A blog by Dr. Uwe-Klaus Jarosch, November 2025
Knowledge management is a topic that is only discussed in many companies in soapbox speeches. People talk about how employees and their knowledge are the company’s most valuable asset. And at the first signs of a crisis, employees are laid off or dismissed without any concern for ensuring that their know-how remains in the company in some way.
Business figures are then the only valid yardstick – and the value of knowledge in the company is typically not a relevant value.
This raises the question of what knowledge is in and for a company.
You have probably heard of the chain
characters – data – information – knowledge
.
Characters
Characters are the smallest units, such as the letters in a word or the bits in a digital data set. Only several characters or characters in a specific context create data.
Data
Data are records of facts, numbers, words about events, calculations, or observations. They are also referred to as unordered units of information.
Informationen
Information is a compilation of data. For example, a series of words can form a sentence that conveys understandable and assignable information. Multiple pieces of data as a data set can reveal, for example, when and where the data was collected, and connections between data can be established. To this end, the data is sorted, organized, interpreted, or placed in context so that the information can be understood and used.
Knowledge
Knowledge is based on information. However, the availability of large amounts of information alone does not constitute knowledge. In addition, connections, conditions, and if-then conditions must be described under which actions and decisions are supported or instructed.
For a company, knowledge is the set of rules that recommends (can, should) or demands (must) what should be done under certain conditions. These are instructions for action.
It is therefore necessary for each company to invest effort (money, time) to develop such rules and keep them up to date.
Failing to record, pass on, and use knowledge means that processes are no longer stable and reliable. However, this is the basis of every company, both for internal efficiency and for customer relations.
Management systems are nothing more than knowledge repositories for describing internal processes in a binding manner and organizing access to this knowledge for all employees.
When you map company processes in the management system, this is nothing more than a set of rules for how departments should work together to complete a defined task in a given situation.
A work instruction is comparable to a process description, which is a binding instruction on how a defined activity must be carried out within the department or work group in order to achieve a comparable result each time it is repeated by any of the possible employees.
A company standard is a binding set of rules that describes how methods or processes are to be applied. Such standards are usually formulated by experts who organize and document their knowhow (information) in a structured manner. Typical situations and conditions are described. Under these conditions, the following courses of action are to be carried out based on existing experience. A clear distinction can and should be made between mandatory and recommended instructions.
Templates and checklists also reflect past experience. They are also instructions for action in pre-planned situations, such as filling out a form or systematically working through a checklist.
Whether such instructions are only agreed verbally, recorded in writing on paper or as a file, or accessed and processed digitally in the situation, they remain knowledge that is available as a set of rules in the company and has usually also been authorized by management.
This knowledge within the company only becomes effective, i.e., visible in everyday life and in economic results, when it is used. To do this, employees must know the knowledge and the rules and have easy access to them. This includes training courses that bring this knowledge to people’s attention and, more importantly, enable them to apply the knowledge correctly (abilities).
Utilization requires that the binding nature of the knowledge is maintained. It is of no use to the company to develop rules and regulations and provide training if no one or not everyone adheres to them afterwards. Compliance with the rules is therefore, in my view, an essential part of knowledge management. And this compliance means that supervisors and team members in particular must pay attention to it and demand compliance.
Of course, rules can also be outdated, incorrect, or inappropriate for the current situation. In such cases, the knowledge contained in the rules is not applicable.
People are good at compensating for such inappropriate situations. They improvise. They change the rules. They make up their own rules or find reasons for themselves not to follow the existing rules. This then leads to typical human errors.
Now it remains to apply this knowledge in a mandatory manner.
This applies to every company, regardless of whether it conducts research or development, manufactures products, or provides services. It also makes no fundamental difference whether the company operates internally in a conventional, authoritarian, or flat hierarchy, or whether it works in a process-oriented or agile manner.
It is also true for any company that knowledge changes. If the collection of knowledge is to remain applicable, it must be kept up to date.
I would like to discuss this under the heading “Lessons Learned” in a next blog file.
Conclusions:
Stay curious
Uwe Jarosch