Knowledge Services: Will a Glossary Help?

There continues to be a great deal of discussion about the language we use when we speak about our work (especially to people who are not familiar with what we do as knowledge managers, knowledge services professionals, and knowledge strategists).

We’ve thought about this before, even recently. See  How We Talk about Knowledge Services (Dec. 2, 2013) or, more generally, 14 Thoughts for 2014 (Jan. 1, 2013).

As it happens, in response to an exercise for developing a glossary for a discussion group with which I’m affiliated, I thought it might be useful to describe some of these ways of speaking about knowledge services as we use these terms with SMR International clients, colleagues, members with whom we interact in professional associations, and others with whom we come in contact. Although the focus for the discussion group is on knowledge strategy, this preliminary glossary is offered in the interest of opening the conversation in knowledge services terms and perhaps finding common language for describing our work.

We’ve published it as an SMR International Briefing at SMRShare, our company’s content-sharing site. Or you can connect directly at A Knowledge Services Glossary: A Guide for Conversation.

In the Introduction to the briefing, I make this point:

This SMR Briefing is expected to be a fluid document, with the date/version changing as new concepts and terms are added or current ones revised. Here at SMR International we welcome input about these terms, and we look forward to broader discourse after this briefing is reviewed.

Please note that unattributed definitions are those we have developed over the years at SMR International. We apologize if some definitions and/or descriptions are not attributed (or worse, misattributed). Just let us know and we’ll try to correct these errors or add specific attributions in a later version of this glossary.

 As you can tell, here at SMR International and among our professional colleagues and clients, we’re very interested in your response to this effort.

Please send along suggestions, thoughts, ideas, clarification, and such. As I say in the document, “The last several years have seen an amazing growth of interest in knowledge management (KM), knowledge services, and knowledge strategy,” I’m wondering if this isn’t the time to think about the language we use.

Many thanks for you attention and your interest.