A knowledge audit refers to a systematic process of identifying knowledge assets and their relationship across an organisation. Acquiring a proprietary knowledge audit methodology is not always economically feasible, especially for smaller organisations. A knowledge auditing methodology focusing on core processes includes the following steps [1]:
Stage 1: Acquire Organisational Strategic Information
This step aims to identify the organisation's mission, vision, and objectives considering its environment, culture, and traditions.
Stage 2: Identify Organisation's Core Processes
This step aims to identify which organisational processes contribute most to the organisation's overall success and establish criteria for measuring and ranking processes according to their criticality.
Stage 3: Prioritise and Select Organisation's Core Processes
Core processes with the highest potential impact on organisational performance are selected as the focus of the audit. This does not mean that other processes are omitted from consideration, but some priority level must be established to maximise the use of limited time and resources.
Stage 4: Identify Key People
This step aims to identify all the people that play a key role in the core processes identified during the previous step.
Stage 5: Meeting with Key People
Once identified, the key people are introduced to the concept of the knowledge audit. It is crucial to ensure that they understand the processes and motivations behind the knowledge audit and that they feel supported by management.
Stage 6: Obtaining Knowledge Inventory
During this crucial stage, the existing knowledge assets within the organisation are identified and captured by engaging with key people through questionnaires and interviews. This process can be repeated for processes of decreasing priority until all knowledge assets have been examined and integrated into an overarching inventory.
Stage 7: Analysing Knowledge Flow
The questionnaires and interviews utilised during the previous steps should include questions regarding how tacit and explicit knowledge flows through the organisation. As with the previous step, the flows identified initially will relate to the highest priority core processes. This process can be repeated for processes of decreasing priority until all knowledge flows within the organisation have been identified and captured.
Stage 8: Knowledge Mapping
The objective of this step is to create a visual representation of the organisation's knowledge assets (e.g. who has knowledge, where these persons are located, the level of accessibility to them, with who they most often share and exchange knowledge, etc.). The first iteration of the knowledge assets map will focus on the highest priority core processes. This process can be repeated for processes of decreasing priority until a complete map of the organisation's knowledge is created.
Stage 9: Knowledge Audit Reporting
After a thorough analysis of the knowledge inventory, knowledge flows, and knowledge map of the first core processes, an audit report is presented to management. The report should describe in detail the major findings of the audit and should include the following:
The existing status of knowledge assets within the organisation.
The knowledge maps generated during the audit.
The current effectiveness of the organisation in achieving its business process objectives.
Potential knowledge gaps or threats.
Opportunities and recommendations for improving the organisation's use of knowledge assets.
The final knowledge report forms a basis for implementing KM initiatives going forward.
Stage 10: Continuous Knowledge Re-auditing
Once the core processes with the highest priority have been audited, the process is repeated on the remaining core processes until all knowledge assets and flows are identified and captured. The organisation should also periodically re-audit its knowledge assets and update any relevant changes to the knowledge inventory, knowledge flows, and knowledge map. In this way, the organisation can measure the performance of its KM initiatives over time and make adjustments to facilitate continuous improvement.
1. Perez-Soltero, A. et al., 2007. A Model and Methodology to Knowledge Auditing Considering Core Processes. The ICFAI Journal of Knowledge Management, 5(1), pp. 7-23.
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