Knowledge Is A Strategic Axis Of Progress
Here we are the advocate of a culture of knowledge in business, defending the idea that businesses would benefit a lot from better disseminating of knowledge, and would better disseminate knowledge by generalizing the assessment of knowledge. It is obvious that all jobs rely on knowledge, and increasingly so. The more knowledge is disseminated and mastered, the better everyone will succeed in their missions. And yet, it seems that many companies are not fully aware of this, or at least do not make mastering knowledge a strategic axis of progress.
The Culture Of Knowledge As A Vector Of Productivity
Businesses are rightly obsessed with productivity. This is the primary parameter of their profitability. And productivity, basically, is the product of three human-related factors:
- Individual abilities
- Motivation
- Knowledge
Organizational and methodological factors could be mentioned, but they actually come down to knowledge. The methodology is only a factor of productivity insofar as it is known and controlled. To be complete, we should add a nonhuman factor: the work tool, whether robots or software. Its importance can be immense, but here we focus on the human factors of productivity. Thus, we can write the fundamental equation of individual productivity:
Productivity = Capabilities x Motivation x Knowledge (x Tools and Methods)
Note that this is a product and not a sum, because it is clear that any of these factors, if zero, can cancel out the result. The same factors also determine the capacity for innovation: each idea, each invention, is born in a soup of knowledge. Recruiting brings a few ingredients to this soup, but for the most part, the company must create, disseminate, and nourish its knowledge internally. This is why a real strategy for managing and strengthening knowledge is necessary. Especially since, for each employee, being sure to have the knowledge required to succeed is also the condition for happy work.
We are talking here about knowledge in a very broad scope, including everything we learned at school, as well as the best practices acquired on the job. Fundamental knowledge, but also very contextual knowledge...these may be the technical characteristics of a product, the company's commercial references, a recent legal text impacting its profession...all things whose perfect mastery simply allows you to work better.
Capitalize On Business Valuation
The advancement of knowledge in the company is the mission of vocational training. Structured, organized training is, however, only a minority way of disseminating knowledge. Most of the dissemination of knowledge takes place "on the job," in the daily exercise of one's profession, through the advice of an elder, through personal observations, through self-learning. These processes, which are often not very structured, can be accompanied by the deployment of assessment tools, which make it possible to formalize knowledge in a directly actionable way, and to measure progress continuously, in application of the maxim "no progress without measure."
To make the best use of business valuation, the first condition is that it be well-experienced by everyone, that it becomes an ordinary work tool, at the service of everyone's progress. From a young age, we have been conditioned to experience the knowledge check or written assessment with a certain amount of anxiety. Many things would depend on this result: the joy or anger of parents, the transition to the next grade, the admission to a higher education course, professional prospects. It is therefore quite natural that the idea of a knowledge check still gives us some anxiety. And many companies, anticipating this concern, deprive themselves of the benefits of valuation.
However, the solution is very simple. For assessment to be experienced positively by everyone, it must be trivialized, generalized, and the best way to achieve this is to make it self-service. That is to say, promoting a chosen evaluation used by everyone as an ordinary work tool, in the service of their learning, and therefore of their personal progress. If each employee can independently and anonymously ensure that they have the expected level in a particular field of knowledge, then formal assessment, certification, is a simple formality without particular stress.
In summary, we believe that businesses have a lot to gain from generalizing a culture of knowledge evaluation, that they must get it accepted as an ordinary work tool. This requires strategic will on the one hand, and efficient assessment tools on the other.
