This Knowledge Stuff Isn’t So Hard

You know, we know how to do this knowledge management thing.  We all do it, every day.

• We learn things—capture knowledge—nearly every time we do something or talk with someone
• We keep our knowledge current in just the same way.  If we try something and it doesn’t work, we generally try to figure out what went wrong, and we learn better—improve our knowledge—in the process
• We use our own knowledge all the time.  Generally, we do this by remembering things, or by having what we’ve learned baked in to how we do things.  Sometimes, we look at notes, emails, or books, just to make sure we get it right

In other words, we capture, improve, and reuse knowledge in the workflow of our everyday lives.  We don’t have weekly knowledge reviews where people peer into our skulls to check what we know.  We learn and self-correct as we go.  Maybe it’s not perfect, but it seems to work pretty well, actually.

It’s powerful when we do it ourselves.  Think how powerful it is when we do it as a group.