Web 2.0 tools could help preserve institutional memory

The idea is bright but I'm afraid it's theoretical. You name it the companies today consider employees as disposable/replaceble. So why should one support this by sharing the knowledge that makes her valuable?
And even if she's using public Web 2.0 tools like Twitter or similar sharing services it would take a big effort to recover gone information from that. Companies should embrace a culture of documenting important things by providing apropriate tools and a scaffold for documenting. And of course there is also a need for monitoring the success of this process.

For me, the key to successful knowledge management is "participation". Read Larry Prusak's book "Working Knowledge" and he describes something called "knowledge currency" which implies the exchange of value for knowledge sharing. Max's point is well-taken...who wants to give something for nothing...or worse...lose their powerbase? The concept of "knowledge currency" that represents the motivational value to openly exchange/share knowledge. That smacks of a minimum cultural entrance criteria before the first piece of technology is dropped off on the loading dock.

The reason most companies today are worried about 'knowledge sharing' is that they don't want to hire 'extra' people to learn their 'craft' alongside older, more experienced workers. They want to be able to hire someone, hand them a sheaf of procedures or give them access to a a wiki, and have them perform like someone who has done the job for 5-10 years. Can you say 'tightwads'?

WEB 2.0 or e-learning is not a miser WoW for a service company that now live a period of great competitvness . Share KNowledge or Manage Knowledge inside a firm is one of its asset that will garantee a bright feature. Some knowledge not always can be bought by hiring experience people , or at least not in any case. The mayor companies need to spread out their know how in the most effective way , especially when have Centre spread out along the globe and with different service maturity level . Don't forget anyway that Prson to person Training, mentoring OJT are alway actual and vital for a service company that base its business on a skill leverage . Shall we continue to say this "cheapskate" ?

Max:
Thanks for your comment.

Just to clarify, I used Twitter as an example of how people share, but I see using micro-blogging inside the firewall and lots of companies are introducing Twitter-like tools for the enterprise that would make it simpler to capture and search this information stream.

I absolutely agree that companies should encourage a documenting culture, but the beauty of Web 2.0 tools is that they leave an audit trail of knowledge without explicitly requiring the employee to take a step outside of the normal work procedure. The sharing of information with co workers is then built into into the process and become part of the culture naturally (at least in theory).

Ron

Shadowchb:
Thanks for your comment.

I think companies have always been worried about knowledge sharing even before today's leaner staffing requirements, but it's not just the scenario you describe. We now have companies being combined, and at the same time, more spread out than ever before and we need tools to make the act of knowledge sharing a part of the day to day work process. Web 2.0 tools at least give you a fighting chance to do that.

Ron

Thanks to everyone for your thoughtful comments. I'm so pleased to see so many people sharing their thoughts and ideas.

Ron

In my company it is not so much the tools that keep people from sharing knowledge, it's the people themselves. I think a company should promote the sharing of knowledge by giving people credit if they do. Why not judge people by how they do their job, but also by how they share their knowledge?

I do not see how Web 2.0 could do a better job than "plain old" ECM ssytems. We use both, and the only difference is that young people tend to prefer web 2.0 systems and the elder use e-mail, fileshares and, growingly, our ECM system. The reason? They are familiar with the systems their generation uses.

Then again: I (being of the in between generation) still prefer our ECM system, because it supports both generations (it has 2.0 capabilites, but can function as a fileshare as well). And one big advantage: it has a search engine that can search through all information that is stored, whether it is a Word file, a discussion, a blog, metadata or a chat session. That is the main disadvantage of web 2.0 systems: we have separate software for wiki's, blogs, discussions, chat etc. We need a separate search engine to be able to search all repositories in one go.

Hi Evert:
Search is a key to all of this. Being able to search across all of the repositories to get to the information that's out there is essential. But I don't see these tools as generationally or mutually exclusive.

The tools all work together. Web 2.0 doesn't mean there are no more file shares or email. They each play a part in the system, but the Web 2.0 tools when fully integrated with these other tools provide an easy way to share data and information in the natural course of interacting in a work day.