Capturing Ideas and Advice

24373 Resource 214 24 21 1079449736431 1082988221343 Controlled The High Cost of Not Finding Information

As an accountant, I learned about opportunity cost and ways to measure it. The opportunity costs associated with not finding information when its most needed is more difficult to calculate.

As indicated in the <A href="http://www.kmworld.com/publications/magazine/index.cfm?action=readarticle&Article_ID=1725&Publication_ID=108">article</A> of the same title (by <A href="mailto:sfeldman@idc.com">Susan Feldman</A>), knowledge worker output is difficult to measure, so it's not surprising that opportunity costs relative to information resources are also tough to quantify. However, it's pretty easy to measure how information workers use their time. A friend of mine (<A href="mailto:carlos@caballero.cc">Carlos Caballero</A>) has developed a worksheet that helps you (and your firm) identify how much time you spend on information-work that can be directly related to the cost of not performing tasks.  "There is a problem experienced by every overworked executive, manager and staff alike: the cost of not doing certain tasks just because the overhead required renders it anti-economic, or obsolete by the time it is completed. That problem is more and more common as a result of shrinking IT resources, the elevated cost of customized applications, and the long backlog faced by IT. Information workers face the need to do what they can with what they have, and that tends to sacrifice the more resource-intensive tasks, regardless of how critical they are for corporate missions." -- Carlos Caballero The objective [it seems] in creating a more operationally efficient information framework is to adopt tools and processes that lower the overhead of performing tasks critical to the business. That overhead must be just a skinch less than anti-economic. Some tasks are extremely anti-economic while others are probably borderline cases (i.e., low-hanging fruit that can be picked by adopting a few simple changes). By encouraging your staff to CC a single important email message per week to an information repository you will begin to build a useful knowledge base of information that would otherwise vanish from corporate awareness. Following this basic (and frictionless) policy a team of 25 people will generate 1,250 information objects that are preserved and searchable and will raise your corporate <A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0105910/2003/05/13.html">knowledge continuity</A>. 9 application/xml false Carlos Caballero knowledge continuity opportunity costs Susan Feldman Capturing Ideas and Advice Quite often solutions to what seem to be complex problems are a bit simpler than we think. One way to capture great ideas and advice from your employees is to simply ask them. item/16549 KMWorld: The high cost of not finding information In an increasingly information-based world, we turn out complex products that are less tangible than they are knowledge-based. http://www.kmworld.com/publications/magazine/index.cfm?action=readarticle&Article_ID=1725&Publication_ID=108 Operational Efficiency I recently purchased a robot - I turn it on; it vacuum's my floor. item/15257 Thanks for the (Corporate) Memories When employees leave, vital institutional knowledge may be lost forever. item/7238 Knowledge Continuity Management Where knowledge management concerns capturing and sharing know-how valuable to colleagues performing similar jobs throughout a company, knowledge continuity management focuses on passing critical knowledge from exiting employees to their replacements. http://radio.weblogs.com/0105910/2003/05/13.html Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.0.3705; .NET CLR 1.1.4322) 68.42.141.35 68.42.141.35 aseidl false true false false true 190014 false false true false false false true 214 blog blogsite/MySTHome/web