As an entrepreneur or self-employed person, you are analyzing your operational plan for this year. What is your strategy, what services will you develop and in which markets will you operate?
Have you wondered what you know or should know how to do better than others about your business?…
Before starting to strategically plan your business or your life, it would be important to consider what knowledge is necessary now and what will be future. The proposal is to systematically carry out a diagnosis of the knowledge and skills that one possesses and / or must possess.
Curiously, this is done very little. They have always carried out, with great precision, a physical inventory… But what about knowledge?… The best way to start is to take an inventory of what I know what you are doing or what you want to do, that is, an analysis of processes (be it business, production of goods or services or what you want to undertake)… To this we detail the activities we carry out to develop this process… From there we start to carry out an inventory of knowledge, establishing what we know to carry out each process of the business, the product, the service, etc. … This details the knowledge that we apply in carrying out our work.
With this information in hand, we will prepare to organize it… As a first approximation, we can determine what we know better than others (competitive advantage of knowledge) and in which areas we are weaker (competitive disadvantage of knowledge). With this baggage, we can identify how to compete efficiently and what aspects need to be intensified to remain viable in the market.
In addition, those services or activities that can be undertaken with the inventory of knowledge that we possess can be identified… And?… You will ask… What is this useful for me?… Because, improving the productivity of work based on knowledge at work Whether independently or in a small team, it will be one of the most challenging goals business must face in the 21st century. And this urgency for knowledge comes from the convergence of five trends that are putting pressure on businesses to make quick and efficient use of their knowledge:
1. The constantly increasing amount of knowledge contained in products and services.
2. A shorter life cycle of the utility of knowledge.
3. The reduction of time and geographic barriers thanks to computing and the Internet.
4. A tendency to focus on core skills and improve the productivity of trained professionals.
5. And an increasing focus on the growth that businesses (companies, micro-enterprises, startups, and the like) require to survive. As we can see, businesses and professionals live in a time when we are absolutely dependent on knowledge. Knowledge-based businesses account for 30 percent of jobs in the United States and generate nearly 45 percent of new job growth.
Quality emphasized obtaining products and services that satisfy the customer, reengineering taught us to use technology to improve and simplify business processes… Now to make our ventures viable, we must focus on growth.
Analysis of the facts shows us that the link between knowledge and growth is a fundamental challenge that we must actively face. Knowledge management should not only encompass traditional forms such as licenses and patents, but also make up the theoretical knowledge acquired, work experiences, work techniques, and all the tacit knowledge that is in our minds we could then imagine three processes Characteristic and independent that must be included in any knowledge management strategy:
1. The creation of knowledge by individuals or groups of professionals within a company or in a specific undertaking.
2. The addition of knowledge, which is the systematic accumulation of skills and experiences that people acquire in relation to business processes and practices, information related to a particular business, intellectual properties such as patents, manufacturing secrets and license agreements, which operate as a business knowledge database.
3. The use and reuse of knowledge, which involves discovering what we know about the business and distributing this knowledge to the entire organization (if it is a company) so that it is used, reused and acted on respectively to create new knowledge by business, closing the circle of the process. As we see, knowledge management is absolutely dynamic. With regard to how to structure our knowledge-based business environment, it is important to rethink the development of the following skills:
1. Build our own database (books, reports, Web page addresses saved in favorites, file on our computer the resolution of cases of former clients, deepen our professional contacts, subscribe to Newsletters related to our interest, specialty magazines, discussion forums, etc.) and organize it in such a way that it is quickly accessible and can be used at the right time.
2. Collaborate in communities of trained professionals, who represent themselves in the form of informal networks of people with shared practices and interests (either within a company or participating individually in discussion forums or another organization that provides us with knowledge).
3. And develop a kind of "motor" or "mental exercise of knowledge" to keep knowledge moving, using creativity and innovation to keep growing organization or independent work. In a company or startup, this surely calls for risk, boldness and leadership. The task of leadership (more than a leader, a coach) is to create the environment for knowledge management. Requiring less emphasis on what we have and more emphasis on what we know. It is about defining a context and stimulating the minds that are involved in the creation and realization of the business. Do not think that it is a priority of large organizations, I know some family companies to which the implementation of Knowledge Management,It would create great value for the business and allow it to remain an open, synergistic and viable systemic organization.
