One of the key aspects within organizations is the generation and preservation of knowledge. However, senior management may not identify it as such. The truth is that those companies that promote creativity and innovation as a value are the ones that manage to exercise their leadership by breaking into new products and services, and staying on the market for longer.
The companies that create and learn are more sensitive to the environment and, therefore, have a greater component of adaptability to changes, which makes them prone to identifying niches in the market and improving processes. That is why if the employees have characteristics associated with sensitivity and adaptability, they feel more identified with the company, achieving greater performance in the personnel.
All this climate of identification with the company is enhanced if the company has a culture of innovating and sharing knowledge among employees and among the organizations that comprise it. This prevents unshared knowledge from becoming obsolete and losing the company's competitive advantages.
For the culture oriented to promote knowledge to exist, 3 elements must be present: Leadership, Organization and People.
Leadership assumes risk and failure as a source of learning, facilitates the development of its people, and fosters shared leadership in achieving a vision. The Organization must provide the necessary climate to innovate, promote and share knowledge to be translated into plans and actions, celebrate successful ideas, tolerate the uncertainty of risk and failure. In this way, people will feel that they can generate ideas and share them, have ease of requesting and accessing information, being very natural the formation of multidisciplinary teams in order to complement skills and competences. In this way, there is a favorable climate to generate knowledge, identify sources, carry out searches, organize it and make it available to others.
However, it is possible that within a culture of sharing knowledge, some leaders have paradigms that limit their development and that of their organization, since their performance is based on the belief in organizational plots, the share of power based on the possession of the information, the maintenance of the "already" achieved and the questioning without appreciating the positive results. All of these trends can limit the sharing of knowledge. However, if it is evident that the culture of knowledge sharing is fostered within the company, these leaders will soon be out of the process and out of the organization.
Another frequent paradigm is to think that the preservation and generation of knowledge requires an expensive technological platform, which constitutes a serious error, since it is not decisive. There are companies that do not have a complex platform to ensure the preservation of knowledge, and they see it reflected in their people through the documentation of processes, procedure manuals, presentation files, etc. In this case, the basic thing is to have the support of the data, the structure and the ease of access to be able to interpret the information and thus achieve knowledge.
Knowledge sharing is based on the principle of collaboration, which allows us to be able to generate the environment to build and manage all kinds of knowledge (tacit, explicit, internal, external, etc.). Only in this way will companies be able to ensure the sustainability of their competitive advantages and learn to survive in the world of intangibles and in the era of knowledge.
Introducing the concept that organizations learn leads us to reflect on the processes that arise and to ask ourselves the following concerns
• How to promote organizational learning?
• Is it worth promoting?
• How to ensure that value is generated to the business?
• How to organize?
• What resources are required?
• How to motivate employees to share their knowledge?
• How to define the communication strategy?
• How to manage change, if you assume the culture of sharing knowledge?
• What is the role of Human Resources management?
Market-leading companies often strive to optimize costs and improve productivity, creating the climate for organizational and individual learning; For this reason, they encourage their employees to identify best practices, measure their application, document and share knowledge, procedures, successful cases, etc., An effective way to achieve this is through what are known as knowledge or learning communities..
For a Knowledge Community to be successful it will be necessary to define its vision, mission, scope, value proposition, members' action rules, communication strategies and ways of recognizing contributions. The most important thing is to identify the possible members who will integrate it and the roles they will assume.
Within these communities, considering errors as sources of learning facilitates the climate of trust among its members, and it is necessary to assume that:
- Leadership is shared. Knowledge that is acquired or already has is offered to the community. Ignorance is valid, as is creativity and innovation.
Additionally, it is required that the people who comprise it:
- Show interest and respect what others think, say and contribute. Be willing to evaluate, learn and discover the strengths rather than the weaknesses of the rest of the members. Be flexible and have a sense of humor.
All of these features are necessary to facilitate the hard work involved in identifying a best practice or development opportunity, standardizing a procedure, or creating an instrument to optimize a process. It becomes necessary, then, to integrate them with individuals who are Ingenious, who have courage, are persevering and patient so that they can capture needs and expectations, inspire and motivate others and guide them towards achievement; In this way, the community will be able to achieve results, surprising its members and the company itself.
It should be noted that the community can be made up of permanent members (experts, with active participation) who meet regularly, assess needs and work together, and freely affiliated members who learn and consult, making the community a source of learning for the community. new worker in the company or for those who must assume a new position. As free members participate, the community will enrich itself, as questions and new ideas arise; hence the importance of involving the owners of the study process, suppliers and clients.
Another important element within the communities is to establish the measurement of management results, in terms of indicators, that allow measuring the addition of value to the company's business. It is necessary to define progress reports to different audiences reflecting new aspects, changes and adjustments made to a particular process, if that is the case, and the benefits in terms of costs or productivity.
Likewise, for the results to be successfully implemented, the dissemination must be aimed at all those involved, and the use of workshops, videoconferences, workshops, etc., is recommended in order to clarify and reinforce what could come to form. part of the official manuals and procedures of the company.
Now, creating and promoting the culture of sharing knowledge involves a series of efforts that the company must undertake. One instrument is individual and group recognition (based on contributions) that should be encouraged in organizations; This recognition goes beyond direct and indirect compensation that coordinates the Human Resources function and requires that the individual be truly valued as the most important asset in the company.
