Tim Powell is a frequent visitor to our SMR posts, and we speak together often. Tim also teaches with me from time to time in my course at Columbia, and we have on-going conversations about anything having to do with information management, KM, or knowledge services. It’s all part of this friendship we share, giving me the opportunity to be pretty up on what he’s working on at any given time.
On top of everything else Tim is an exceptionally fine author. He is the author of one of the textbooks I use (The Knowledge Value Chain Handbook 4.0), and the material he shares in his blog (Competing in the Knowledge Economy) is always stimulating. Last month, Tim produced one of my favorites (and, yes, I’m aware that I’m writing this six weeks after his post but I wanted time to think about what he wrote).
It would be unfair to attempt to respond to every comment and particular point of view Tim makes in Whatever Happened to Knowledge Management? but I experienced a couple of important take-aways. One of the most useful was Tim’s comment about the place of relevance, with respect to KM and knowledge services projects and activities, to the general population. It’s just not always clear what the result of getting into this work is going to be and, truth to tell, knowledge workers (and knowledge leaders) must focus on the relevance of what they’re proposing to do before they even begin. [And to give credit when credit is due, SMR Int’l partner Dale Stanley was one of the first people I knew to make this point; long, long ago – back in the mid-1990s – when Dale and I were giving workshops to budding knowledge services professionals he made sure that no knowledge services activity would work if it wasn’t relevant to what the company was trying to do].
So good for you, Tim. Thank you for keeping relevance at the center of the conversation when we’re speaking about success in KM/knowledge services.
Another focus with Tim, referencing Donald Hislop, looks at how often KM surveys tend to focus on implementation issues (“how to?”), rather than first gauging the level of interest in KM (“why?”).
Absolutely. And for anyone who has sat in on one of my webinars or lectures (or even in conversation with Guy, for the topic comes up often!), this distinction between “how to?” and “why?” is one I work with a lot. Instead of (or sometimes in addition to) Hislop, I’m quick to allude to Simon Sinek, who back in 2009 came to fame with his “golden circle,” urging us to focus on the “why?” of any activity before we try to deal with the “what?” and the “how?” His TED Talk has become a classic, and I never tire of bringing Sinek and his golden circle up in conversation, particularly when we’re speaking about KM and knowledge services. The construct fits so well with knowledge work, and it just makes sense to start with the “why?”
Which might explain why I liked Tim’s post so much: The analysis is right on, very good, and I can’t help but respect Tim for what he’s put forward for those of us working with KM, knowledge services, and knowledge strategy. I’ve been trying to deal with much of this for a long time, but particularly since I first got involved with the “idea” of knowledge services. [And whether or not I really came up with the term – as some give me credit for – doesn’t make any difference; someone else probably used the term before I did.]
I now realize – having been stimulated by Tim’s good post – that when I got to thinking about knowledge services, I was deliberately stretching (we might say) the concept of KM beyond “just” knowledge management. I was striving – I think consciously – in my definition of knowledge services to take KM to a more practical way of thinking about knowledge work (in fact Dale and I refer often – and have since the beginning – to knowledge services as “the practical side of knowledge management”).
So I called knowledge services “the convergence of information management, KM, and strategic learning” (the last usually referred to as “organizational learning” but I like the “strategic” flavor!) because I saw a need to move away from the concept of “managing” information and knowledge. And for good, very solid reasons, some of which Tim describes, and one reason which, in particular, impressed me perhaps more than all the others: too many executives just couldn’t get their minds “around” KM and knowledge services. They were having trouble with the whole idea of “managing” information and knowledge (and many of them still have trouble with this, as we consultants discover all the time).
And throughout all my writing and thinking and discussion I’ve tried to be careful to say, just as Hislop notes in his second reason (“KM activities now may not be labelled as such, but may just be part of the way things are being done”), that knowledge services is not a discipline or management theory in and of itself but a framework for describing how we – and hopefully everyone else in the organization – work.
Indeed, in much of my writing and conversation (until a couple of people hinted that I should stop making this reference, since it might affect my consulting business!), I’ve been known to say that knowledge services – including KM of course – might not even be around in a few years.
For me, I see (and have said so on many occasions and particularly in presentations to large conference audiences) that knowledge services might be considered analogous to quality management, TQM, “quality circles,” etc. It will still be there in the workplace but for all I know, in the future knowledge services – including KM – quite possibly will not be thought of as a separate management methodology or management tool, but just as part of “the way we work.”
I’ve never (really – this is true!) felt that KM, knowledge services, and knowledge strategy development should be stand-alone activities and disciplines. In my opinion they should be incorporated into what professional managers do as they go about bringing together the long list of management techniques and tools into their “ordinary” work. Everything connected with knowledge services should just be part of the management toolbox.
It might take us a while to get there, and that’s why I recently chose to change the title of a course I teach from “management and leadership in the knowledge domain” (pretty pompous that!) to “managing information and knowledge.” It’s pretty simple, really. I want my students to understand that when they move into management positions, their role will be to ensure that knowledge services is built in to the overall, larger enterprise-wide scheme of managing. As Tim puts it so well in his post, “information is not an island” and of course for me that moves on to being “information and knowledge – not an island” because we need both to get the work done. Information management, KM, and knowledge services must all be integrated into the larger, enterprise-wide picture. When they are not and the focus is on projects and implementation processes, we’re simply doing that, just focusing on individual activities. Our purpose is to focus on an overall picture or framework that influences – and responds to – the culture of the organization.
I was wondering how long it might take to have KM so integrated that it is not mentioned … and to my surprise, I noticed that my own 2013 book on Library decision-making does not even list knowledge management in the index. The concepts and methods are described throughout under their appropriate functional tasks, but the concept is simply assumed to be utilized throughout. And this is from a former Chair of the SLA KM Division.
Posted by Harley Dell at the AIIM Global Community of Information Professionals LinkedIn Group:
Good question whatever happened to knowledge management? Grasping a concrete definition is difficult and the concepts were a bit ahead of its time. Now however I would submit it will be arising again as the baby boomers exit and the next gen takes over everyone would agree that there is a great void of knowledge. KM will have a come back..
Posted by Nerisa Kamar, SMR’s Sub-Sahara Representative, at the KM/Knowlede Services Sub-Sahara LinkedIn Group:
Thank you for Sharing this. Guy, what I get is “the why” = Relevance and it is the starting point for Successful KS/KM in any organization.
KM, from my observation, had difficulty with ROI and so, as a technology, was coopted into concepts like content management, business intelligence and change management.
KM, in a functional view, is one of the end results of a properly implemented ECM system where people can have access to information when they need it, so that previous learning does not walk out the door at 5 pm. The capture of this knowledge though, was the biggest barrier to benefit.
AI systems, with automated machine learning could be an answer by capturing the learned information in the context of performing work. However, this is a few years off, and will ironically lead to the replacement of white collar workers with AI systems, imho.
So, until the learning item capture process is built into ECM business analysis and solution design and taken seriously by management, we will continue to see wasted efforts of merely protecting information assets from legal risk factors as opposed to providing organizations with competitive advantages.
Jon Thorne at the Gurteen Knowledge Management Community LinkedIn Group says:
For KM at its heart is about us increasing our ability to create, discover and invent ways to make what what life throws at us … Work for us. The last 15 years have been about extending the ability to control what people do. For me this was never KM. KM was designed to liberate people, to help people to solve their own problems. KM was never meant to control and limit people.
I don’t think we ever had KM.
It’s not a question of what happened to KM it is why we never got KM …
1 hour ago
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Then Jon adds:
At the beginning of KM there was an intense battle between those that believed KM was a social process where individuals created, discovered and invented ways to make what life throws at them work for them and those who believed KM was about removing errors. The removing errors group won and Best practice, quality, etc all came to be called KM.
I was in the socialising and conversation camp. We lost because we could not come up with an ROI that was better than the remove errors camp.
I think that ROI is emerging … As it is based on the cost of adding resilience into the fragile systems created by people who seek to remove error.
A new KM based on socialising is coming … I hope 🙂
Rémy Fannader at the AIIM Global Community of Information Professionals LinkedIn Group writes:
As illustrated by the name of the Symbolic Systems Program (SSP) at Stanford University, and formalized by Davis, Shrobe, and Szolovits’ tenets of knowledge representation, advances in computing and communication technologies have brought together IA, KM, and information systems.
https://caminao.wordpress.com/what-is-to-be-represented/knowledge-architecture/
What happened to Knowledge Management is that it became the province of the intellectual rather than the practitioner. Don’t get me wrong – as a former Head of Knowledge Management for a respected private sector scientific research organisation, I absolutely understand the need for pure research and debate. However, their pure research had to have practical resonance with the practitioner community which is something I rarely see in the KM world.
Whilst I acknowledge your comment that “knowledge services should just be part of the management toolbox”, published advice and guidance offered rarely extends beyond the traditional Information Services world or business cases for the next generation I&KM software application.
As an Information & Knowledge Manager for around 20 years, I firmly believe I cannot manage Knowledge –but I can manage or contribute to the Knowledge Environment. I take my inspiration from two sources. The first is the classic definition of knowledge by Tom Davenport and Laurence Prusak in Working Knowledge (1998), that includes the phrase “It originates and is applied in the minds of knowers.” If Knowledge is behind the eyes and between the ears it cannot be managed directly, which means my role as Knowledge Manager is to maximise opportunities for an individual to be a “knower”.
The second source is the role of Conversation in Knowledge Management. I suggest that an individual’s personal knowledge is generated during a conversation when “information” received is mentally challenged, verified and/or adapted into that individuals personal belief system. That happens quite naturally during a conversation between people but it could equally be when a person reads a corporate policy document, book or blog, listens to a lecture, watches a webinar, etc. and mentally examines the concepts; “Do I accept that statement, do I reject it, do I accept it but adjusted to my beliefs, etc.”
That makes my role as Knowledge Manager one of creating the maximum of beneficial conversations by:
• Managing the information environment (yes, obvious but merely the first item on the list)
o Document & records Management, Libraries, etc.
o Technical aspects of information sharing, collaborative working, etc.
• Contributing to the physical environment;
o Physical building design, e.g. library next to the staff restaurant, location and number of break-out rooms, location of common services such as printers, coffee / water machines, stationery, cloakrooms, etc.
o Office design, e.g. desk layout for teams, desk design – esp. the screen between facing desks, visual management tools, communication and display tools in meeting rooms, etc.
• Contributing to business process design;
o Helping managers understand the information and knowledge management implications of their business processes and how they add to or detract from information and knowledge environments.
o Participation in business improvement activities such as LEAN or 6 Sigma events, again to draw out the information and knowledge management issues
o Building Information and Knowledge elements into standard business processes, e.g. knowledge acquisition, generation and sharing objectives in appraisals, recruitment and induction, corporate risk registers, etc.
• Contributing to corporate culture and change management
o Building expectations that people will manage, share and develop information and knowledge
o Building expectations for collaborative working
o [Yes, I have done all this and more ;-} ]
Too many see Information and Knowledge Management as a project for an underfunded Library & Information Services team rather than a way of life for the business. Often, LIS teams see their role solely in terms library and records management rather than getting their elbows out and entering the robust world of organisational management. Most organisations expect People and Finance resource managers to involve themselves in area beyond their immediate remit. I believe I should be doing the same for the Information resource.
When organisations make decisions based on the impact the decision will have on People, Finance and Information / Knowledge, and people are unsurprised by collaborative working, information and knowledge sharing, etc., then I’ll be able to retire. I predict a long working life!