Have you ever looked back and wondered how a certain decision was made in your business? And, more so, how your business can now dig its way out of where it has landed as a result of that decision?
Active Knowledge Question:
How do you capture and store your business’s most valuable learnings in a systematic way to ensure knowledge is a compounding asset?
Memories Are Sometimes Written Over
Memory is a funny thing at times. Some people say they have a crystal-clear recall of what happened, what was said and why something was done. Others will have different views of what was done and why. You can be pretty sure that if something has gone vastly wrong, then it will be everyone else’s decision that led the business to where it is. People rarely want to own failure. But everyone likes to be part of the successes.
Corporate memory, however, is an invaluable asset as it reflects the learnings and reasoning within your business. There is possibly no more important area of learning than that of business strategy. Your business strategy is how you intend to compete to achieve your purpose as a business. To be able to look back and understand why decisions, good and bad were made, is a critical strategic asset.
However, few businesses bother to spend the time to capture this knowledge and preserve it for further generations.
Knowledge Sharing And Journaling
The concept of capturing and sharing knowledge has been around for some time now and was given a big boost by the internet and digitalisation. Of course, the principle of ‘rubbish in-rubbish out’ applies to knowledge banks and the quality of what is saved is often in the individual’s hands.
What knowledge is valuable and how it should be catalogued and saved is also a challenge, as often you do not recognise what is valuable until some years later. Usually when no one can recall if it was saved and, if so, where.
The barrier of ‘knowledge being power’ is also a potential problem. If self-interest is rife in your business, then you can be guaranteed that individuals will personally keep valuable knowledge for their own use and will work against its active sharing.
If you reflect back on your personal experiences about knowledge built up in your businesses and where it resides, then you will likely land on the answer, ‘in the head of the person who ran the project’. Want to know something about a project and where the information is stored? You will probably be searching out the person who ran the project and asking them for a copy.
Putting all these practical limitations to one side, the real problem with knowledge sharing is that it tends to be focused on technical data, precedents and the like. You could almost say ‘factual information’. It rarely captures ‘experiences’.
I am not sure how many of you may be into journaling, that is, keeping a written diary of daily events that have been significant, important or just interesting in your life. Journaling seems to be gaining popularity again. If you step away from whatever thoughts you may have about the value of journaling, you will recognise that it is, in fact, a historical record of your actions, reasoning, successes, failures, reflections, feelings and learnings.
Journaling is your personal knowledge bank, which, as you look back over it in future years, can provide you with invaluable insights as to what has worked for you and what has not. It can become your long-term performance guide and support you in achieving those things in life that are most important to you.
The CEO’s Journal
I’ve actually never come across a CEO who during their time in the role has maintained a journal of their experiences, reflections and learnings overseeing a particular business. I am sure many have kept a personal journal as a means of record and reflection. But a journal to be passed onto the next CEO – never.
Imagine you were entering a new role as CEO of a business, but before you did you could sit down and quietly read the journal of your predecessor, and take in their thoughts and feelings from their tenure. You could focus in on periods in which the business went through troubling times and learn how they managed those events.
Even better still, you could study outstanding successes and discern how they were achieved. It would be one of the most invaluable assets that a business would possess.
However, the reality check is that very few people would be likely willing to create such an asset. Imagine, for example, the legal implications it could give rise to.
Yet there are alternate ways in which a CEO can ensure their reasoning and experiences are captured and retained for the future.
A Record Of Reasoning
Think back to the last time you undertook a strategic business planning exercise. If it was done well there would have likely been:
- The gathering, analysis and debating of data.
- A process that challenged and extended the way your team thought about the customer, their needs, and your business’s ability to compete.
- The creation of insights and understanding, not only about the above but how the future may evolve to deliver more value.
- The building of confidence and knowledge in the course of action that you would pursue.
- Possibly the creation of simple guiding principles to guide everyone in the business.
- The moulding of the organisation to be able to deliver on the strategy being developed.
- The crafting of goals, compelling reasons, stepping stones and outcomes in working towards building momentum.
That strategic planning process hopefully brought together the best thinking and insightfulness that the business could muster in developing the way forward.
The question for you is how much of that process– the inputs, discussion, rationale, decisions, expectations, actions – was captured in a way that allows that ‘best thinking and insightfulness’ to be carried forward?
In many cases, the entire process of a strategic plan is reduced to a few words on a power point presentation, so the final outcomes can be communicated. In that outcome, the investment that the business made is lost. It now only resides in the memories of those who participated and their ability to recall it in the future.
You may not keep a journal, but you can ensure that key decisions made are fully captured and carried forward. That way the effect of compounding on experience may be brought to bear in your business’s enduring success.
An entirely new level of performance.
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All the best in the success of your business,
Richard Shrapnel
