The Tower of Babylon

Communities of practice are the heart and soul of knowledge sharing.

'The building of the city was stopped when the confusion of tongues took place, and the greater part of the inhabitants made this inevitable.' … the story ends with: 'The tower was exceedingly tall. The third part of it sank down into the ground, a second third was burned down, and the remaining third was standing until the time of the destruction of Babylon'

In the age of digital transformation, where the acceleration is accelerating, having a clear aligned x standard 'mind map' of your business architecture is a solid basis on which your digital transformation can be built.

And people who understand the layers of your business architecture are the key to success. How to 'solution' your transformation if you don't have a network of A-players you feel comfortable with floating ideas and allow them to 'fail fast x fail cheap'?

Knowledge sharing is increasingly becoming a "you're-falling-behind-if-you-don't" rather than a "nice-to-have". When you're not taking advantage of the wealth of knowledge and experience that your employees bring to the table, you're ignoring that any success transformation benefits from the following elements: Business Knowledge, the ability to articulate strategy requirements, stakeholder requirements, which come on top of 'traditional IT project' requirements. This is what makes any digital transformation so much more vulnerable than IT projects, as it requires cross-layer, cross-functional communications across all organizational layers. And every layer has a different mental map and 'speak a different language'.

Time to start considering building your knowledge management system?

How can you build a digital strategy on something which doesn't exist? If you can't improve what you have, then how will you be successful 'dreaming out loud'? And what do you when substantial parts of your organization are not able to build a 'holistic' mental map of what you have today? Well, then it is time to start considering having a knowledge management system in your organization.

A knowledge management system is any kind of [IT] system [or cloud solution] that stores and retrieves knowledge to improve understanding, collaboration, and gain process alignment. Knowledge management systems traditionally exist within IT organization, but would it be an idea to be used to build a knowledge base of your markets x customers?

The purpose of a knowledge management system?

Does your organization share valuable information in a structured manner? The business benefits of knowledge sharing are seemingly endless, but here I have compiled a list of my favourites for you:

• Organizational alignment x employee engagement,

• Historical problems solved, better informed 'holistic' decisions,

• Reduced knowledge x know-how leaking when people leave the organization,

• Avoids re-learning x re-inventing of what already exists

• Reduces training time when onboarding new employees,

• fosters dialogues focused around innovation x growth …

• … which will attract x retain A-Players for you x your organization.

The above will enable you to improve your overall business performance, maintain or increase a competitive advantage, facilitates investments in your future by unlocking the potential of an innovation culture and last but not least have a better chance of finishing your tower of babel.

Will you finish your "Tower " and rise to the highest of heavens?

Let me know, curious to understand how you shape your success.

Yours Sincerely,

Boris Hendrik A. Colruyt