by Cynthia J. Young
Organizations are continuously seeking ways to improve efficiency and reduce waste. Lean methodology, with its focus on streamlining processes and eliminating non-value-added activities, has become a popular approach for achieving these goals. However, the success of Lean initiatives often hinges on the availability and effective use of knowledge within the organization. Integrating knowledge management (KM) into Lean projects can significantly enhance their effectiveness by ensuring that the right information is available to the right people at the right time.
KM can be defined as knowing what to do with the information (or data) that you have. In the end, it’s the people side of the people/process/technology triangle of KM that makes the decisions to support the internal customers of the organization and the external customers paying for the services. For Lean projects, KM involves identifying critical knowledge, making it accessible, and ensuring its application to improve processes. Integrating human-centric knowledge management practices can improve both the basic and the intense Lean projects. Use common sense. Don’t overcomplicate it.
Integrating KM in Lean projects should not be a project of its own. KM practices should be a standard method of ensuring knowledge is in everyday processes in the organization so that when integrating KM, extra time and effort doesn’t need to exist. The following strategies will enable organizations to leverage KM practices to enhance and support their Lean initiatives.
Provide employees with foundational KM training to support Lean processes. Start by defining explicit knowledge as written knowledge and the tacit knowledge as what people know through their Lean experiences. Locate items of explicit knowledge used to support Lean processes and procedures to include documented lessons learned and best practices. Follow this by identifying personnel with Lean experience and begin documenting their tacit knowledge for conversion to explicit knowledge. Tacit knowledge can come from anywhere in the organization so don’t just talk with personnel who are working in Lean positions.
Audit your organization’s KM practices. Conduct a knowledge audit to identify what knowledge is available, where it is stored, and who needs it. This will help in understanding the current state of KM and identifying gaps. ISO 30401, Knowledge Management Systems – Requirements, addresses areas of operations, and specifically in the Performance Evaluation section covers monitoring, measurement, analysis, and evaluation; internal audit; and management review which provides a high-level oversight and aids management in the ability to ensure continual improvement.
Develop a KM strategy. Based on the audit results, engage leadership to develop a KM strategy that outlines how knowledge will be captured, shared, transferred, stored, and how it will be findable in the organization that will support the overall organizational strategic plans. A major benefit of having a KM strategy is the ability to use it to support the organization’s strategic planning. This should include defining roles and responsibilities, selecting appropriate tools and technologies, and establishing processes for KM. When developing the strategy, keep in mind the three legs of the KM stool of people, processes, and technology along with the underlying governance that is not KM-centric, but how the organization needs to legally operate.
Encourage a knowledge sharing culture. Create a culture that values and encourages knowledge sharing. This can be achieved through leadership support, recognition and rewards for knowledge sharing, and providing training on KM tools and practices. Encourage open communication and collaboration across all levels of the organization.
Sharing the knowledge gained from the capture of lessons learned and best practices can be best accomplished through discussion rather than assigning one person to coordinate the capture of the lessons learned and best practices and then posting these to a mysterious shared folder on the organization’s intranet never to be seen or used. Sharing lessons learned should require an easy-to-understand process and encourage reuse.
Reduce waste. Lean projects rely on the ability to reduce non-value-added processes to also known as the eight wastes of defects, overproduction, waiting, non-utilized talent, transportation, inventory, motion, and excess processing or DOWNTIME. A method of waste reduction through KM practices is by capturing lessons learned and best practices. This helps teams to avoid past mistakes and build on earlier successes. Doing this must also include knowledge sharing with not only their leadership and their team, but making the knowledge captured known to the organization.
Use lessons learned and best practices. For ease of knowledge sharing and transfer, as well as supporting waste reduction, an organization can share their lessons learned in an issue-discussion-recommendation the format described below and further shown in the example in Figure 1 :
• Define the issue using one sentence to convey the problem.
• Discuss the background and why the problem was or is a problem in one paragraph of three to five sentences.
• Make a recommendation to solve the problem or share how the problem was solved.
Figure 1. Lesson learned write-up example.
To help others understand, and ultimately act using the best practices, resist the temptation to exclusively post them. Have a conversation with the team to make sure they’ve collected all the best practices and then share them through discussions with other users. For instance, a project manager and their team may know of another project manager and their associated team who are doing similar work. By sharing these best practices with the other team, the receiving team will be able to better mitigate risks to the project.
Enhance problem-solving. Lean methodologies often involve problem-solving techniques such as root cause analysis and the five whys. KM supports these efforts by providing access to historical data, expert insights, and documented solutions to already-identified problems. Rather than operate with an A-team mentality where only the same people are used each time to solve problems. Spread the wealth. Learning to problem-solve helps to build confidence making individuals into stronger team members.
One way to grow or supplement the pool of experts available to become problem-solvers would be through cross-training team members. Using a forceful backup mindset enhances the team expertise and overall team expertise while maintaining the corporate knowledge they have gained. Organizations that enforce a forceful backup mindset w purposefully have personnel trained to cover other work during times emergencies or just exercising personal time off, and to be there to bridge the gap when personnel leave or retired from the organization.
Another method of supporting the need to have a pool of experts is to have personnel in other parts of the organization function as knowledge managers. This is more of a collateral duty since this helps to eliminate silos through cross-organizational discussions and collaboration. Lean projects often require cross-functional collaboration. KM helps this by that knowledge flows freely across departments and teams through people functioning as knowledge managers when they use their insight to the help their co-workers solve their problems.
Cynthia J. Young, is the founder of CJ Young Consulting, LLC, a knowledge management consulting firm. Through a human-centric focus, Dr. Young continues to demonstrate and reinforce that having a knowledge management mindset supports overall organization health with the intent of knowledge to be managed throughout the enterprise. She has co-authored three books with her chapters having a knowledge management focus – two of which are international best sellers and gave her TEDx Talk, A Knowledge Mindset: What You Know Comes from Where You Sit for TEDxBeaconStreet in September 2020.
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