Every team experiences efficiency issues that cause bottlenecks in their process. These issues can occur frequently – daily, even – creating hiccups on the road to team building success. Luckily, there is a remedy.
Today’s workplace environments, from IT support to customer service to sales and more – increasingly rely upon a centralized knowledge base to make sure that team members are accessing and disseminating the correct solutions to common issues consistently and rapidly.
Consider the open-source “wiki” pages that many companies use internally to share common information. It’s a good example of a central knowledge base that anyone with access to the company’s internal network can view, search, and even add to when necessary. Larger companies may have knowledge bases for each division or each specific unit, and may even have customized software or apps that each employee can use to find the information they need most often, without too much work.
These knowledge bases – from simple wikis to complex databases – form part of Knowledge-Based Services (KBS), also known as Knowledge Centered Services. The other part of KBS is the methods, techniques and principles that the team uses to get the most out of the information contained in a centralized database.
The principles of knowledge-based services are straightforward:
- Share more knowledge so everyone learns more.
- Create value by considering the big picture.
- View knowledge as the byproduct of interaction.
- Build trust between team members by having them share knowledge. This engages and empowers the team.
What kind of solutions can a team come up with when they apply KBS principles to problems that occur frequently? You’d be surprised how many new ideas – really workable ideas – present themselves when people put their heads together in an effective way.
Major corporations use KBS principles to design better, more efficient workflows. Team leaders and their teams can do the same. In fact, applying the team building skills I outline in my blog, books and speaking series does a lot to build the strong communication and vulnerable trust that is needed to share relevant information and use it to solve problems.
Look at your team’s performance and ask a few questions:
- Does the team have a knowledge base they can easily access to solve common problems?
- Is the team able to communicate effectively about challenges they experience in trying to reach a goal or resolve a problem?
- Can the team test and implement solutions to common problems?
Putting KBS to work for your team can really jump-start new solutions to ongoing issues, build team trust and spur motivation.
Excerpted from One Team, One Dream by Gregg Gregory For more information, get your copy of Gregg’s book, One Team, One Dream today! Available in both print and electronic versions!
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