Post-COVID knowledge work: foresight, innovation, co-creation!
The impact of COVID-19 has meant organisations have been forced to put greater trust and ownership on their employees in relation to working within the new norm — working from home…
Post-COVID, this increased sense of trust and ownership must be sustained as it will be crucial in carrying out day-to-day operational activities that enable businesses to sustain growth in the future.
Organisations must continue to recognise, understand and acknowledge the interdependence of people, and empower those at different levels to foster faster decision making and action processes. By empowering everyone within your organisation, you begin to create leaders at the middle and lower levels, which will aid in making more efficient decisions and drive the design of innovative products and services for your customers.
For every day spent in lockdown, it is becoming more clearer that organisations must follow suit in their reactions to COVID-19, and continue to be more agile in the way they process for approvals, allocate resources and measure business impact, because remote working, flexible hours and output-driven cultures will become the new norm.
The new norm
Now that we have proven we can survive, and even thrive in the remote working world, wise companies will look to cut down face-to-face meetings and turn them virtual, whilst making them shorter and to-the-point as lockdown measures are relaxed. This is a great model of efficiency for saving time and resources in organisations, and a strong asset for aiding the concentration of employees as they re-adapt to old working processes and increase their time spent online.
Virtual meetings will also help businesses by saving on travel budgets that can then be used for any process or platform improvements. It’s possible that social media platforms could turn into the official PR and communication channels for many. A number of Chinese companies already used social media platforms, such as WeChat to coordinate their employees and partners. (Source: Harvard Business Review)
The acceleration of digital transformation
While the business world was already embracing the impact of digital transformation before COVID-19, the post-pandemic world will see a much higher level of adaptation to technology, especially in interacting with customers; offering services online, allowing mobile-based payments and the integration of 3rd party services. It will, therefore, come as no surprise that we expect artificial intelligence to play a leading role, by easily analysing customers’ preferences, spending behaviours, decision making criteria and so on. The world will see significant levels of human-computer interaction such as speech and face recognition, augmented reality, scenario-based decision making and choice preferences.
However, while the advancement of technology is definitely at the core of the post-COVID world, companies need to also focus on the soft side of the coin — people, and train staff on new software to help them understand how to interpret behaviour to be able to make more effective and competitive business decisions. It’s imperative that staff adopt a digital mindset however, this might be easier for the millennial generation, where baby boomers and Generation X might need more guidance.
Knowledge: machine learning and cognitive search
Faster innovation, decision-making and customer acquisition require companies to have a robust knowledge management system in place; however, technology alone will not bring about the desired outcomes. Organisational cultures that promote collaboration, trust and recognition is a pre-requisite for achieving these results.
Collaboration online and offline has to be top-notch, not only through your technology platforms but also through proper governance. Leaders now need to encourage and reward productive collaboration that drives value to organisations.
In addition, post-COVID-19, companies will see wider levels of collaboration beyond their organisational boundaries; they will establish new partnerships, not only with suppliers and customers but also with their competitors. Such collaboration requires secure IT platforms.
All of this new knowledge will need to be stored using knowledge management platforms that have been adapted to machine learning and cognitive search to produce the right information at the right time for the employees that need it. As such, machine learning will help organisations identify critical knowledge gaps, as well as generate new insights from the vast knowledge database. Expanding the function of the KM platform to data analytics and trend visualization will become inherently common in the next few years.
Ultimately, the right information should be at the fingertips of leaders to enable accurate and efficient decision making in the new world. This requires knowledge professionals to be alert, dynamic and adaptive in dealing with their organisation’s information flow. Leaders need to devise enticing recognition programmes to enthuse these experts to share tacit knowledge without hesitation. Effective knowledge sharing does not happen without incentives.
Foresight. Innovation. Co-creation
Many organisations already have formal foresight units that investigate future trends, conduct scenario planning, and recommend the next course of action to remain relevant in the market. Others conduct such exercises at strategy development units. It does not matter how this is placed within the corporate structure, what is imperative is that all companies are able to continuously look for ‘signals’ that provide hints on where the world is moving. Searching for ‘signals’–otherwise known as horizon scanning–can be done through active internet search, subscribing to blogs, following futurists on Twitter etc., and requires teams to meet often to discuss those signals and find implications upon the business.
Successful foresight and implication analysis is what leads to industry innovation that brings value to organisations as well as to customers. Post-COVID, companies need to innovate faster to survive in the market and effective knowledge management will be at the crux of this, acting as the base on which successful innovation can and will evolve.
Companies will also need to go outside of their organisations and tap into the phenomenon of crowdsourcing to be able to innovate. However, attracting outsiders to share relevant and useful knowledge with commercial organisations is a challenging task. Therefore, the value proposition needs to clearly defined.
Final thoughts
It should come as no surprise that post-COVID-19, remote working is expected to flourish at the global level, making it easier for companies to hire expertise from anywhere. As a result, onboarding will be much faster as many individuals will not need to obtain visas or residence permits as they continue to work from home. Remote working essentially opens the doors for co-creation and companies will hire experts and skilled customers to co-create new products and services. It’s clear that managing knowledge within and outside of the organisation will become more complex, exciting and impactful than it ever has been.
Are knowledge managers ready for the upcoming challenge?
* The article was originally published in KM Insights, by ARK Group (UK)- https://kminsight.co.uk/insights/post-covid-knowledge-management-foresight-innovation-co-creation
