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Isn’t the KM/Knowledge Services Connection Missing? Steve Denning’s Post on Tom Friedman’s Column

December 7, 2010 By Guy St. Clair

Take a look.

Steve Denning has written a useful and stimulating post (and has had some fascinating comments in response).

Read Steve’s post here. It has to do with a recent Tom Friedman column.

Don’t know if you read Tom’s work. I do, and I always find myself impressed with Tom’s insight. His column last week, about an imaginary WikiLinks-type activity in China (“From WikiChina“) was intriguing and really got me thinking as I headed off on a long journey.

Tom’s idea was to describe what the situation might have been if, as he put it, “China had a WikiLeaker and we could see what its embassy in Washington was reporting about America?”

Tom describes much that’s not working in today’s society or, as Steve synthesizes it, “crumbling infrastructure, the speed of the trains between DC and NY or the number of dropped calls are merely symptoms of a more serious illness …  our institutions are no longer productive.”

Steve contends – and I agree – that Tom has focused on symptoms rather than the cause of the problem. It all traces back to “unproductive management.”

From our perspective (that is, those of us who work in strategic knowledge and who focus our professional lives on the role of knowledge development and knowledge sharing in organizational management), isn’t there a pretty obvious “missing link” here?

I’m talking about the value of KD/KS at senior management levels, and how, without focusing on KM/knowledge services in working with one another, enterprise leaders are doing themselves and their organizations a disservice to expect productive management (especially when they themselves fail to incorporate the principles of KM/knowledge services into their own working environment).

About a year ago, an e-Profile at this site (Ken Winter at VDOT: KM/Knowledge Services = Innovation, Opportunity, and Influence) described an organization that was moving forward in this area. In a sidebar to the profile, one leader in the organization – Maureen Hammer – described how an enterprise-wide knowledge culture was created, using leaders to set the stage. Here’s how they did it, as reported in the e-Profile.

“She [Hammer] brought project managers together for confidential meetings, persuaded them to open up to one another, to talk about best practices, lessons learned, improved processes, and similar topics, all topics they all knew a lot about and when pressed, realized that it was knowledge they should be sharing with one another.”

Much to think about here. Can’t managers themselves – using and promoting KD/KS – provide the solution to unproductive management?

Tagged With: ” management, Corporate management, Denning (Steven), Executive leadership, Friedman (Thomas), Hammer (Maureen), KM/Knowledge Services, organizational effectiveness, Organizational leadership, Productivity, Winter (Ken)

About Guy St. Clair

Guy St. Clair is the Series Editor for Knowledge Services, from Verlag Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin, the scholarly publishing house specializing in academic literature. The series subject is knowledge services, the approach to managing intellectual capital that merges information management, knowledge management (KM), and strategic learning, presenting and discussing new and innovative approaches to knowledge sharing in all fields of work.

With Barrie Levy, Guy  is the author of The Knowledge Services Handbook: A Guide for the Knowledge Strategist (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020). He is also the author of Knowledge Services: A Strategic Framework for the 21st Century Organization (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016). [Note: Go here for the free PDF version of this book: https://bit.ly/3msI27V. ]

Guy is also the author of Knowledge Services: Five Free Webinars from Guy St. Clair, available to anyone who wants to learn more about knowledge services. The webinars are offered at no charge.

Guy’s other professional writings are listed in SMR International’s corporate website, at SMRShare. 

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