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Description
In our great-grandfather's day, lessons were often taught by those who had hands-on experience and teaching was very often "see, learn, do". The successive generations would add their practical lessons and improve the process or procedure. These lessons were often written down in "How to" documents (explicit knowledge). However, this never captured true expertise, and subsequent lessons learned or experience (tacit knowledge) were even harder to capture and therefore never added. Because learning is a continual process, documenting knowledge is only a "snapshot in time".
In today's environment, we are more separated while at the same time connected by the computer. While computers enable us to stay in touch with our operations virtually from any location, they also separate us from the experts that really know what's going on. If you could sit and talk to your great-grandfather, eventually you would hear some gold nuggets that came from experience, yet were never written down. In industry, we know that the generation of the "baby boomers" is approaching retirement, and we will lose these experiences if we do not know how to capture them. In the government, and in the military, we need to harness the experience of our senior leaders.
Fundamentally, this is called knowledge management (KM). KM systematically brings together people, organizations and processes, enabled by technology to facilitate the exchange of operationally relevant information and expertise. It is a process whereby information is discovered, selected, organized, distilled, shared, developed and used in a social context to improve organizational effectiveness.
Knowledge management in conjunction with information management (IM), should provide an organizational framework to... |
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