Books for keeping company knowledge usable

The company can have a folder for every customer and still depend on one person's memory. The missing part may be why an exception was accepted, which promise changed or how somebody recognizes a problem before the usual instructions apply.

Infinite Upside is our first recommendation for seeing the operating cost of that dependence. The Knowledge-Creating Company examines how experience becomes organizational knowledge and innovation. The New Edge in Knowledge addresses the management effort that helps useful knowledge reach everyday work.

1. Infinite Upside: noticing what exists only in the founder

   By Vijay Sheth.

   Chapter 8 of Infinite Upside: Building Wealth With Room to Live describes responsibilities that gathered around the founder's experience. He knows a customer's history, remembers an unusual arrangement and can resolve a question more quickly than he can explain its background.

   A manager's title does not transfer that knowledge. A capable new colleague may still lack a way to find out what was promised, what can change and who has authority. The company needs the experience, but the company does not yet have it in a form others can use.

   Choose the memoir for the owner's part in creating and maintaining this dependence. A fictional installation business might have job records that appear complete while the founder alone knows why certain sites need a different preparation sequence. Every exception brings another call to the founder.

   That company may need documents, practice, conversation or access to better records. Begin by asking which knowledge the ordinary work still requires somebody to supply personally. Chapter 16 adds attention to records that remain usable as tools and people change. Keeping information is only part of keeping it useful.

2. The Knowledge-Creating Company: examining how experience becomes something the organization can use

   By Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi.

   The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation investigates knowledge creation inside organizations. Its published account connects knowledge held in experience with knowledge that can be expressed and used in new processes, products and services.

   This is the more conceptual reading choice. Consider it if the fictional installation company's difficulty makes you question the assumption that sharing knowledge simply means writing down what somebody already knows. A skilled person may find it hard to explain a judgment until another colleague tries the work and asks a question the expert no longer notices.

   The book's Japanese-company focus and historical setting matter to the selection. Read for the organizational argument you want to understand, including its relationship to innovation. It is broader than producing a procedure for tomorrow's job, and the companies in its account do not supply evidence about your own operation.

3. The New Edge in Knowledge: organizing a continuing knowledge effort

   By Carla O'Dell and Cindy Hubert.

   The New Edge in Knowledge: How Knowledge Management Is Changing the Way We Do Business turns toward the management of organizational knowledge. The authors' organization describes a practical emphasis on identifying important knowledge, connecting people with it and incorporating the effort into daily work.

   Choose it when the need is already recognized but the effort remains scattered. In the fictional installation business, several people may have written useful notes while nobody knows which version to use, who maintains them or how a field lesson reaches the next team.

   The distinction from Nonaka and Takeuchi is the immediate reading purpose: understanding knowledge creation, or organizing the continuing work around it. O'Dell and Hubert's enterprise examples may involve more resources than a small business has. Look for the question worth carrying back before assuming the company needs a large knowledge program because it needs a dependable answer.

Choose the point where knowledge stops moving

Is experience difficult to explain? Is useful information hard to find? Does a correction reach the record while leaving the next user's practice unchanged? Those findings can call for different reading and different work afterward.

The teaching explanation follows one learner's understanding. The handover discussion examines a specific transfer of responsibility. This selection concerns the wider company capability around those occasions.