# The Rise of Knowledge Management By:: [[Brian Heath]] 2022-11-15 Knowledge Management is the practice in some organizations to formally capture, record, and share knowledge to improve understanding within the organization. This formal shared understanding is said to improve the training of employees, alignment of work streams, strategies, and objectives, and organizational outcomes via documented learning. From the outside, it looks like a valuable thing to do, especially for large organizations where the division of labor and organizational hierarchies prevent the efficient sharing of organizational knowledge. However, it is rare to find a place that is executing an official knowledge management program. The most common attempts come in the form of data governance programs that focus on data controls but not knowledge and document-sharing portals where employees store and share documents in a central location. These shared documents hardly represent knowledge, but even if they do, it is nearly impossible to decipher what that knowledge is without tremendous amounts of effort. These documents are not curated, and recording information does not represent knowledge inherent within the organization. Creating a shared understanding of the world, the organization, and how it works goes a long way in solving many organizational problems. So, why aren't organizations embracing knowledge management? One reason may be ignorance. They are unaware that such programs and capabilities exist. Compounding this problem is that knowledge management jargon and approaches can be hard to understand. Knowledge is much more complicated than we give it credit. Take a minute to appreciate all the complex stuff your brain does without you thinking about it. For example, the fact that you can have a coherent discussion about whether cereal is a soup right now is astonishing. Now imagine codifying that formally. Things get complicated quickly. However, understanding knowledge management is only one barrier. The other is the effort it takes to build and maintain the knowledge management program. It is non-trivial work that is hard to measure and mostly has long-term benefits. Current business cultures view these long-term benefits as never a priority because the long-term never happens before the short-term. Nevertheless, knowledge management systems have a future if sold, positioned, and deployed properly within the constraints of human and organizational conditions. As the Information Age passes, we enter the Age of Choice. This new age is about choosing and curating information into knowledge and wisdom. It is only natural that we move forward with evolving our information systems into knowledge systems. While still early in its development, Knowledge Management is one step towards capitalizing on the massive amounts of information surrounding us. Because of the formal nature of Knowledge Management in dealing with information, no other profession is better suited to tackle and make sense of your organizational knowledge than Analytics. #### Related Items [[Analytics]] [[Knowledge]] [[Management]] [[Knowledge Management]] [[Complex Systems]] [[Organizational Analytics]] [[Business]]