Knowledge Management (KM) is about documenting and sharing what is through activities such as:
• Knowledge audits. Determining exactly what intellectual capital exists in the company at a given point in time. Knowledge audits can take the form of informal interviews, such as self-reporting formal paper-based surveys, or through group meetings with management and employees.
• Collaboration. Formal task- or project-oriented groups designed to facilitate information sharing. Formal collaboration normally involves the participation of employees who normally would not work together in the course of their regular work.
• Communities of practice. Employees who share tasks, projects, interests, and goals, normally within a specific work area. For example, the programmers and artists in a multimedia company formed two communities of practice, defined largely by their common work function. Communities of practice are generally self-forming, dynamic entities.
• Knowledge mapping. A process of identifying who knows what, how the information is stored in the organization, where it’s stored, and how the stores of information are interrelated.
• Mentoring. Experts sharing heuristics, values, and techniques with employees new to processes within the company. Mentoring, like the formation of communities of practice, can be fostered by the corporation but not dictated.
• Social network analysis. The process of identifying who interacts with whom and how information is communicated from one individual or group to another.
• Storytelling. Otherwise known as the case-based method of teaching, storytelling is a way of communicating corporate values and other implicit forms of knowledge.
• Training and development. The traditional method of dispersing explicit knowledge. However, in Knowledge Management, training and development normally involves internal experts from different disciplines, as opposed to professional trainers.
It’s important to note that these activities aren’t limited to KM initiatives, and rarely are all techniques used in the same initiative and at the same time.