The Writing Organization: Knowledge Management Made Easy

I have a piece of advice for those who bemoan the lack of knowledge-sharing in their organizations: Make tacit knowledge explicit. Externalize expertise and experiences across all functions, from the office manager to the executive team.

How? Make it mandatory for every employee to keep an internal blog and post at least once per week. Depending on their role, employees can blog about customer experiences, sales tactics, strategy, product improvements, organizational design, competitors, market trends, and even gossip. Potential productivity losses are outweighed by the value of knowledge that is being generated and shared.

And what is productivity anyway these days? "Productivity (...) is exactly the wrong thing to care about in the new economy," writes Kevin Kelly in his "Maxims for the Network Economy": "In the coming era, doing the exactly right next thing is far more fruitful than doing the same thing twice."

Blogging helps identify the right thing. If you turn your organization into a writing organization, it will become readable and thus more knowledgeable.