Author: Claire Valentine, Training Manager
Last week I attended my first NetIKX meeting at the British Dental Association. Chris Collison was presenting on how as internal experts, knowledge and information professionals can use techniques such as ‘the river diagram’ to assess and improve the knowledge and information processes within their own organisations. The technique takes a step on from benchmarking exercises to develop a situation whereby a learning and knowledge sharing culture can flourish. It does this through identifying common ground on which to build a maturity model. This model identifies key aspects to benchmark, a discussion on what ‘good’ looks like in terms of performance is then identified on a sliding scale for the model and each part of the organisation are asked to self assess their section against it. You can read about this in more depth in Chris’ latest book ‘No more consultants, we know more than we think’ which he co-authored with Geoff Parcell.
The session itself was extremely enlightening as not only did Chris present and explain this technique but also took us through a practical exercise whereby we all made assessments of the organisations we worked in against a readymade maturity model of knowledge sharing benchmarks. From this initial assessment we were able to develop a very clear picture in the room of where the expertise was the strongest for different bench mark measurements and where that expertise could be shared with those who wanted to learn and develop expertise. This led us into a knowledge sharing exercise as ‘experts’ in certain areas were split on to different tables so that those who wanted to improve their progress in certain areas could learn from those who felt they were doing well in those areas.
Our table was focussed on knowledge strategy where we had a very interesting and lively discussion on best practices for building, developing and implementing a knowledge strategy. Some of the key learning points were:
- A strategy should be simple enough to be kept in your head and not constantly referred to through a paper document
- A strategy should consider the values, ethos, and policies and culture it wishes to promote
- Advocacy and promotion through champions will aid acceptance of the strategy
- Confidence and building trust important considerations in the development and implementation of a strategy
- Technology, the environment (i.e. building space etc) are all important facilitators in the implementation of a knowledge strategy
It is interesting to note that a lot of what was discussed in this group required the use of the ‘internal consultant’ skills that we talked through at the event at Henley earlier on in the month (see post Jack of all, master of none? ) Clearly, capitalising on the ‘softer skills’ such as influencing, advocacy, and relationship management are important parts of the tool-bag of skills needed today.
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