Knowledge sharing in a virtual world

Abstract

We have a number of papers related to knowledge sharing and flow in this issue and I wanted to reflect on what that means in the current working climate. At the time of writing England has just entered into its second full lockdown as the Coronavirus shows no signs of abating. Office workers who were starting to return to the office in some cases are now back to working from home full time. It is therefore more and more important to facilitate effectively the sharing of knowledge as the face to face disconnect continues. An article in McKinsey Insights, Reimagining the postpandemic organization reflects on how the pandemic has changed previously bureaucratic organisations to be more adaptive and innovative, making quicker decisions. Access to senior executives and quicker decisions with a recognition that inertia is a more risky strategy than a willingness to ‘make decisions and go’ had enabled organisations to be more flexible and able to survive. This reflects what I have heard from conversations I have been involved in recently – the change in operations has seen a number of organisations flatten out and open up. Perhaps counterintuitively then it seems that the inability to be in the same location as other employees has been a facilitator to connect directly with key stakeholders and decision makers who have the ability to make things happen. This change in accessibility of senior stakeholders could be down to the initial slowing down everyone experienced as the first lockdown took hold, giving these people more time to take a moment to think how to survive and move forward under these conditions. How this will continue to develop and change is anyone’s guess but what is clear is a recognition and willingness to adapt to the changing environment is a key survival instinct. McKinsey’s article goes on to delve further into this scenario to speculate how things could be in the near future. Good communication channels are the key to making the right connections to share knowledge and create an innovative space to find solutions to today’s challenges. Part of this is to ensure trust, trust in the system, operations and people. The ability to connect and share information, knowledge and expertise in the right context will enable us to get at to what is needed and help navigate the sea of misinformation and fake news. How do you develop trust in an online remote working world? Trust is about believing in the system, that the technology works as it should, that it does what it says it will do, that people do what they say they will do, that what is expected happens and if it doesn’t we can find out why. The main challenge is facilitating engagement and connecting people. Technology is helping us utilise knowledge and data internally, so is there a way to effectively combine the technologies available to us with the more people to people aspects of knowledge management? A white paper from KM World entitled Knowledge Aware: the future of knowledge management takes a look at changes needed in knowledge management practice as we work in an ever more digitised environment and remote working situation. Written before the pandemic they reflect on the increasing trend for remote and asynchronous working, take a critical look at the current traditional models for knowledge management and conclude that in order for knowledge management to be successful users of knowledge need access to knowledge that is: