Maintaining knowledge means retaining it within the organization over time, keeping it up-to-date, and verifying that it is always relevant and useful for organizational development.
Since knowledge, as we have seen, can be explicit, implicit, and tacit, this work must be done not only with documented knowledge but also with all the others. This process is necessary because there are always changes within any organization, and it is therefore necessary to maintain the level of knowledge even during periods of turnover, when new people arrive and when those who have worked there for years leave, when old systems become obsolete, and when new ones are introduced.
Explicit knowledge will be acquired through documented information and, therefore, whenever new knowledge is acquired that can be transmitted explicitly, the reference controlled information must be updated. Appropriate controls must then be put in place to keep the documents up-to-date. Periodically, then, each process should be reviewed not only to determine whether it is being executed as required but also to verify that its objectives, methodologies used, and resources to be used are relevant. It is also important that people know the current performance of the process and past performance, and this is why it is necessary to maintain records that give an accurate picture.
It is also necessary to periodically review the knowledge required to manage the process by asking ourselves: "Do we need to know X or more?" and again "Have the lessons learned due to recent problems we have had on the process been transmitted to all those who need to be made aware of them?" Following the review of the process, consideration can be given to archiving certain documents and updating others. Knowledge should also be maintained when it relates to a project.
Upon completion of a project, in fact, time should be spent reviewing it in its entirety together with the people who worked on it to evaluate each phase and try to understand what worked well and what could have been done better. Obviously, the goal of this moment of reflection should not be to redistribute any blame among the people for the things that went wrong but to learn from successes and any failures.
Demonstrating that organizational knowledge is maintained to the extent necessary can be done in this way:
- Presenting evidence of the existence of a document control process that provides for how to promptly update documented information following a change to a process;
- Presenting evidence that the relevance of a process's knowledge is continuously reviewed and that provisions have been made for its updating;
- Presenting evidence that the performance trends of each process are continuously monitored;
- Presenting evidence that when personnel leave the organization or are hired there is a handover for what concerns knowledge
Making knowledge available within the organization
Making organizational knowledge available to the extent necessary means enabling those who need to be aware of it to access the information. Therefore, if a person needs to know certain information to fulfill their duties effectively, that information should be made available to them. A person, in fact, cannot be held responsible for the results achieved if they do not possess all the essential information they need to produce them.
Making organizational knowledge available to everyone can be done in two ways:
- Acquiring and distributing this knowledge in the form of documented information (explicit knowledge) to those who need it and allowing them to access it. For documented information, in this case, we can mean guides, methods, codes of conduct, training materials, procedures, etc.;
- Having people who have this knowledge and people who do not have it work in groups in order to circulate information
The development of this information can go through a real PDCA cycle that will be articulated in this way:
- Planning of the documented information
- Realization
- Testing of the results achieved using it
- Possible update
Demonstrating that organizational knowledge has been made available to the extent necessary is possible in this way:
- Presenting evidence of the presence of a process that has the task of disseminating explicit knowledge on how to undertake individual activities and make decisions about them and the lessons learned in relation to the work of one person or more people;
- Selecting a representative sample of people engaged in a process and demonstrating that everyone can access the explicit knowledge that has been made available;
- Selecting a representative sample of people engaged in a process and demonstrating that each of them can contact the people to whom the experience necessary to make certain decisions has been recognized in case of difficult problems to face
Acquisition of new knowledge
What is the meaning of this specific requirement? Since knowledge is a resource used by organizations to achieve objectives, it follows that, when trends change, current knowledge should be updated if it is found to be insufficient to continue to meet organizational objectives. In preparing any plan to achieve an objective, an assessment of current knowledge should be made to identify whether or not additional knowledge is required for its achievement. To bridge the knowledge gap, it is possible to find this knowledge outside the organization using sources such as libraries, trade associations, universities, or it can be acquired by hiring people who possess it.
Still, you can finance the training of an internal resource. Demonstrating how the organization has acquired the additional knowledge it has deemed necessary can be done in the following way:
- Presenting evidence of the existence of a process aimed at acquiring or accessing the additional knowledge necessary;
- Selecting a representative sample of changes that have occurred in the internal or external environment and presenting the results of the analyses that have established the need to acquire additional knowledge;
- Presenting the plans for the acquisition or access to the additional knowledge planned as necessary