Does your business follow a tribal knowledge or an organizational knowledge style of management?

Tribal Knowledge

Most businesses start out using a tribal knowledge style of management, where there is no system to administer process details. The company is simple enough that the process details for operating the business are interactively passed along to team members. Employees pick up on the knowledge from activities like training, meetings, emails, and workplace experiences. With this management style, the responsibility of knowledge preservation permeates across the memories of the employees.

The effectiveness of tribal knowledge starts breaking down when the business grows and becomes more complex.   Using employee memories to preserve knowledge undermines efforts to manage changes; it becomes difficult to gauge which portions of the process details are known by the employees.  There are risks that the knowledge is spread too thin, and details become lost when someone either forgets or leaves the business.  Employees can become less confident about the work because they’re uncertain if their understanding of the process details is up-to-date and accurate.

To compensate tribal knowledge practices,  companies started documenting this information in knowledge base articles, procedure files, PowerPoint slides, training materials, emails, and other forms of documentation.    The inconsistency of these documentation methods added complexity issues with managing the knowledge. It generated additional concerns about where the information resides and if it is still up-to-date and accurate.  There are also timing issues where the knowledge content was not easily accessible at the times when users needed to use it.  These documentation methods still kept employees in the unsupported position of having to practice tribal knowledge.

Organizational Knowledge

The organizational knowledge style of management involves using a central interactive software system for maintaining a support resource on the process details.  The system provides employees ongoing support and relieves the burden of their memory being the sole knowledge source.  With organizational knowledge, employees can perform their work confidently, knowing they have quick access to a support resource for reviewing the latest process details. Knowledge loss risks are minimized by having a system to retain process details. Using a central system for reviewing process details simplifies the change management efforts on planning and implementing business improvements.

Organizational knowledge is another example where a software system is used to improve the productivity of business operations.    Software systems enhance productivity by reducing the manual steps of converting data into the information employees need to be successful at work.   An organizational knowledge system reduces the manual effort of having to memorize all the process details by supporting employees with quick access to the knowledge they need to be successful at work.

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