In the first two parts of this trilogy, I looked at the business sense behind a learning organisation and how it might work if viewed as an ecology, comprising interlocking value networks.

For this coda, I simply want to suggest that there are always ways to make life easier in the workplace by combining complementary strengths in your management team. This is a catalyst for learning, which is often easily overlooked.

Managers in business support roles should seize upon any opportunities to add value, glue together a culture that is conducive to learning and build trust through partnership.

Finding a suitable project should not be difficult. It could be as simple as a specific learning problem for a workgroup, with a "knowledge-intensive" core.

With this in mind, your Marketing, Human Resources Development (HRD), Facilities and Knowledge Management (KM) people might find it beneficial to brainstorm together every so often, perhaps informally over lunch.

It is a great way to listen actively, experience alternative perceptions and cross-pollinate ideas.

Business support teams can cooperate to heighten each other's visibility and value. At AS&K, skills in Marketing and KM were interlaced on some internal marketing collateral, which all new employees receive.

This profiles the expertise and services of the KM team as a fee-earning "internal consultancy within the business".

Similar cooperation uncovered the branding concept and certain design aspects of the firm's successful Pathfinder Portal.

The Training Officer and Professional Support Lawyer co-authored its self-help documentation.

In another partnership, IT & KM specialists co-developed an interactive product, which in a mouse click or two enables anyone to find quickly any available in-house expertise linked to a critical document.

The document grows cumulatively with the addition of new links. The idea is simple and can be extended to other accelerated learning needs.

Authorship of linked items signifies a de facto declaration of expertise, so that information hunter-gatherers can follow up with them if necessary.

Users thus save hours of frustrating search time and discover the crucial informational relationships woven into an issue.

They acquire a richer understanding of the context, where the meaning of the information is more readily appreciated from the whole map of the terrain.

Instead of floundering, trying to make sense out of seemingly unconnected, disparate fragments of information, there is faster, contextualised learning. In Internet parlance, this is very close to what the founder of the World Wide Web - Tim Berners-Lee - envisioned as the "Semantic Web".

Issues like recruitment, staff retention and attrition, resistance to change and training employees to cope with it constructively, have also attracted HRD minds into the KM arena.

During recessions, these topics inevitably move much higher up the business agenda to become attention-getting hotspots.

When interdisciplinary insights are applied to them, the value of the learning organisation - and its reliance on pervasive knowledge sharing - becomes self-evident.

Over time, you can then measure the benefits against agreed criteria, both in dollar values and qualitative terms.

How can all this become a reality? Five key things need to happen. Firstly, a business needs to recognise knowledge loss and attrition as a strategic issue. The cost of this loss is high and must be mitigated wherever possible.

Secondly, HRD can team up with KM practitioners to decide on what exactly is worth capturing, or safely ignored.

Imminent retirees or employees leaving the firm usually have critical expertise or know-how to capture, document or pass on to (potential) successors.

Interviews, handover checklists, project milestone reviews and even videos can all be used in conjunction with an audit of knowledge gaps and deficits. As previously suggested, there may even be scope to bake - or automate - some of this brainpower into routine workflow.

Thirdly, your Facilities Management people can help you to review the proximity issue - physical "thinkplaces" conducive to interaction. For electronic connectivity, mobilise your IT folk for insights.

Technology must blend naturally into workplace "biodiversity", rather than disrupting it. It should not be imposed regardless of the complexity of a context or people's work preferences. Experienced knowledge management practitioners can help you to get the overall balance right.

Fourthly, HRD and KM staff can collaborate on the agenda of lifelong learning, moving it beyond hollow rhetoric. Recruiters and trainers know that attracting smart and versatile new talent is easier if the business has a solid learning infrastructure, through accreditation like Investors in People, identifiable professional development programmes (like the CLE scheme for lawyers) or its use of alumni networks as a source of value.

Lastly, Marketing, HRD and KM can conduct consumer behaviour style "soft" audits together.

These readings on the mood and morale of employees in a firm and the unwritten rules of engagement in the workplace reveal what impels or impedes learning. Indicia about learning styles, information seeking patterns and preferences can then be designed into any remedial initiatives, or new services.

In our twenty first century, complementary management roles in a business have increasingly converged around the synthesis of working knowledge, especially in dealing with loss of expertise or staff attrition.

It is a perfect example of a learning ecology at work but without stewardship it is susceptible to disruption and imbalance. Our management teams should be its guardians.

Chris Maiden is the Knowledge Manager at Appleby Spurling & Kempe. He is both a Chartered Manager and Chartered Librarian and writes and speaks internationally on knowledge management issues. Copies of Mr. Maiden's columns can be obtained on the Appleby Spurling & Kempe web site at www.ask.bm.

This column should not be used as a substitute for professional legal advice. Before proceeding with any matters discussed here, persons are advised to consult with a lawyer.