A Practical Approach

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The Power of Knowledge Sharing

• A Practical Approach

Presented By Maureen Shaw Supervisor, Workforce
Planning Portland General Electric
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What is Knowledge Management?

• A range of practices used to identify, create,
  represent and distribute knowledge.
• Managing knowledge is one of the critical issues
  organizations face as experienced workers retire.

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Objectives

• Gain awareness of the state of knowledge
  management in your company / department
• Begin to identify gaps and needs
• Learn about practical knowledge-sharing tools
• Ask questions of a panel of your peers
• Resource list

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Two Kinds of Knowledge

• Organizational knowledge explicit
• Human knowledge tacit

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Explicit / Organizational Knowledge

• What we can put into words
• What we can write about
• Guidelines, procedures, instructions
• What can be captured, stored, and easily accessed

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Tacit / Human Knowledge

• Whats in our heads
• Whats hard to explain
• What we learn through experience
• Insights and instincts
• Unwritten rules of thumb
• Hard to capture, store, transmit in a systematic
  manner

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Knowledge Keepers

• Its not just the people who leave, its the
  crucial institutional knowledge they take with
  them
• Only they know what they know!

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The challenge
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Ways to Promote Knowledge Transfer

• Procedures
• Instruction manuals
• Schematics
• Electronic databases
• Work process flow charts
• Recorded knowledge interviews
• Videotaped interviews or processes
• Knowledge mentors peer experts
• Internal networks formal or informal

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More Ideas

• Knowledge sharing events brown bags
• Peer mentors for new employees
• Indexes of documents and supplies
• Yellow Pages of go to experts
• Establishing knowledge coordinators
• Summer interns / Educator interns / Retirees
• Employee cross training
• Electronic file sharing
• Work duties lists
• Business Education Compact, www.becpdx.org

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How are you doing?

• Self - assessment checksheet compare results at
  your table
• Each table identifies one best practice to share

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TVAs Strategic Lessons Learned

• There is a logical process.
• Focus on critical positions one job at a time
• Lots of detailed work, analysis, planning,
  project management
• No single solution
• Everyone must do their part management, human
  resources, process owners and knowledge holders

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Back to the Willamette
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Resources

• Peer-to-Peer Mentoring Workshops - Oregon
  Graduate Institute, http//cpd.ogi.edu/
• Peer-to-Peer Mentoring Teach What You Know ,
  Steve Trautman, www.peermentoring.com
• The Complete Idiots Guide to Knowledge
  Management by Melissie Clemmons Rumizen, Ph.D.
• Tennessee Valley Authority http//tva.gov/knowle
  dgeretention/
• Harvard Business Review, www.hbr.org
• Business Education Compact - www.becpdx.org