SMR Knowledge

Building the Knowledge Culture

  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • Home
  • About Us
    • The SMR Team
  • SMR’s Knowledge Services Blog
  • SMRShare
  • Contact SMR

“You Have to Teach That?”

February 6, 2012 By Guy St. Clair

A recent conversation with a colleague got me to thinking about our work in KM, knowledge services, and knowledge strategy development. A group of us were in conversation with a lady who is not among our usual group of acquaintances. She’s a professional person, well-established in a career (not in management), and she was curious about our work in the M.S. Information and Knowledge Strategy Program at Columbia University, with which I’m affiliated.

So I launched into my usual explanation about the value of knowledge development and knowledge sharing in the larger organization, how there are many companies and organizations and all sorts of enterprises where communication is a problem. I explained that much good work goes on these organizations, but when knowledge is developed through this good work (or even knowledge about failures), it often isn’t communicated. Our IKnS program teaches managers how they can work with their organizations, developing strategies for better knowledge sharing. Since many workers don’t know how to share the knowledge they’ve developed – or heard about – we teach managers how to be knowledge strategists, what we sometimes call “knowledge thought leaders.”

My friend’s reaction was quick and to the point: “You have to teach that?”

Hmm…. Got me to thinking.

Why do we teach KD/KS? Why is knowledge development and knowledge sharing – as an organizational function – not part of our conventional thinking, when we are dealing with the workplace? Even those who fit Peter Drucker’s classic description of the knowledge worker (employees who work primarily with information or who develop and use knowledge in the workplace) are not immune. And since most of the workforce can be classified as knowledge workers (some estimates range as high as 80% of all workers), we’re talking about a lot of people who should – just by the nature of their work – understand KD/KS.

And the challenge isn’t just in the workplace. When we move to the bigger picture, to how KD/KS functions in our personal lives, we would expect an almost automatic attention to KD/KS. Isn’t managing knowledge something that everyone has to be concerned with at one level or another?

And what about the next step, the societal level? Shouldn’t KD/KS be a focus of attention for our leaders? Of course (but perhaps that’s a topic that’s best saved until after the political season in North America has calmed down).

So why must KD/KS be taught? From where I sit, I see several reasons.

  1. Knowledge is commonplace. We can play with the popular data/information/knowledge/wisdom construct all we want, but in the final analysis, it’s knowledge that enables us to carry out the necessary functions of our lives. Whether on a personal basis or otherwise, the more we know about an activity, a goal, or any other desired objective, the easier it is to achieve what we want to accomplish.
  2. As we begin to give more thought to KD/KS, we recognize that we’re not just speaking about knowledge development and knowledge sharing as an enabler. Of course KD/KS helps us – as individual knowledge workers – to work better and smarter. But in the process of learning more about the benefits of excellence in the KD/KS process, we begin to come up with important insights about our role in the organization that employes us. We’re there for a purpose, and it’s not just to have a useful and interesting line of work for ourselves. We’re contributing to corporate success and to the successful achievement of the corporate mission and that role – in and of itself – speaks volumes about the value of what we do as knowledge workers.
  3. Related to that contribution, it’s now pretty clear that successful KD/KS matches (or should match) management expectations. In every organization, management’s job is to ensure that the investment in resources (people, processes, technology) pays off and hopefully – from our perspective – leads to the functioning of the company as a knowledge culture. The quest for ROI can’t be curtailed or downplayed, and today’s enterprise leaders are realizing that the proper management of intellectual capital brings tangible results. [And if they don’t realize it, we help them – that’s one of the things we teach as we seek to educate knowledge strategists for the business world.]
  4. Finally, in almost everything we do in the workplace, we need to go “beyond the routine” (full disclosure: the phrase is not mine but was shared by my colleague Nerisa Kamar in Nairobi from yesterday’s sermon at church). We’ve all known people who find themselves locked into a position that is often referred to – not so kindly – as a “deadhead” job. Nobody wants a job like that. One of the beauties of working in the knowledge domain, of learning how to contribute to well-functioning KM, knowledge services, and knowledge strategy development, is that knowledge workers have the opportunity to work beyond the routine. As society changes, as our personal lives grow and develop, and as the workplace continues to evolve, learning how to manage the KD/KS process is a career path that is guaranteed to bring interest (and perhaps some level of professional excitement) into our lives.

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. 

Comments

  1. Anthony Liew says

    February 7, 2012 at 2:29 am

    Well, there are many issues we take for granted without really understanding them. For instance, the much talked about data-information-knowledge hierachy still hasn’t quite clarified itself. 9 out of 10 still make the mistakes of circular definition i.e defining of data in terms of information, and vice versa; or defining information in terms of knowledge, and vice versa. (Basic fallacy in Philosophy 101)
    If we are not clear about their definitions, how can we be clear about their purposes, how they really interact, and how we can manage such processes and resources??

    Reference
    Liew, A. (2007). Understanding data, information, knowledge and their inter-relationships. Journal of Knowledge Management Practice, Vol. 8, No. 2,

    Reply
  2. Guy St. Clair says

    February 7, 2012 at 1:49 pm

    Mary Woolsey at SLA’s KM Division and at the LinkedIn KM/Knowledge Services Group sent this:

    As a solo librarian in the corporate world, I felt that my job and role was to educate the people in the groups/teams I worked with regarding the value of information and its value in the overall knowledge landscape in which we were involved with daily at every opportunity I had.

    This was an on-going process, and as you point out in the article that knowledge is part of all aspects of our lives, and not just the corporate or work world. In spite of this on-going focus in my job, it was difficult to educate people that the knowledge contributed by each of us in the business world contributed to the bottom line of the business as well as each making contributions at the individual employee, and individual groups and teams level. If this connection was not made at the work level, I’m sure it was not make at other levels in people’s day-to-day lives.

    Also, as I tried to make a case for an overall knowledge management just in the group I was involved in, there was difficulties even at this level to convince people that all the information contributing to the overall knowledge base had value and a need existed for management of each individual’s contributions of information to the overall knowledge picture. And as individuals in the workplace, they were not and could not manage all the information coming at them from all sides; and thus could not pick out the most important and valuable information to contribute to their personal and business knowledge base. They were, in essence, overwhelmed….

    Of necessity, we need to continually to educate people around us as well learn ourselves, how to manage the knowledge; but also to manage all aspects of knowledge as on-going basis. This is a tall and overwhelming order.

    Guy responds to Mary’s comment:

    Thanks, Mary, for that cogent comment and you’re absolute right: ti’s education. We’re always educating, aren’t we? KD/KS is the name of the game, and if we’re going to be making any sort of contribution as knowledge professionals, we must educate people around us to manage knowledge and to do it on an on-going basis. With my students in the Columbia program last night, we were learning the specifics of the knowledge audit, and I was telling them just that: the knowledge audit (like everything else we do in knowledge work) is not a one-time thing. We begin it, yes, but it becomes an on-going part of our work. We are continuously educating.

    Reply
  3. Petrie Coetzee says

    February 7, 2012 at 3:54 pm

    Dealing with the data deluge in this era of information technology is critical for netting knowledge. Therefore we need data management and information management just as much as we need knowledge management. None of these on its own is a simple technical issue – each of them requires human involvement. How to manage this whole chain and cycle of knowledge development needs to be a central focus for us. Dealing with this matter is a tall order, indeed.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

SMR’s Knowledge Services Blog Archives (since 2009)

Tags

archives management Conversational Leadership corporate archives corporate records COVID – 19 Healthcare Hovell (John) IAO ICT ICT training Information Africa Organization information and communications technology information management information technology KD/KS KM KM KM/Knowledge Services KM training knowledge asset management knowledge development/knowledge sharing knowledge development and knowledge sharing knowledge networking knowledge services knowledge sharing Knowledge Strategy Knowledge Thought Leaders Manion (Kevin) organizational archives organizational behavior organizational effectiveness organizational management organizational records Peter F. Drucker records management social networking Special Libraries Association strategic knowledge strategic knowledge management strategic knowledge services Strategic Learning strategic planning strategy development The Knowledge Culture ” management

Contact Information

SMR International
10 Park Avenue, Suite # 4-F
New York, NY 10016 USA

+1 917 797 1500
info@smr-knowledge.com
www.smr-knowledge.com

Follow Us

  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Recent Blog Posts

  • Five Free Knowledge Services Webinars August 1, 2022
  • KM/Knowledge Services Community: Humanist Management and Knowledge Services (Part 2) January 24, 2022
  • KM/Knowledge Services Community: Guy St. Clair on Humanist Management and Knowledge Services ( Part 1) December 28, 2021

Copyright © 2023 · SMR International · All Rights Reserved