Why is Institutional Knowledge Important to an Organization?
Over time, every organization develops tools of the trade, techniques, and best practices to perform jobs effectively. For government affairs teams, institutional knowledge refers to maintaining those tools over time to develop solutions, save resources, and pass that knowledge and history to new employees and legislators.
Institutional knowledge can save time and money, especially when onboarding new hires or when new legislators take office. Rather than reinventing the wheel, procedures that have worked (and information on what hasn’t worked) can be passed on to new employees so they can build upon the foundation already laid in an organization, or presented to new legislators with all the relevant historical information.
“Institutional knowledge is key, especially when it comes to state government affairs,” said Sandy Guenther, manager of state government affairs and advocacy engagement at the American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons (AAOMS). With government affairs, issues are often very cyclical. Issues organizations dealt with a decade ago may resurface again. “Being able to know what occurred back in the day in these various states, tactics used, and what was said is very valuable,” Guenther said.
Having access to a single repository — keeping a record of all the moving pieces associated with their work — is needed to drive alignment and increase efficiencies across team members. From policy developments to activity metrics, teams need an easy and reliable place to get the information they need. “If there is a new person that joins the team, they can get that historical perspective from the platform,” said Melodie Shrader, vice president of state affairs at the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association (PCMA).
With the “Great Resignation” we have heard about over the last year and the reputation of Congressional staffer jobs for being a revolving door, it’s important to minimize the disruption to current projects. Maintaining institutional knowledge ensures these projects are not abandoned and that new employees or legislators can pick up where others left off.
“There are lots of [job] opportunities for people in D.C. So, from time to time, people move on to other places to work,” said David Bellaire, executive vice president and general counsel at the Financial Services Institute. Bellaire uses FiscalNote as a centralized location for all institutional knowledge to help ensure business continuity. With FiscalNote, now all the archives are in a single platform everyone can access as needed and get the information they need.
Retaining institutional knowledge is also helpful when new legislators are elected, as it can get them up to speed on projects or educate them on important topics. “When a legislator has an idea, we can pull out all the information on the topic from the past and create a summary to give them an idea of what has come before,” said Kali Wicks, manager of government relations at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Montana. “We can take that information and walk the legislator through what has or hasn’t been successful.”