Human Resources Technician According To Techniques For Effective Knowledge Management

At the brigade level, Knowledge Management (KM) is an imperative tool to ensure information is disseminated to the lowest level and vice versa to ensure the commander’s intent is followed and met. According to Techniques for Effective Knowledge Management, “KM is the process of enabling knowledge flow to enhance shared understanding, learning, and decision making. Knowledge flow is the ease of movement of knowledge in organizations.”

Being assigned as the Brigade S1 Human Resources Technician in a Sustainment Brigade, I focused my survey on all levels from senior leadership, to staff officers/non-commissioned officers and Soldiers at the 20 level and below. Each answer given was unique in that person’s concept in KM and how it is implemented within the organization, to include myself. My assessment is that each member has a general idea and utilizes those tools in everyday use in sharing knowledge in the decision making process, but does not have a full understanding of the concept in Knowledge Management.

Of the ten personnel interviewed, more than a third indicated KM is information that is stored on a network share drive and the KM leader is the S6. The rest gave various answers ranging from it is a Commander’s Update Brief, to databases, rock drills, the internet, or had no familiarity at all.

In our organization or overall Reserve Components, hands-on training on CPOF is very limited due to time constraints and qualified operators. For every major Annual Training event for our organization, contractors must be employed for updates and training. For example, from our previous Warfighter Exercise at Fort Hood, TX, here again General Dynamics employees are contracted to service the systems and provide training, not only to the Reserve Components, but also to our Active Duty counter