How to Create an Organizational Knowledge Management Structure
Have you ever wondered or searched your organization’s intranet for this one document? You knew you saw it somewhere…. it looked kind of like this: 📄. You don’t know who owns it, though. It was just shared with you – now you just can’t find it.
Then, shortly thereafter, you find out that the person who owned the document no longer works there. That former co-worker used to save all their work in their personal drive. That meant, when they left, their documents left with them.
The pain of a missing proper Organizational knowledge management Structure
That document you were looking for? That unfortunately needs to be recreated.
If this story sounds familiar to you, you know the frustration, time drain and especially duplicate work this causes.
So often, I have experienced this or a similar scenarios myself. Also, I have met countless new employees who struggled with lost institutional knowledge during onboarding. The very thing a proper onboarding needs was missing: process documentation and access to the necessary information.
If you can relate, this article is for you.
While I don’t have all the answers to all problems an organization might phase, I am very confident in knowing one thing:
Building an effective knowledge management structure.
What is an Organizational knowledge management Structure?
In plain language, a Knowledge Management Infrastructure is everything a district puts in place so that employees don’t have to “reinvent the wheel” every time they start a project.
A knowledge management infrastructure is made up of:
tools (e.g. the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) templates),
habits (updating SOPs every so often), and
rules (naming conventions etc.).
These tools help the district remember what it knows and pass on this knowledge on to new people within in.
An Organizational knowledge management Structure is like a library
To create a library, you need more than just the book (the knowledge). You would also need:
- The Building: A place to go (the Software/Intranet – e.g. SharePoint).
- The Dewey Decimal System: A way to organize the books so people can find them (the naming convention).
- The Librarian: Someone in charge that keeps the library tidy, so you can find what you are looking for (the Rules).
- The Culture: A rule that says “don’t scream” and “bring the books back” (the Values).
If you just have a pile of books, you don’t have a library.
If your organization has just knowledge sitting in personal drives and unorganized documents, you don’t have a organizational knowledge management structure.
You need to implement the tools to create a system built for longevity.
How I would go about creating a knowledge management Structure:
If you’d ask me how to build a knowledge management infrastrucure, here is how I would go about it:
1. Put someone in charge.
No project, initiative or undertaking will be seen through unless there is 1 point person. This staff member does not do all the work. Rather, this point person is a rather the staff member that keeps the project going, makes decisions and ensures people follow any rules properly – basically a project manager.
2. Create the file-sharing audience and platforms tree
Think about which information needs to be shared in what groups? This determines your infrastructure team.
For example
| Audience | Platforms | Example | Responsible |
| Public | Public website | Board meeting schedule; district policies | Staff name |
| All-staff | Intranet (SharePoint) | Brand language guide; department newsletters; all staff meeting schedule; SOPs | Staff name |
| Division internal | SharePoint Team page / Shared Google Drive | Division org-chart | 1 staff for each division |
| Department internal | Microsoft Team / Folder within the Division Google Drive | Confidential SOPs (IT, legal processes); collaborative working documents (This is where the majority of documentation lives!) | 1 staff for each department platform |
| Individual | Personal Google Drives / OneDrive etc. | Personal work-related documents (e.g. HR-related documents, Pay-stubs, brainstorm documents not ready to be shared with co-workers etc.) | Staff themselves |
3. Determine the file-sharing platforms.
Your organization may use cloud-based Google Drive, SharePoint (OneDrive) or even Building Shared Drives. Before you can start setting up an infrastructure, you need to determine what is and isn’t allowed to be used for file sharing.
In my current job and Team, we have 2 digital homes:
- Google (for Google-based mostly school-facing files)
- SharePoint (for Microsoft, mostly administrative files)
4. Set up the file-sharing infrastructure above with the help of the IT department
This is the biggest technical lift. If you are streamlining filesharing at your organization, you may find that department currently use several different ways to share files. Here are a few examples I have seen:
- Shared Google folders
- Google shared drives (this is different from a google folder)
- Microsoft Teams
- Shared One-Drive folder from an individual account
- Documents that live in a staff-members personal Google- or One-Drive randomly shared with people
It will take a lot of heavy lifting to move all staff to use one file-sharing system, if your organization is currently using several.
5. Train staff ongoingly
Then, when your file sharing infrastructure is set up, you need to explain to people, how to use it. Start with Division leadership and department heads. Leadership needs to follow the file sharing strategy first, the rest will follow.
The responsible staff determined in step 2, need to be trained ongoingly, maybe quarterly, to uphold standards and ensure everyone is following them consistently.
6. Move the files to where they belong
I think I said this before: This will be the hardest step, because you need to trust that other people do the job. Hold your folks accountable. Be the point person and answer questions.
Organizing files is important, but not urgent. So, everything that is urgent and imporant will be done first – and a lot of the time, there are 40 hours of urgent and important tasks in school district administration.
You as the point person have the job of explaining that doing this not-urgent but important file management infrastructure set up, will ultimately create fewer urgent tasks. This is because with proper processes and access to information in place, a district can run more smoothly.
When all processes run smoothly, there are fewer fires. Fewer fires = fewer urgent and important tasks = less stressed staff = more retention = everyone is better of 😊
7. Implement ongoing accountability and file clean-up sessions
This could be quarterly reminder emails from the person in charge.
Drop in Office-hours or mandatory meetings. I recommend doing this during slower times. This is a not urgent, but important task, so it’s unrealistic to expect staff to do this work during a high-volume time.
8. Document this process
Let’s say you are the person in charge of file sharing in your organization. You are not only in-charge of setting up the infrastructure itself, but also accountable for documenting your strategy and process, should you ever leave.
Building a knowledge management structure is not easy. This will take time and a lot of work with people. You need to have dedication, perseverance, and patience with your co-workers and staff, because you are asking them to change their habits.
But, once established, everyone will benefit the “one source of truth”. I promise.
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