“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest “----.
Benjamin Franklin
Knowledge is the
key to success and like a strong lock needing multiple keys to open it; you too
need multiple skills to open the doors for your success in your chosen career. Knowledge
cannot be stolen and it only grows when shared. Even if others copy your idea,
you are still ahead of them as a leader, since others are followers. Good
knowledge of the subject (domain), rules and regulations and business practices
of the organisation, law and policies of the government and emerging technologies
can help you to be more confident, good decision maker, leading a team by
personal performance and effectively dealing with customers, vendors and business
partners. Adapting new technologies and best
business practices will enhance your competence and overall productivity. You
may be a professor in a university/college or a manager/ team leader in any product/service
industry or any other professional in a company related to construction, manufacturing, transportation,
real estate , IT/software, media , design, finance or
trading; you cannot afford to stay static with your basic degree
/certification. Each one of you need to find time for participation in workshops, seminars/conferences,
research work or go on technical visits
to other industries/countries. Although it is the responsibility of every CEO
and his/her HR team to plan and schedule
training and up-skilling of their employees, yet you too must be on the lookout
for various upcoming seminars, conferences , symposiums,
workshops , tech-fairs and on-line courses and seek management’s permission to participate. If you
are a project manager or a Head of Department (HOD) in an organisation / institution,
you must facilitate and recommend your team members to participate in such
events. Knowledge gained and literature collected by participating in such events
must be shared within the department or team for cumulative gain of the
organisation. All knowledge gained by all employees is the intellectual assets
of the organisation and by sharing these resources; you can save in time,
effort and cost, in completion of any assigned task. Such gains for your team /organisation
will provide acceleration to your success and stability.
Scope.The
scope of this article is to cover knowledge gaining and sharing by any young
processionals of any field, working in a medium to large size industry/organisation.
It does not cover small entrepreneurs
who do lot of multi-skilling and multitasking to keep their organisation lean.
Some basic steps for knowledge gaining and sharing are covered in succeeding
paragraphs.
·
Knowledge is power. Lack of knowledge will make you hesitant to
speak in public and even during any meeting / discussion. You are to quickly develop
new knowledge /skills and move toward excellence. If you have good aptitude for
a subject/skill and quick on the uptake to understand and absorb
instruction/process and positive attitude, you can quickly gain needed
knowledge/ skills. Some may be born with good aptitude / memory, while others
may have to put an extra effort to grasp the subject/instructions.
·
What is Knowledge? There can be many good definitions
of knowledge but in this article we are considering knowledge related to your
chosen career. Some of these are:
o Domain knowledge of the area of your career- business, engineering,
journalism, health care. sale/marketing , HR, law , education, manufacturing,
construction , design and so on.
o Strength and limitations of your team members – Domain, technology, hand-on
experience.
o Software packages / tools for enhancing productivity in your area of
work. It could be as per your area - Programming languages, DBMS. Cloud
computing, Data Analytic, Animation, Designing and Manufacturing, Filming and Digital
photography or Mass communication.
o Tools, instruments and quality standards for testing and quality control.
o Digital marketing- Content
writing , web advertising , branding and networking
o Vendor / sub-contractor’s competence and reliability.
o Software tools for simulation, analysis, data projection and decision
making.
o Rules, regulation, Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) and instructions
of the organization.
o Market trends and public
expectations ,
o Government laws, policies and incentives.
o Cyber security, secrecy and privacy of data.
·
Gaining
of knowledge
After
you join a company/organization, there will be so much to learn on-the-job for
which you must have right aptitude to be
quick on the uptake and positive attitude to take maximum advantage of
the opportunity. In addition, there are
large number of on-line free and paid courses offered by COURSERA, Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), Future-learning
and by lead universities like Stanford, Wharton, Princeton, Darden, Carnegie
Foundation, Michigan, MIT in USA , IIT’s in India and
many others academies and universities
across the world . MOOC and COURSERA are the most popular sources and
many countries have adopted or adapted their similar/near similar versions in
their own languages .You can search the web and pick the right on-line course for
you.
·
Sharing of knowledge. Knowledge is
multiplication factor to enhance your productivity, synergy and respect among
participants. If one team knows two skills
and other team knows five skills, collectively both the teams gained additional
expertise which is more than the arithmetic total of 2+5 skills. On the other hand,
keeping everything close to your chest shows your complex or fear; and this
will lead to retardation in your professional growth. If as a professor or
research scholar, you are doing research work or innovating some new product/process, sharing of your approach with others will
help you to take advantage of other’s experience and have higher take off,
instead of re-inventing the wheel. A good old saying is ever true- “Power is
gained by sharing knowledge and not by hoarding it”.
·
Administrative knowledge.
To perform well in any field you should
have good knowledge of the subject, related technical/business skills and rules
and regulations of the organisation as well as those of regulating authorities.
You should carry out periodic self-analysis and identify what more you need to
make up your deficiencies both in technical skill and administrative skills. Ignorance
of law or policies is no excuse. A knowledgeable person can be bold and
confident while speaking, writing and decision making.
·
Knowledge of customs and culture. It is necessary to
be aware of customs, cultures and traditions of team members, when working in
international team. You should cheerfully mingle among team members and
celebrate their religious festivals /national days.
“The
good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge”---. Bertrand Russell
·
Every career is a long and tough journey. A service carrier is a long journey with many challenges
where you are to respond quickly and appropriately. It is not a short run or
walk that you do alone and leisurely. A race could be undertaken alone but for
journey you need partnership and reciprocal support. There will be simple as
well as difficult situations to overcome by using own + others expertise. Take
help and give help is the real mantra to stay on track during a long journey.
·
An approach to increase knowledge sharing. As a
manager/team leader you must establish a system to manage the flow of knowledge
across a team, a group and an organization. Knowledge management is the process
of improving an organisation’s performance through designing and implementing
systems or tools for creation and sharing of knowledge. Through good knowledge
management, companies can develop better products, retain employees and improve
customer satisfaction. Some action
points are:
·
Let employees to take time off from
their work to acquire new knowledge
Various workshops,
conferences or seminars, are the ways
that you and your team can acquire new knowledge. The CEO and HOD/ managers
need to plan at the start of the year, a training schedule for all employees to
take time off to learn new knowledge/ skills. According to a research, 70% of
workers claim that training and development policy of the company is the most
important support for their career growth. Therefore, when employees are
granted the opportunity to go for training, they will become happier workers. You
can get your employees trained, through online training courses which give them
flexibility to pick and choose what and when they want to learn. The company
must invest on employee’s training and should not expect them to do it on their
own time and expense. Happy and satisfied employees after completing their on-line
courses and /or face- to-face (f2f) training through
workshops, seminars, conferences , will
come back fully recharged and find better ways of doing their tasks.
·
Provide office space to facilitate interaction among employees. We are social beings and we need
to connect with others, when we are at
work. Most companies are doing away with traditional work cubicles in favour of
an open space layout to increase opportunities for co-workers to interact
throughout the day. The open environment ensures that people are aware of what
is going on in the office and they can ask questions or exchange ideas rather
than keeping to themselves. Open layout is quite common in Agile project work
environment
·
Brain-storming / Brain-sketching. Provide
opportunities for the employees to share knowledge by
organizing mini brainstorming/ brain sketching sessions during team meetings.
You could also create an online portal for employees to submit suggestions and
sharing their knowledge.
·
Incentivize knowledge sharing. The CEO, HOD, project managers
should institutionalize incentive for knowledge gaining and sharing. The
incentive could be monetary or non-monetary .
·
Having an open-door policy. This is a small step for founders/owners of
the company, but a huge leap of faith for employees. They will get assured that
the founder /CEO is approachable always and encourages employees to share their
knowledge/ experience, ideas or information.
·
Learning from past events
Learning
from past events, correcting the present process and planning the future is a
proven approach for enduring success. Knowledge sharing may involve audits or
reviews of projects, once they are completed, followed by sharing insights
gained from the review. The team may reflect on following questions:
·
What was the objective/target –
Customer Requirement (CR)?
·
What happened during
implementation indicating both success and failure? - Did your team meet CR fully or no?
·
What were the problems and how did
team handle those?
·
Any suggestions for future?
·
Digital
Indexing Library. The organization /
institution should have Digital Library for storing information of reusable
assets .It should also have very effective indexing and search software for
easy access to knowledge related to the need of a team or individual
professional. This helps in reusability of available resources /sharing past
knowledge.
Sharing
is caring.
It is good to know how much you know and equally important to let others know
how much you know. Do not assume that your boss knows all about you and will
take care of your career/promotion. He /
She may have many other things to do and it you who must project your
performance. It is equally important to know how much you don’t know but more
important to know from whom to know what you don’t know. Then don’t wait but
plan to reach the source of knowledge and learn what you did not know. If you
now know what you did not know, you are knowledgeable and start sharing with
others.In software/ IT projects management parlance, knowledge sharing is also called
reusability of available assets and you must know what all is available in the Digital
Indexing Library. The developers are encouraged and rewarded for developing
more general software assets which can be easily adopted or suitably modified
by others users. Likewise, there can be incentive scheme for those who use “reusable
software assets”. This will save in Time, Effort and Cost and ensures better
quality. This approach is recommended for every type of work
To know more,
you may visit www.amazon.in or www.amazon.com and type in my name – sarbjit singh in the search window to see listing of my
two books :
1) A2Z 26 steps for assured success.
2) Career challenges during global uncertainty
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