Capturing and retaining critical knowledge within your organization is important for developing your policies and procedures.  But communicating that knowledge effectively with customers, employees, and suppliers is the key to growing your organization.

Policies and Procedures that are written but not used will quickly become outdated.  Poorly written, confusing, or long text-based documents will not be used either.  What is used is the informal network of knowledge experts, mentors, and old hands that have done it enough to know what to do without procedure documents.  Is better documentation the answer?

Maybe… depending on what you mean by better documentation.  Procedure documentation can certainly be improved.  Redundant passages can be integrated, unclear terms can be defined, passive voice can be transformed into active voice construction, and poorly written or confusing parts can be clarified and re-written.  But this is of little help if people are not using the procedures.  Communications are two-way interactions.  Procedures provide the basic information but text-based procedures are only one-way communications systems.  A robust knowledge management system must communicate in many different directions in order to reach many different people.

Many-to-Many Communications

One form of a many-to-many communication system is using lean visual management.  Employees get involved creating visual maps, aids, and scoreboards for key processes.  Process improvements are captured as well as current process metrics, targets, and results.  Visual management provides the visual cues that remind employees of important process history, of key training elements, and of what is expected.  Visual management can be used to replace text based documents, create engagement, and foster the involvement lacking in purely text based procedures.

Online social networking concepts can be used to connect employees with each other.  Organizations can use visuals, job aids, video, and online interactive social media systems to go beyond text-based procedures.  Social media tools  encourage knowledge sharing, updates and feedback that increase knowledge transfer throughout your organization.  Collaboration becomes a reality if you create the knowledge management system that supports it.

New knowledge management systems can transform how your company communicates, interacts, and uses your policies and procedures at every level.  Implement a collaborative system that continuously improves user involvement, training, and communications.  Leverage your policies and procedures investment to garner more sales, save time and money, and grow your company.  It is all possible with new knowledge management system concepts.

Characteristics of a Visual Workplace

• clearly communicates needed information
• clearly reflects established standards
• clearly identifies behavior or process targets
• clearly is low cost and easy to use

Involving the actual users in the measurements is the first step to building a visual workplace.  The idea is to provide results in an appropriate form for your audience.  Data must be reported in a timely manner to the people who can act on them.  Spreadsheets and dashboards are great electronic tools for visual management but you have to get the information out in the open to the users.

A visual workplace will sustain improvements made to your quality system.  A constant visual reminder is a great help in preventing the backsliding that can occur in many improvement initiatives.  Visual Workplace Safety is another area that is easily communicated using visual management.

Visual Management Scoreboard

A simple scoreboard provides the foundation for visual management.  Process metrics, descriptions, historical data, all will translate your company vision into the daily execution of your strategy implementation.  Isn’t that the value you want to communicate?