26 January 2010 Comments

KM is not for looking pretty

The Secret Bench of Knowledge

Image by Vlastula via Flickr

KM is not for looking pretty – Knowledge Jolt with Jack.

There are a lot of interesting conversations happening recently about knowledge management and the value of knowledge sharing or knowledge collecting and what it all means.  Surprisingly, one of the sources has been a long discussion on a LinkedIn group, If the term KM could get a do-over what would you call the discipline? The question was asked two months ago and is going strong with over 200 comments.

Fortunately, Mark Gould has given this one a little more pondering and brought in a few other threads too in What do we do with knowledge? I like where he goes with the discussion:

The key thing in all of this, for me, is that whether we talk of knowledge sharing, transfer, or management, it only has value if it can result in action: new knowledge generation; new products; ideas; thoughts. But I think that action is more likely if we are open-minded about where it might arise. If we try and predict where it may be, and from which interactions it might come, I think it is most probable that no useful action and value will result in the long term.

Exactly!  We don’t want to do knowledge management simply because we need to “know what we know.”  It’s more important that we actually do something with the stuff that we know.  Whether that works out to be an individual taking action, based on what they have learned, or a group of people doing something they wouldn’t have done without a “best practice” or a “before action review” or talking to their colleagues.

Continues @ http://blog.jackvinson.com

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Related Posts with Thumbnails
blog comments powered by Disqus