Collective IQ is about creating a culture of knowledge sharing. This involves a commitment to creating high-value knowledge assets, making them available electronically in the best possible way, and maintaining and adapting them constantly to support the aims of the enterprise.
How do you achieve this? By putting in place the above building blocks. Each of these individually enhances organizational capability. In combination, they enhance exponentially.
Plain writing
Write policies, procedures, and instructions, using plain writing principles. This ensures knowledge is quickly and easily acquired and applied by those who need it.
Topic centred
Create ‘atomic units of knowledge’ by combining policy, procedure, and instructional information into single guidance topics that directly support task completion, decision-making, problem-solving, and conceptual understanding.
Document types
Assemble documents in libraries according to type – Guidance topics, Forms, and Other reference documents (Manuals, Technical Papers, Articles, Reports, Flowcharts, SWMS, etc.). Considered together, all these reference documents are knowledge assets.
Process-orientated and hyperlinked
Classify guidance topics according to the process to which they belong. All an organisation’s activities are aspects of processes that break down from its business model. Use hyperlinks to connect topics up (for more context), and down (for more detail).
This results in documented knowledge that forms an integrated whole, which directly supports the organisation’s business model and, by extension, the achievement of its operational and strategic goals. One-to-one correspondence with processes also means that documented knowledge supports a baseline for process performance, a platform for improvement, and a means by which continuous improvements can be implemented and reinforced.
Dynamic Knowledge Repositories (DKRs)
Use groupware to create dynamic knowledge repositories driven by metadata. These provide ready access for users, and fast and flexible update and adaptation for maintainers.
Knowledge asset management
Make managers accountable for maintaining knowledge assets in the same way that they are accountable for physical and financial assets. Without accountability, knowledge assets quickly become out of date, disorganized, duplicated, unreliable, untrusted, and irrelevant.
Training integration
Base training on current documented knowledge. Don’t duplicate it (and potentially contradict it). Current documented knowledge provides ongoing support after training is delivered. If changes are made when preparing training, update current documented knowledge at the same time.
Quality, safety, and environmental management
Interweave systems for managing quality, health and safety, and environmental impacts closely with the organisation’s core business operations and knowledge assets. This is essential for them to be effective and to demonstrate compliance with both legal requirements and industry standards.
Compliance management
Support and adapt legal and regulatory compliance by integrating requirements with the organisation’s core processes. Track compliance requirements in groupware libraries using metadata and look-up links.
Continuous improvement and CoDIAK
By classifying reference documents by process, and managing them in Dynamic Knowledge Repositories (DKRs), you align them directly (and flexibly) with process improvement activity. Codified processes are readily accessible for analysis, adaptation, and improvement. And updated reference documents support rapid and effective change management. The result is CoDIAK – Continuous Development Integration and Application of Knowledge.