Improving “Knowledge Flow” within an organisation

By “Knowledge Flow” – I am referring to the speed and efficiency by which communications are delivered to the employees in an organisation.

Often, information is fed along a human chain of Executives, Senior Management, Local Management and eventually to team members. This is often determined by the scheduling of respective monthly team meetings or circulation of bi-monthly/quarterly internal magazines.

An example:

• A new scheme for employees is going to be launched (educational/promotional) etc. It is discussed by and agreed upon by the executive team.
• Each executive circulates this news to their senior managers at their monthly update.
• Each senior manager then relays the news to their local team managers at their monthly update.
• Each team manager “announces” the new scheme to their team.

Notice the emphasis on new. Depending on the circumstances, be it availability of individuals or indeed the occurrence of any of these meetings – the news could take up to a month to reach the people who it really affects. Laurence Prusak describes it as follows:

Knowledge flows along existing pathways in organizations. If we want to understand how to improve the flow of knowledge, we need to understand those pathways.

I like the idea of internal blogging to deliver non-confidential information to employees. To make it even easier, the name for your blog can be “The [YOUR DEPARTMENT NAME HERE] Blog”.

Once people get over the “new-toy” aspect of reading a blog, they will see how easy it is to get the latest news, find relevant past posts (using categories and archiving) and how simple they are to use.

The problem I see with monthly or quarterly internal magazines is that they end up in the trash, and you would be hard pressed to find that much of what it contained was remembered. In contrast, if I remember that there was a post about Career Opportunities or Training Courses recently on the blog, I can easily search for it and find what I want!

For the executives, it can ensure quick responses to queries and items to be addressed. It also provides an opportunity to link to relevant intranet pages where the full article or policy relating to the topic can be found. It acts as an information repository for all of the communications within the organisation, division, or department. This is in contrast to an email pointing to a policy document which is “buried” deep behind the intranet homepage:

Home->Division->Department->Team->Documents->Polices->Comms Policy

If we want to improve knowledge flow, then we have to ease the information load on our executives and managers (the serial forwarders) to ensure that information is communicated to employees in real time. That way we will have an environment where employees are always receiving information which is relevant and up-to-date.

As part of my dissertation I am going to examine knowledge flows and how they can be improved.