A recent but very powerful trend emerging in business is the gathering, leveraging, and management of knowledge as a corporate asset. Think about it: how many times have people made mistakes and learned how to overcome them, only to have many others make the same mistake because the knowledge was not shared? When a person leaves the organization, how long does it take to get a new person up to the same level of productivity? (Hint: studies show the average is about six months, at a cost of over $25,000 when direct and indirect costs are take into account.) How much more effective could the organization be if employee expertise were captured, organized, and made easily available to anyone else who might benefit from it? Indeed, this is an area where the rules of competition are being redefined.

The impetus for knowledge management was launched by Peter Senge's seminal book, The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization. In the book, Senge defined a learning organization as one "where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free and where people are continually learning how to learn together." Over time, practiced diligently, learning organizations can create new products and services more efficiently, respond to customers faster and with higher quality, and promote people more rapidly and thereby retain their talent. At Buckman Laboratories, a specialty chemical maker, their investment in knowledge management has doubled the number of new products being introduced while slashing response time to customer inquiries from days and weeks to a few hours.

Knowledge sharing systems can range from quite simple to very complex. Computer technology is certainly helpful, especially tools like Lotus Notes that are designed for this task, but automation is not absolutely required. The main lessons learned about the characteristics of an ideal knowledge sharing system are:

• Each individual must be allowed to enter knowledge into the system - capture the learning of everyone, not just a small set of designated experts.

• Get knowledge directly from the source - don't ask people to communicate to someone else to record the information or else the information is likely to get distorted.

• Everyone must have access to the knowledge base of the organization.

• The system should function across time and space, being available 24 hours a day (ideally, from wherever the employees happen to be located).

• The system should be easy to use.

• Capture who has contributed each item to the knowledge repository so people know where to go if they need more information or have questions.

Knowledge management has the potential to deliver tremendous benefits to human service organizations. So much is learned empirically, from trial and error - how to build rapport with clients, how to assess needs quickly and accurately, which community resources to access and when, how and when to follow up with clients, and so on. Typically, when a person leaves the organization, none of this expertise has been captured and the next person must start the cycle all over again. An investment in knowledge management (and it is an investment) can reap dividends like better client service and outcomes, more efficient work, and accelerated learning curves for new staff. Done properly, the benefits are likely to far outweigh the effort required.

To view the exhaustive articles on Knowledge Management & Intellectual Capital refer to pages in the Project titled Knowledge Management