Over this Covid-19 pandemic, I have been looking forward to being able to make those business to business networking connections again and gain more clients. One of the most important thing I have learned from this experience is how Knowledge Management can be done with your family.
The four pillars of Knowledge Management are People, Process, Organizational Culture and Tools. Applying these to your everyday day life can help with a multitude of things from the kids school and activities schedules, bills, doctors appointments, work schedules (yes even when WFH).
The people part of this equation is easy (your family) and each person has a role they play in the family unit. This includes doing the dishes to feeding the animals. Establishing what each person does helps manages what needs to be completed.
Process like it or not is just as important in the business arena as in the home. Processes on how bills are paid, what the approval process is for the kids to be able to get time on their Xbox or electronic devices. Establishing a clear process for your family on how things gets accomplished can help get things done more effectively.
Organizational culture, the family unit is a culture on its own. You have the parental unit(s) as well as the kid(s) and there is a definite cultural dynamic that comes into play on how situations are dealt with on a daily basis.
Tools so how do you keep your family organized, connected and be able to still be able to live. In my home, we utilize Microsoft Office products to include SharePoint and Outlook to keep our documents, bills and other important information where we can collaborate on any decisions that need to be made or have access to our information while we are out in the community. Another tool we use a lot of is whiteboards. I have a Kanban board to monitor my business and we have boards all thought out the house for kids chores, tracking medication, important events and bills. We also take handwritten notes exclusively on Rocketbook notebooks. In terms of our digital meetings we rely on Fireflies to capture audio notes which it does have the capability to transcribe the notes in order to search for information after the fact.
Looking back from the beginning of this pandemic until now, my family and I have gotten closer as well as become better stewards of our Knowledge that each of us has. We are also communicating better as a family.
If you our your company would like to know how Knowledge Management can help improve your business and your bottom dollar. Please feel free to contact me via email at cannonco@cannonco.net or by phone at 620-719-6004.
Figure 1 depicts on what the audience should be within the meeting being held. If the information is similar or related, then you can have one meeting starting with inviting all the members of the coalition first and as the information gets more and more restrictive take a short break and excuse those members that are not privileged to the information. This will do two things. First, this construct fosters communication and information sharing with the members of the coalition, thus making all the members of the coalition feel that they have a say n the decision-making cycle. Second, it allows both the Commander and their staff more white space within their calendar to do the jobs they were slotted to perform
Table 1 shows an example agenda of how the meeting can be executed. As one can see going through the topics in this manner can save the entire staff time as well as give the decision-maker the information from multiple viewpoints that can affect the mission, the decision and ultimately lives that are out in the front lines implementing these directives.
When one develops the architecture for how the meetings will run for a multi-hatted Commander one has to be cognizant of the needs of the coalition, needs of the staff and most of all the needs of the Commander.