Knowledge is power if you can use it to make better business decisions. The trick is to get the right knowledge in front of the right people at the right time.
Inside a business there are normally three key sources of knowledge:
- Data,
- Information or Document Repositories, and
- People.
Chances are you have a lot invested already in each of these islands of knowledge… but they may not be connected or otherwise delivering the value you want. If the data does not already exist in a usable format, you may need to capture it.
Relying on Bob
Too many small businesses have critical functions that only one person has the knowledge to perform. Unfortunately this creates problems for:
- The business – There is a huge risk in Bob leaving his position. Can your business continue at its current level without Bob doing that job?
- The employee – While it may seem like the employee has guaranteed job protection, in fact, the employee may be locking themselves in their current level as an unwanted side effect.
The Solution
Besides doing his day to day job, Bob needs to be working to make sure that he is paving the way to move to the next level and have his replacement able to perform his role.
This means putting tools and processes in place to automate the gathering of data and information into knowledge… and decisions, so that others can do his job as well as he could.
If you do this right, everyone wins.
Disclaimer: The characters depicted in this post are purely fictional and any resemblance to real people is purely coincidental. No Bobs or Roberts were injured or killed as part of this production, including Bob from accounting… and BTW, Bob is my uncle.
