental and corporate knowledge,i.e. prevent the loss of knowledge that occurs when someone moves to a new role or leaves the organisation altogether. | KRT Toolkit for Leavers SaSH version 2.2 |
| Please contact the Library for more information about Knowledge Management and the recommended tools. | |
b. Creating & Acquisition
By gaining input from others into our own work and collaborating together on common issues we not only reduce duplication of effort and silo working but we all gain from the knowledge and experience that each person brings to the activity and can together create new knowledge and innovate.
For example
| What Are We Trying to Achieve? | The Tool |
|---|---|
| Provide feedback in order to learn for the future. The emphasis is on the project teams learning. | Post Project Appraisal |
| A high impact, memorable means for learning or sharing. Sharing issues and learning through a narrative. This can be done face to face or through a webcast. | Storytelling |
| Improve productivity and performance of a new piece of work, pathway or project by identifying existing knowledge and evidence that is relevant e.g. What similar work has been carried out before? How well did it go? Is there anyone in the organisation that has relevant knowledge and expertise? | Knowledge Plan (Lessons before) |
| Generate innovation, sharing of ideas and collaboration and so reduce duplication of effort and improve efficient working Which can be carried out across distance and time | Collaboration Spaces Social Networks e.g. huddle,wikis, blogs Knowledge Cafes Lunch & Learns |
| Understand who, what, where and how people connect; or to enable people to make new connections useful to their work | Social Network Analysis |
| Please contact the Library for more information about Knowledge Management and the recommended tools. | |
c. Capturing & Structure
By keeping track of who is doing what, of experience, interests and work stream and recording in an easily accessible way the lessons learned from a piece of work, those involved have the opportunity to reflect and can consider how they would do things differently next time and others benefit from being able to apply the learning to their own work.
By taking stock of which departments or people have particular skills or competencies, – making that accessible across the organisation – reduces the money spent on employing consultants, duplication of effort and reduces silo working.
For example
| What Are We Trying to Achieve? | The Tool |
|---|---|
| Gain understanding and help from colleagues in relation to a new piece of work or when a project has come to a “cross roads”. The request is initiated by the project lead when he or she thinks peers could be of help to the team. Peer Assist is a meeting of a project team with colleagues the team has invited to assist them with a significant issue the team is facing. | Peer assist |
| Integrating a new or a newly-promoted person into an organisation or role, without overloading them with information. Three tips that apply equally well to the new employee and the employer: – Avoid information dump (be strategic about what to focus on) – Focus on introductions and networking – Carefully select initial projects | Rapid on Boarding |
| Acquire focused information on a topic to be made available for use by others Finding at least one “expert” in the desired domain who: • is willing to provide his/her knowledge; • has the time to provide his/her knowledge; • is able to provide his/her knowledge • Collaborate, problem-solve and generate ideas between researchers and decision makers that happens through linkage and exchange | Elicitation Interviews |
| Promote understanding, provide guidance for decision-making And record facts about critical decisions. | Knowledge Exchange Knowledge Cafes Lunch & Learns |
| Codified human expertise; stored in a digital/electronic format; used to create organisational value; owned by the organisation, not vulnerable to memory loss; commonly deployed via Intranets | Knowledge Assets |
| Please contact the Library for more information about Knowledge Management and the recommended tools. | |
