knowledge management

Knowledge Management is something which is commonly discussed and mentioned during my AIESEC Experience. But what does it actually mean??

Would uploading files onto a server be considered Knowledge Management?
Would naming my files in a certain way be considered Knowledge Management?

Clearly, this would be the 1st steps to knowledge management but not the end of it. Everyday, we receive much data through various media and need time to process it to be valuable information. And with all this information, we only make use part of it and we recognize this as knowledge.

Having facilitated in various conferences, it has been natural for me to write session outlines as detailed as possible keeping in mind that whoever who reads it will understand it and be able to run the session and creating the environment as intended. Seems after facilitating a few conferences, it comes quite naturally to write session outlines in this way as it's kinda training on the job to do so.

During my internship in Hong Kong, it is part of the job to document every process & project into a manual as it seems to be one of the best ways to retain knowledge in the organization. Besides that, having a transition plan will definitely complement it as well ;)

When we do not have good documentations, though having excellent transition; knowledge tends to get lost as it is being transfered from one person to another without having it written black & white. And how much knowledge could be retained in an organization by only word of mouth and not much documentation?

food for thought...

how much time do we take into documenting our processes & information and take the time to make it valuable knowledge for our successors?