Experience walks out the door when people leave. Knowledge management is the discipline of capturing, organizing, sharing, and applying an organization’s collective knowledge so that it remains available and useful.

It addresses both explicit knowledge stored in documents and systems and tacit knowledge held in people’s heads. Communities of practice, after-action reviews, searchable repositories, and mentoring programs are common tools. Technology helps, yet motivation to share and time to codify determine success.

Organizations strong in knowledge management avoid repeating mistakes and accelerate the ramp-up of new staff. Those that treat knowledge as personal property rather than organizational asset reinvent solutions and lose hard-won insight. Making contribution visible and valued changes the culture over time.

• Capturing and sharing collective organizational knowledge
• Covers explicit and tacit forms
• Uses repositories, communities, and reviews
• Reduces repeated errors and speeds learning