Stop Losing Valuable Knowledge By Plugging Your Leaky Bucket

In this era of exponential change, no company has time to re-learn the things they once knew.

In fact, most businesses have just about enough time to learn the things needed to keep up with the pace of change.

?? The problem is, so many companies are losing valuable knowledge every single day!

Skills head out the door as people leave, collective wisdom is chipped away at by poor information management, absolute gold gets lost in the flow of conversation.

In a nutshell, this can be summed up by a bucket full of holes – some big, some small – that allow knowledge and skills to seep through the cracks.

Our goal is to build on our collective knowledge and skills, using that as a platform for success.

But if we keep losing them, our foundation for building the new skills and knowledge we need crumbles away - that's why we need to plug The Leaky Bucket.

How companies lose knowledge without knowing it (short and long term)

?? The everyday: Knowledge that’s lost in the flow of conversation

Our most knowledgeable people are the most likely to get repeat questions!

Typically, given the urgency of the question, they come through channels like Slack and MS Teams.

Because life and information move fast in these places, we skip the step of capturing it.

And when you consider that the average person sends and receives hundreds of messages per week, the scale of the problem is huge.

?? The longer term: Knowledge that’s lost the day people leave your business

What happens when internal experts leave companies with all their knowledge locked away in their heads?

It’s not saved anywhere, it’s not been shared with colleagues, nobody has been tapping into their wisdom...

?? And then it’s gone…

Or there's a mad scramble to capture as much as you can in their notice period.

At best, you've got a month to capture years of contextual knowledge - good luck with that!

The Leaky Bucket explained in 46 seconds ??

How to plug your holes and build a knowledge-sharing culture

1. Create a more collaborative culture

The more we’re collaborating through work projects and learning experiences, the more likely it is that we’ll share knowledge and tap into subject matter experts.

A great example would be a leading sales rep working with your latest batch of new starters on their elevator pitches.

Your skilled deal closer has a wealth of experience and relevant guidance to share with those fresh faces.

And those new sales reps can work together to share feedback on their pitches to foster that sense of collaboration.

In both instances, knowledge is shared in the right context and at the right moment for it to have a tangible impact.

2. Provide tools to capture and share knowledge in the flow of work

Are we removing the friction of capturing knowledge where it's organically shared?

This is one of your quickest wins.

At HowNow, we integrate with Slack and MS Teams, allowing people to capture messages as Nuggets, without leaving the app.

This means that we cut back on repeat questions and have a consistent answer to share when the question does crop up again.

3. Empower subject matter experts to create content

L&D can't become the bottleneck for content creation!

It slows down delivery, which reduces our ability to help people solve problems in moments where the right content could influence performance.

The good news? There are subject matter experts scattered across your company.

Find and use them!

• Start with data: If it’s the customer support team, you might look at which reps have the highest customer satisfaction score or fastest response time.
• Ask people who they turn to when they have a problem: Alternatively, observe who people naturally turn to when they face a challenge.
• Look at the success of past projects: Who was influential and can share contextual insights into what works for your business?

After you've found them, attention turns to giving them the tools and guidance to create valuable content others can use in their moments of need.

4. Bring everything to one place so people can search for it

An often-overlooked part of this conversation is the need to bring all your resources to one single place.

Why? Because if people can’t find shared resources and knowledge, they’ll revert right back to asking a repeat question.

And it’s a far bigger issue than you might realise:

• 55% of employees named finding and sharing organisational knowledge as a challenge.
• 57% also flagged locating specific files and people with specific expertise as a difficulty.

This also prevents people from finding information at their point of need, where they’re most motivated to learn, and more able to apply what they’ve learnt where it can have the greatest impact!

Read the complete guide to Knowledge Sharing In A Fast-Changing World

Read the guide here and start leveraging internal knowledge for impact.