Tuesday 24 May 2016

Re-use, review, improve

Re-use, review and improve are the three basic components of any Knowledge Management cycle


Start a piece of work by re-using knowledge that already exists, in preference to starting from a blank sheet, or re-inventing the wheel. There will be times when there is no knowledge to re-use and you have to innovate, but 8 times out of 10, when faced by an unfamiliar problem, the knowledge that you need already exists somewhere in your organisation or network.  You just have to find it.

Once you have applied the knowledge and finished the task or the project, it's time to review. Hold an After Action review or a Retrospect, and collect your lessons, What was supposed to happen? What actually happened? What have you learned? How reliable was the knowledge? Was anything missing? Have you learned something new?

Once the review is complete, improve the knowledge. Fill in any gaps, and add any addition knowledge you have gained.  By improving the knowledge, you pass it on to the next person in a better state than when you found it. Over time the knowledge gets better and better, and more and more refined. 

Through a combination of re-use, review, improve you are contributing to a continuous improvement loop for knowledge, which will help you and your colleagues continuously improve delivery. 

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