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<\/p>\nAs the old saying goes, \u201cKnowledge is power.\u201d This certainly rings true in business, as those who best understand their industries and markets tend to have a knack for staying on top. If that person is a company\u2019s owner, however, great knowledge can turn into a vulnerability when he or she decides to retire or otherwise leave the business.<\/p>\n
As you develop your succession plan, consider how to mitigate the loss of pure know-how that will occur when you step down. One way to tackle this risk is to implement a knowledge management strategy.<\/p>\n
Two types of knowledge<\/strong><\/p>\n Knowledge management is a formal process of recognizing and treating knowledge as an asset that your company can identify, maintain and share. Generally, a business can subdivide knowledge into two types:<\/p>\n 1. Explicit knowledge.<\/strong> This exists in the tangible world and typically includes company reports, financial statements and databases. These items are usually easy to access, extrapolate from and append. For your succession plan, however, you may need to dig deeper into your own confidential files, memos or emails.<\/p>\n 2. Tacit knowledge.<\/strong> This is information that resides solely between the ears of a business\u2019s leadership, employees and perhaps even service providers. As such, it\u2019s not easily retrievable. In terms of succession planning, this may be the stuff that you haven\u2019t written down or even talked about much.<\/p>\n Typical categories<\/strong><\/p>\n Typical knowledge management categories include:<\/p>\n In addition, knowledge management should account for your company\u2019s intellectual property \u2014trade secrets, for example. Many business owners keep such details close to their vests and even managers may not know the full value of the company\u2019s intellectual property. This could put your business at risk following your departure.<\/p>\n A comprehensive knowledge management effort related to your succession plan will call on you to undertake a full inventory of every category listed above and perhaps others. Gathering your explicit knowledge may entail compiling years\u2019, even decades\u2019, worth of documents, files and writings. This may not be an easy task, but it\u2019s still a matter of straight research.<\/p>\n You\u2019ll likely find capturing your tacit knowledge somewhat more challenging. One idea is to ask a suitable employee or engage an outside consultant to interview you regarding all the pertinent categories. Many business owners find these conversations arduous at first but eventually enlightening and enjoyable.<\/p>\n A legacy preserved<\/strong><\/p>\n A solid succession plan is imperative to maintaining the future stability and success of your company. Knowledge management can strengthen that plan and help preserve the legacy you\u2019ve worked so hard to build. Contact us for further information and for help identifying knowledge related to your tax filings, accounting methods and other financial matters.<\/p>\n \u00a9 2019 As the old saying goes, \u201cKnowledge is power.\u201d This certainly rings true in business, as those who best understand their industries and markets tend to have a knack for staying on top. If that person is a company\u2019s owner, however, great knowledge can turn into a vulnerability when he or she decides to retire or … Continue reading “Using knowledge management to develop your succession plan”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.excelsisaccounting.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.excelsisaccounting.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.excelsisaccounting.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.excelsisaccounting.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.excelsisaccounting.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=959"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.excelsisaccounting.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":960,"href":"https:\/\/www.excelsisaccounting.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959\/revisions\/960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.excelsisaccounting.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.excelsisaccounting.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.excelsisaccounting.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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