Organizational Development for Knowledge Management at Water ...

Presented by: Carl Blanton
INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW
In order for Louisville Water Company (LWC) to meet its strategic objectives, we
must depend on our ability to identify and retain critical operations knowledge.
When workers retire or leave LWC, their critical operations knowledge goes with
them. Therefore, the objectives of this process are:
1. Identify LWC employees who possess critical operations knowledge that
needs to be retained.
2. Identify the critical operations knowledge.
3. Determine if the critical operations knowledge can be obtained from other
resources (internal and/or external).
4. Determine the potential business consequences that might occur if the
critical operations knowledge is not captured.
5. Determine the best format to capture, store, index and make available the
critical operations knowledge to other employees.
6. Develop an action plan to accomplish the above.
1.0 General Types of Knowledge
There are two general types of knowledge: E xplicit and Implicit or Tacit
Knowledge.
‣ Explicit Knowledge encompasses the things we know that can be written
down, shared with others and p ut into a d atabase such as SOP’s, work
procedures, work instructions, training manuals, etc. L WC does a v ery
good job in capturing this type of knowledge and making it available to its
employees.
©2011 Water Research Foundation. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.