Is it current?

Here is something for folks to chew on:

As part of my library science degree at Dominican University, I am taking a class focusing on competitive intelligence. On the first night of the class, the professor challenged (in a good way) my thinking about KM. His challenge to me was "Is the information we gather as part of a KM capability current?" Can it be used for real time strategic decision making?

I started to think about this....If all we use our KM capability for is to capture lessons learned and client experience, this is by nature information that is not timely. We can use it to help not step in the same holes as we did before but how can we use it in a forward thinking way to help our organizations respond to the fluid nature of business.

Any thoughts on that...please comment.

Eugene

Busting KM Myths

The link below has a solid article about KM myths and tries to bust them. This short article can be useful if trying to show how a KM initative can help an organization - but it is only a short treatis and thus cannot be the only thing used.

Enjoy

http://www.smh.com.au/news/Management-Focus/Busting-knowledge-management-myths/2005/04/18/1113676690541.html?oneclick=true

Employee Loyalty and Retirements

In an article found at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/5/prwebxml238577.php, the author makes a good case for KM as it relates to the loss of organizational knowledge because of retirements.

The author also makes the following statement "Despite the potential loss of workforce knowledge and experience, workers remain committed to their employers. According to the survey results, more than two-thirds (70 percent) of respondents said they expect to retire from the organizations at which they're currently employed, and half (49 percent) said they expect to remain in their current positions until that time. The vast majority (88 percent) said they are willing to acquire new skills, nearly half (46 percent) said they are willing to relocate for their employers, and more than one-third (39 percent) said they are willing to work longer hours. Yet four in 10 (41 percent) said their companies are doing only a fair or a poor job of providing the training they will need to meet the skills challenges they will face prior to retirement. "

I would question the conclusions drawn from this statement. Are people willing to do things like work more hours or relocate for their employer out of loyalty or fear of job loss. The high rate of people who expect to retire from their current employer may not say that because of loyalty but because of the fact they consider themselves "short timers" and will retire at the first available moment.

KM In Action

I was reading an article entitled Knowledge Management in Action and it was dated March 16, 2005 and appeared in an online magazine called TechRepublic. It is about a company called Collaborative Consulting and their KM initiative. Here are some of the key points that I found:

1) The team spent enough time to identify the issues and get the key decision makers to sign on.
2) They chose two tools called Jive Forum and Jive Knowledge Base. This product only cost them $10,000.
3) They created an incentive system so that people would start using the KM system right away.

The key take away items for me are 1) you don’t need pots of money to do implement a KM system – the software was relatively cheap (when compared to other KM products) 2) getting something into folk’s hands as rapidly as possible does have value. The old 80/20 rule may be applicable in this case and 3) senior level buy in is still critical.

Just some food for thought and grist for the mill.

The field is where the knowledge is

In the 20 December 2004 issue of Newsweek on page E6 there was a story under the title A Call to Mecca. It tells the story of LG Electronics CEO Kim Ssang. The story stated that he spends 70% of his time globe trotting because "the field is where the knowledge is".

This is so true. If we, as knowledge managers want to really show value for the work that we do, we must be as close to those who have the valuable content knowledge as we can. It is through their expertise can we help take the knowledge that is developed in the field and universalize it for the entire organization and thus, create value.

Blog penetration

Here is another article about the penetration of blogs in business http://www.adtmag.com/article.asp?id=10466.

I think we are on the cutting edge of something that will be commonplace very soon.

The Changing Role of the Librarian

In this article http://crm.ittoolbox.com/news/dispnews.asp?i=125209&t=99 the changing role of the librarian is highlighted.

This just proves some of the things I found out when doing my research about going back to librarian school. The days of "Marian, Madame Librarian" with her hair in a bun and a pencil through it are long gone.

From now on, librarians will have to be content managers, contract administrators and be able to stay abreast with all manner of technology.

Blogging for Business redux

Here is an article that is good for the neophite blogger or those thinking about it.
http://www.intranetjournal.com/articles/200501/ij_01_10_05a.html

Blogging for Business

I saw this short article http://www.webpronews.com/news/ebusinessnews/wpn-45-20050103BloggingforBusinessanOverview.html.

It's short but shows how blogging can be a value added activity in business. Those of us who are early adopters should be using our new bully pulpit to get other to try blogging as a value added activity and not just something to do when we have time.

Inspiring Great Discussions

My friend, Jack Vinson published the following item in his blog (http://www.jackvinson.com/ )
"It isn't only coffee that inspires conversation. It might be anywhere that people are gathered for purposes of open discussion: coffee shops, tea houses, hookah huts, good meals... George Nemeth found an interesting quote on Inspiring great discussions with respect to hookah smoking.
'One of the oldest traditions of the Middle East is the art of hookah smoking. The hookah, also referred to as a narghile or narghila, shisha or sheesha, water-pipe, and hubbly-bubbly, has long inspired great discussions of politics, religion, and the daily happenings. In social gatherings, the passing of the hose is remarkable- a narghile is placed in the center of a group and smokers pass the hose to the next in the circle, all the while exchanging words and sharing ideas in a playful mode...'"

Now, the question for our time is how do we recapture a truly oral tradition like this? With the attention span of the west growing ever shorter and organizations' timelines (vis a vis their vision and mission) becoming shorter, how can we show the value of a truly oral tradition that values history as well as the time it takes to build relationships. In the Middle East, hooka smoking was an important social activities and relationship were build that stood the test of time. What do we have in the west that is comparable?