Untapped knowledge
Today I had a long call with Phil McPlan, Louise McGeek and James McMann. It was a follow up from the last week’s management meeting when I promised to look into what is stoping a better performance by the Project team.
Phil McPlan, Head of Projects, says that, despite Cablinc’s accumulated knowledge, new engineers hardly use it – they don’t know it exists or they cannot get to it (in a timely manner). That means reinventing the wheel or, even worst, making totally avoidable mistakes.
He sees two main reasons for this:
- senior engineers complain they are too busy – although Phil McPlan believes there is an element of “knowledge is power” mentality going on;
- the digital tools available for engineers to document their work and search previous projects are not intuitive, are not updated regularly, and, as a result, end up not being used.
Louise McGeek, Cablinc’s CIO, defended the technology. She believes the tools are fit for purpose: it’s just that there are no incentives for engineers to use them (specially senior ones) and, without relevant and up-to-date information, nobody bothers to.
James McMann, Head of HR, defended the senior engineers. He believes they genuinely have a lot on their plates.
From what I heard, and because covid forced teams to work remotely and to source their preferred apps to support that remote work, much of this valuable knowledge is written down somewhere. But where? Was it in a WhatsApp message? Or on a platform direct message? Or as a comment on a document in the shared drive? Or perhaps an email?
I need to digest all this to see if, and how, I can help.
Good knowledge sharing practices supported by adequate enterprise social tools can improve organisational performance. Attend Social Now to see how it can be done.
Social Now 2024: Realising the value of your digital workplace
Lisbon, Portugal – 16 & 17 May 2024