K - Knowledge Management (A to Z Tips)
Benjamin Franklin once said, "an investment in knowledge pays the best interest."
Even though schools are where learning occurs, most schools have overlooked the importance of knowledge and knowledge management. In contrast, commercial firms have long recognised knowledge as a valuable, strategic asset and key resource.
Knowledge management helps to establish and maintain a competitive advantage, it allows you make decisions based on fact, not feeling. It affords an opportunity to improve your school’s efficiency, productivity and to ensure that the right information is available to the right people, at the right time.
Putting it simply, Knowledge management is the reason we no longer ride horses but instead choose cars as our preferred mode of transport.
It is key to ensuring your school can operate and innovate based upon reliable information; it is significant to success and key to creating a robust Strategic Plan.
Knowledge is defined as
• Facts
• Information
• Skills acquired through education or experience
• Understanding of a subject
• Awareness
• Familiarity of a fact or situation
Knowledge management is the efficient handling of this information; the process of discovering, assembling, evaluating, classifying, and sharing it. This includes your documents, procedures, resources, and employee skills.
There are four key areas to Knowledge management:
• Data – This is raw data or facts that are available to you. When this data is processed, it becomes information that can be distributed to members of your team.
• Information – Information is the outcome of processed raw data. To create information, data has to answer the five W’s, “who, what, where, when, and why”.
• Knowledge – Information becomes knowledge after it is analysed while taking your own experiences into account. At this stage, knowledge can be used to make decisions.
• Wisdom – When you have acquired knowledge, you can use it in conjunction with your experiences, expertise, and personal judgments to form wisdom.
The goal of Knowledge management is to provide reliable and secure information, and to make it available throughout your school's lifecycle. The purpose is to create value and to meet tactical and strategic requirements. It will help your school to:
• Be more effective
• Ensure your staff have clear and common understanding
• Provide complete and accurate information when needed, at any given point in time
Being able to access the information whenever it is needed, will help to keep your staff informed and encourage innovation. Maintaining a knowledge base can give you access to data that may be useful for identifying new opportunities.
In addition to our Developing a Strategic Plan training, and our Inspection Heath Check, Headspace Academics can offer a Knowledge Management Audit, this will highlight to you and your Senior Management Team, the competitive advantages your school offers.
For more information, please contact Dannielle Hutchings via support@headspaceacademics.com