Traditional organizations are changing their way of work. Until not so long ago, most organizations and today many traditional ones had a clear hierarchy and were process oriented.
Consequently, leadership was determined by position and was exercised by supervision, people carried out their tasks with not a lot of interaction and there were little synergies among different departments.
Hence, we were before a cultural scenario oriented to avoidance of errors at all costs where knowledge was a precious asset of a few in the top of the hierarchy, and where the average employee had less than optimal means of learning.
The arrival of Agile
Agile methodologies come by the hand of software engineering good practices. Due to software development, specific and project oriented ways of working need of new models that adapt better to these practices.
Projects are characterized by the creation of a new product or service. For that, the lifecycle has several differentiated phases chained one after the other, until a result is produced.
However, project development should not be understood as something lineal but as a living, evolving system, that evolves along with the changes in needs of it.
The new organization
These new ways of work and project based structures, imply leaving aside obsolete methods as to adapt to an ever-changing environment. We start to find a working culture that embrace error, experiment, and innovate, that seeks learning constantly and that thrives to give customer an added value.
The new organization is then formed by multi-disciplinary teams where people will need to have not only the right knowledge but also, the right transversal skills with which to confront diverse and different projects at hand.
Leadership is decoupled from supervision and gets recognition the informal leader, that which can lead by example. Organizations adopt plainer structures, favouring agility, knowledge exchange and adaptability.
The moment of Knowledge Management
NOW is the moment of Knowledge Management. Collaboration and knowledge transfer are a competitive advantage. It is the moment to give visibility to what our employees think, to foster debate, to bring issues into discussion and generally, evolve.
If we don´t align our company´s knowledge with our company´s strategy, if we do not share it internally, make it visible and update it continuously, we are taking the risk of becoming crystalized and not able to respond in time to new challenges or business opportunities.
For that, the first step would consist in a cultural transformation where the company becomes a content facilitator, equipping and incentivizing employees for knowledge sharing. Employee should feel sufficiently comfortable and encouraged to share their knowledge with the rest of the company, avoiding the sensation that they become replaceable. Also, the company should integrate knowledge capture within its core processes and enable the flow of ideas, constructive criticism, creativity, and debate.