How can SMEs retain, preserve and spread hard-earned knowledge
This same problem arose last month – how did we solve it then?
What do you mean you don’t know, why didn’t we capture the solution? Now we have to waste time to re-solve the same problem!
I remember such an issue arising – I wonder who solved it then. Let’s find out, and give it to that same person to solve this time as well.
Do these words sound familiar to you? Probably they do, and you are at your wits’ end to find a way to stop reinventing the wheel every time an issue needs to be fixed.
To overcome such a problematic situation, what I practice is to create a Global Learning Repository (GLR). This is a centralized storehouse of Learnings which can be accessed by anyone at any time, though the right to add Learnings to the store exists only with team leaders. This is to ensure that learnings are correctly recorded in an organized manner so they can be retrieved easily. And these learnings can originate from any event in the company.
When our Development department resolves a difficult bug, or efficiently designs a product, or is faced with a choice of many ways to architect a product and eventually decides on one approach, it is important to record these events so that the next time such a situation or choice arises, employees have access to relevant previous choices or decisions made, and the justification for those decisions.
Sometimes our Professional Service department, which needs to access certain internet sites to customize our products for clients, finds some sites very difficult to negotiate. It certainly helps to have a record of which sites are difficult so that we know this ahead of time for similar tough transactions in the future.
Assume you are about to close an important deal, and only have a 50% chance of winning it, because you have a strong competitor. The Head of Sales calls a meeting of everyone involved in the deal to brainstorm on how to close the deal in our favour. So the relevant salespeople, technical people, commercial people etc. are all called for the meeting. You brainstorm and analyze your product and your competition with respect to the client’s needs, and evolve a strategy that wins you the deal. It is very possible that a similar situation might arise in the future, with the same product and/or type of client and/or competitor. If you have a GLR, the lessons from the first case would be available on record for the other sales person to refer to in the future, saving you time and energy, and winning the deal again. Naturally, without the GLR, you would need to repeat the same exercise, losing time, effort, and efficiency, by which time the deal itself may have been lost!
The GLR would have the entire history of all learnings and how they were resolved the very first time they occurred. Learnings can be from critical situations, mistakes made, complex problems resolved, out-of-the-box thinking on the part of a bright employee and so on. For instance, if an architect designed a house on a hill station after heavily researching the direction and strength of sunshine in both winters and summers, it would make sense to add the relevant research to the GLR so that such projects in the future would have access to this research. Thus, similar houses would be designed faster, increasing revenues and hence profits for the builder.
Now that you understand the need for a GLR, let us see how to manage it, because a disorganized GLR is as bad as not having one! It is vital to manage the GLR correctly. As CEO, you must decide upon the form in which learnings will be stored. You may store the records of all learnings in spreadsheet form or you may like to use free software tools like Tweet etc. For the GLR to be useful, it is essential to categorize learnings correctly. You could choose to sort all the learnings by product or by learning types or by person or by skill types or any other criterion. Next, you need to decide who can enter learnings into the GLR; only team leaders have this authority at our company. This is important to ensure that learnings are placed correctly in the relevant category else the entire concept will fail because learnings are irretrievable!
Summary
Create a GLR, decide which tool will manage it (spreadsheet, Tweet etc), create categories to record learnings , decide who can enter learnings, and finally see how these learnings can be shared with the rest of the employees. But where do the inputs for the GLR come from?
The inputs for the GLR come from 2 sources. The KTs you would conduct (see Learning 23) are all learnings that need to be recorded in the GLR for future references. Similarly, all learnings which come from out-of-the-box thinking need to be recorded in the GLR for future reference.
Caution: The GLR must have learnings correctly categorized and entered in order to be useful to employees.
Employees must be thoroughly trained on how to enter and access information into/from the GLR.
Sum-up: Having a GLR saves time and effort, allowing quicker, correct results.
With GLR, the experience of all employees, even if they have long left the company, can be mined for the benefit of the company.
The contributor of this article is Mr. Ajay Wahi, author of management books like and the award for the BEST SME of the year goes to... and Get Noticed Get Promoted.
He can be contacted at 9810027979 or awahi2010@gmail.com
This same problem arose last month – how did we solve it then?
What do you mean you don’t know, why didn’t we capture the solution? Now we have to waste time to re-solve the same problem!
I remember such an issue arising – I wonder who solved it then. Let’s find out, and give it to that same person to solve this time as well.
Do these words sound familiar to you? Probably they do, and you are at your wits’ end to find a way to stop reinventing the wheel every time an issue needs to be fixed.
To overcome such a problematic situation, what I practice is to create a Global Learning Repository (GLR). This is a centralized storehouse of Learnings which can be accessed by anyone at any time, though the right to add Learnings to the store exists only with team leaders. This is to ensure that learnings are correctly recorded in an organized manner so they can be retrieved easily. And these learnings can originate from any event in the company.
When our Development department resolves a difficult bug, or efficiently designs a product, or is faced with a choice of many ways to architect a product and eventually decides on one approach, it is important to record these events so that the next time such a situation or choice arises, employees have access to relevant previous choices or decisions made, and the justification for those decisions.
Sometimes our Professional Service department, which needs to access certain internet sites to customize our products for clients, finds some sites very difficult to negotiate. It certainly helps to have a record of which sites are difficult so that we know this ahead of time for similar tough transactions in the future.
Assume you are about to close an important deal, and only have a 50% chance of winning it, because you have a strong competitor. The Head of Sales calls a meeting of everyone involved in the deal to brainstorm on how to close the deal in our favour. So the relevant salespeople, technical people, commercial people etc. are all called for the meeting. You brainstorm and analyze your product and your competition with respect to the client’s needs, and evolve a strategy that wins you the deal. It is very possible that a similar situation might arise in the future, with the same product and/or type of client and/or competitor. If you have a GLR, the lessons from the first case would be available on record for the other sales person to refer to in the future, saving you time and energy, and winning the deal again. Naturally, without the GLR, you would need to repeat the same exercise, losing time, effort, and efficiency, by which time the deal itself may have been lost!
The GLR would have the entire history of all learnings and how they were resolved the very first time they occurred. Learnings can be from critical situations, mistakes made, complex problems resolved, out-of-the-box thinking on the part of a bright employee and so on. For instance, if an architect designed a house on a hill station after heavily researching the direction and strength of sunshine in both winters and summers, it would make sense to add the relevant research to the GLR so that such projects in the future would have access to this research. Thus, similar houses would be designed faster, increasing revenues and hence profits for the builder.
Now that you understand the need for a GLR, let us see how to manage it, because a disorganized GLR is as bad as not having one! It is vital to manage the GLR correctly. As CEO, you must decide upon the form in which learnings will be stored. You may store the records of all learnings in spreadsheet form or you may like to use free software tools like Tweet etc. For the GLR to be useful, it is essential to categorize learnings correctly. You could choose to sort all the learnings by product or by learning types or by person or by skill types or any other criterion. Next, you need to decide who can enter learnings into the GLR; only team leaders have this authority at our company. This is important to ensure that learnings are placed correctly in the relevant category else the entire concept will fail because learnings are irretrievable!
Summary
Create a GLR, decide which tool will manage it (spreadsheet, Tweet etc), create categories to record learnings , decide who can enter learnings, and finally see how these learnings can be shared with the rest of the employees. But where do the inputs for the GLR come from?
The inputs for the GLR come from 2 sources. The KTs you would conduct (see Learning 23) are all learnings that need to be recorded in the GLR for future references. Similarly, all learnings which come from out-of-the-box thinking need to be recorded in the GLR for future reference.
Caution: The GLR must have learnings correctly categorized and entered in order to be useful to employees.
Employees must be thoroughly trained on how to enter and access information into/from the GLR.
Sum-up: Having a GLR saves time and effort, allowing quicker, correct results.
With GLR, the experience of all employees, even if they have long left the company, can be mined for the benefit of the company.
The contributor of this article is Mr. Ajay Wahi, author of management books like and the award for the BEST SME of the year goes to... and Get Noticed Get Promoted.
He can be contacted at 9810027979 or awahi2010@gmail.com
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