Stop managing your knowledge. Let it manage you.
Knowledge is the lifeblood of every successful company and every successful work stream. Think about your day-to-day — whether you are an executive, a manager, or a powerful individual contributor — your work heavily relies on the knowledge created in your company by other people, and other people heavily rely on the knowledge you create.
Companies have started to realize that in recent years and invest more in knowledge management platforms, as well as ramp up more and more roles whose job is to manage and deploy knowledge: product enablement, sales enablement, etc.
Knowledge enables. It drives productivity and alignment. At Akooda, we believe that companies are not even scratching the surface in taking advantage of the knowledge they create to enable their employees and managers.
Why? For 2 reasons.
- Most of the knowledge we create is undocumented and unstructured. It lives in places where we don’t usually look for knowledge, and in places that aren’t easily accessible or searchable
- We don’t have access to and make no real use of a whole layer of immensely insightful meta-knowledge
Let’s unpack those.
Where does knowledge live?
Knowledge lives along the dimensions of documentation and structure but the most interesting and important knowledge is undocumented. The knowledge we hold in our brains includes our reasoning and answers to follow-up questions. Sharing knowledge verbally in meetings allows the flexibility of thought and applications that generate innovative ideas.
Knowledge is also our currency. We often use it to build relationships and position ourselves within the organization. In other words, knowledge is worth more when we tie it to the people who hold it and enable live knowledge exchange, when we use it to cultivate internal networks and meaningful interactions. Having a meaningful conversation with a colleague is worth much more than reading a document she wrote about the topic at hand.
This is why at Akooda we attribute knowledge to the people that hold it, generating an intuitive understanding of who is working with whom and on what, and who are the experts on specific topics, customers, or projects. We build an internal networks knowledge manual.
What is meta-knowledge and what can we do with it?
If knowledge is the lifeblood of any successful company, its meta-knowledge is the lifeblood of successful company management. Knowledge allows us to know. Meta-knowledge allows us to manage — ourselves, our employees, and our companies.
Combining these two theses, drives our vision for our product: to allow everyone in the company to better manage their work and their surroundings, in a knowledge-based manner.
If this resonates, let’s talk. Moriya@akooda.co
