Skip to main content
 

Succession Planning or Knowledge Management?

[types field=”mpagrav” size=”full” align=”left” id=”$studentblogprofile”][/types]

By Brittany Clark, on July 18, 2014

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.

[types field=”mpafootone” class=”” style=”” id=”2433″][/types]

One Response to “Succession Planning or Knowledge Management?”

  1. 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.

Comments are closed.