Circulating wisdom

Without the circulation of wisdom, great initiatives such as exciting team meetings and communities of practice may never reach their full potential. Again, there are numerous ways to circulate wisdom within business.

The path you choose depends in part on the style and character of the knowledge involved. What must be remembered is that simple checklists or routines can be shared if they are written down, but when the wisdom is locked up in people s minds in the form of stories or experience they are harder to use. So great care must be taken to give time for people to share their formulas, mental models and views of the world.

In this regard, here are some examples of how knowledge is generated and dispersed successfully in business:

• A team decides to apply their learned knowledge to a new situation or scenario. For example, a sales team reviews their performance in the marketplace and applies what they have learned to the next week.

• Individuals and groups archive what they have learnt and place it on a business database so that it can be used elsewhere by others.

• People provide peer assistance to another team. For example, a team leader in a factory in Fiji has developed a new way of reducing toxic waste. The global head office in Paris hears of this and the team leader is asked to go to Mexico to help reduce toxic waste in another factory. However, in assisting in Mexico, the team leader s job is to get the Mexican team thinking, by listening and asking questions and avoiding telling what is required. Then when the Fijian team leader returns with new knowledge discovered in Mexico, he or she could make further changes in Fiji.

• Placing scenarios, work in progress or case studies on a business web site or discussion forum to get other people s opinions . This is particularly valuable in regard to situations yet to be confronted, or for those challenges which are more complex. For example, a past CEO of Heinz Watties in New Zealand described how they established shadow executive meetings of junior staff to review situations explored by senior executives at another time.

• For those very infrequent requests such as obsolete technology and unique processes, a person is appointed to monitor and make sure the question is answered . In larger organizations good digital technology is important and on many occasions people may need to raise their question on the Internet to get an answer.