Facilitating Knowledge Management through Story Telling
Quite often a good story is the best way to impart knowledge (Davenport and Prusak 1998).
Storytelling is the oldest technique of knowledge
transfer and has been touted as the most effective medium to pass across a
message to someone since we tend to memorize stories better than dry facts and can
easily link them to our personal experiences. Medical technologies have also
proved that storytelling is a natural way for brain to capture and retain
information.
During the recent years “power of storytelling” has
garnered a lot of attention from the perspective of Knowledge Management and
harnessing the tacit knowledge of an organization. In a domain that has been
primarily dominated by charts and facts, storytelling has a great potential as
a knowledge transfer and learning tool. Capturing tacit knowledge is a pain
point for most organizations so no wonder, storytelling is fast gaining
recognition as a KM tool.
Let us see below how the role of storytelling in a KM framework.
Fostering collaboration – In an
organization people often come together as teams, groups, communities. Using
narrative techniques during these sessions help people collaborate and learn
from each other’s experiences as they have a context missing in the traditional
form of meetings.
Transfer of tacit knowledge and understanding -
Stories allow tacit knowledge to be shared more easily as stories provide
context and focus on issues relevant to the listener. Storytelling allows a
seamless leap from information to knowledge.
Ideation leading to Innovation – Ideas
pave the way for Innovation. Employees have hands on experience with processes,
clients, products, and customers. When they collaborate to share their stories while
collaborating formally or informally, they create a new paradigm by introducing
new ideas with potential for improvement and innovation.
Organic way to learn - The wider
purpose of any KM framework is to equip employees with knowledge for greater
good of the organization, and the medium of learning is vital. Various studies
have proved that story telling is most effective in imparting and capturing of knowledge.
Tacit knowledge from experienced members and outgoing employees can be embedded
in narratives to help inexperienced employees learn and upskill.
If the question is why stories work so well in
knowledge management, then the answer–simply–is that “our brains seem to be
wired to easily and almost automatically organize information into stories”
(Reamy, 2002).
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