The big opportunity for knowledge management

Using technology effectively

Moving forward, we should be rethinking, reinventing, reframing, and reimagining knowledge gathering, management, and decision making. Using some combination of Slack, Box, Dropbox, Teams, and Google is a stop-gap situation—one in need of improvement. The potential for innovation to make those improvements and make the best of our changed working conditions is enormous. We are adapting and will continue to adapt—that’s what humans are good at—and the tools and technology we use need to adapt in parallel. Still, we need much more innovation at the technology level. But even more innovation and new perspectives are required to understand how we work and think. What the team and I at Deep Analysis hope for in the coming year is less focus on the underlying technology and more emphasis on understanding how employees and customers alike can use this technology effectively.

Through our research project, we did learn a few new things that quite frankly surprised us and may help us all on this seemingly bumpy journey to remote and hybrid working. First, remote and hybrid workers think their working environment has improved overall, believe that there is less wasted time, and feel just as connected as before. I did not expect that, but maybe I am showing my age. But the one big negative, the one that stood out like a sore thumb in the survey data, was when we asked what can be done to improve the current working situation. In response, a heavy majority stated that getting access to relevant information immediately and the need for better-curated information and data (I only see what I need to see) was critical and is currently a significant challenge. If that is the challenge, then I can think of no greater moment of opportunity for the knowledge management community to step in and fix that and become workplace heroes.