Succession Planning or Knowledge Management?
I have now completed two of the projects I have been working on this summer, which is very exciting, but I have realized I am not sure what to do with them. Obviously the self-assessment goes through the required process of being presented to the governing body and then is added to the file with the others, but I don’t know what to do with the notes and the data that went into it. As the end of my internship nears, I have started to think about how I am going to save the data I have collected (for both the self-assessment and the child learning outcomes) in a way that someone can access it, understand it, and be able to effectively use it.
At the conference I attended in June, one of the discussion topics was succession planning. Our director didn’t seem worried about it when I asked him if the agency has a plan. Because there isn’t a clear protocol for sharing information, I am coming up with my own plan so the data isn’t lost (I hope). During school I tried to understand the difference between succession planning and knowledge management, but I didn’t fully grasp it until I was sitting in my office trying to figure out how to best sort the data in excel so that someone can easily use it. If I had someone taking over my position when I leave, I could show them what I did and they could go from there, which is more of a succession plan (I think?). But I don’t, so I realized that this is a knowledge management dilemma.
While thinking about how I have no single person to show the file to (many people can use it) I realized the best way will have to be order the columns of data more logically and clearly label everything, which means more work. I can see why people have so much trouble with knowledge management. Not everyone processes information in the same way, and often, there isn’t a standardized procedure so people know where to retrieve the information they are looking for, so people come up with their own plans, or they don’t and risk losing the information.
One Response to “Succession Planning or Knowledge Management?”
Joseph Beasley
I came across a similar challenge in Kannapolis when I was consolidating data from different departments. In Kannapolis, multiple departments were responsible for buildings & grounds maintenance. Different departments organized data on buildings & grounds maintenance in different formats and with different labels. I was able to review that data and organize it in a spreadsheet that helped the Kannapolis City Manager’s Office grasp a stronger understanding of overall buildings & grounds maintenance.