The first and most important thing when launching a new knowledge management program is to put in a business strategy to share your business knowledge which can be difficult. The strategy should involves a collective visioning of how sharing knowledge will enhance the performance of your organisation and also the reaching of a agreement among the senior management of you organisation that the process of the action will include sharing knowledge option that can be pursued. The implicit in such a program is basically a set of several decisions about the meticulous variety of knowledge management which the organisation should pursue. Apart from this there are also other decisions to be included like:

The Required Knowledge to Share

The knowledge sharing programs should particularly aim at making available different types of content. The program should actually be very different that should depend on whether it is to share know how, knowledge of customers or clients or good practices or knowledge of processes or also competitive intelligence. The sharing program would also differ accordingly which will depend on the type of knowledge you intend to share. Comprehensive, wide program for organisation in order to share knowledge are also made available when the organisation find that the know how to be very important for their business success wherein the value of the knowledge of the organisation is high and also if the organisation is geographically dispersed.

However when it come to share knowledge there is again the question of what type of knowledge to be shared and in such a case it would just be the quality. If the organisation is performing the knowledge sharing program then it would be common that they would put processes in place in order to ensure that the content which is being shared reaches a certain minimal threshold of reliability and value. There are some programs which do not make any distinction in the levels of reliability or materials that is offered when the initial threshold is being met and so it lets the users to make their own conclusions regarding its ultimate value. However the other programs and particularly those which that offer external knowledge sharing generally provide explicit guidance on whether or not the material has been genuine so that the users can make desired inferences regarding its reliability. Most of the knowledge sharing programs also lets in varying degrees the inclusion of promising and new ideas which have not been valid and are also not yet knowledgeable.

With Whom to Share the Knowledge

The main decision generally concerns the planned beneficiaries of this knowledge sharing program. The knowledge sharing system might even aim at sharing with either the external or internal audience. If your organisation intends the internal knowledge sharing program then it would typically aim at making their existing business to work better, cheaper and faster by just aiming the front line staff of their organisation with more up to date, high quality and easily accessible inputs and tools to carry out their jobs an thereby add value for their clients and save the costs. However the other external knowledge sharing poses a greater risk compared to the internal sharing program. This is because it would rise complex issues of copyright, confidentiality and if it in case of the private sector there would also be the protection of proprietary goods, but this process can also offer higher potential benefits. The organisation can use these knowledge management strategies to make great benefits.

How the Share the Knowledge

There should be an agreement in the organisation regarding the principal channels through which the knowledge would be shared, whether it is face to face or through the phone, help desk, email, fax, the collaborative tools or through the web. It is also better to not ignore the face to face communication as it is still one of the best and also the highest quality method to transfer knowledge between people. Most of the organisations have also found that the communities of practice might not be successful in launching and might sustain unless there is a good and high quality face to face communication.

Would Knowledge be Shared

In most of the organisations the negotiations of these knowledge management strategies can also go for a long period or even for years which might not even come to closure for their components. During the end when actually closing the decision and unmistakably deciding to communicate and share the decision throughout the organisation is actually the main step in launching your knowledge sharing strategy. A clear decision is very important as knowledge management basically involves shifting from the vertical hierarchical way of operation to a flat and horizontal boundary that would cross the mode of operation and such a massive shift might unlikely occur on a constant basis unless there is a clear decision at the top of the organisation that occurs. If there is no such decision the opponents of knowledge management would soon or later be able to close the shift and thereby ruin the systematic ability of the organisation to share the knowledge.