knowquestion :: Stephen Bounds

One of my frequent issues with Knowledge Management is the way that it is often defined in terms of activities being practiced, but then avoids explaining what objectives will be achieved via these activities.

A while ago I did an analysis of 43 knowledge management definitions assembled by Ray Sims (now has 62 definitions listed). I thought I would revisit these definitions and focus solely on the objectives (if any) cited in association with KM activities:

UPDATE Nov 2015: If you are interested in an ongoing conversation about Knowledge Management and how to apply it, please check out our newly launched online magazine RealKM!

Knowledge Management (KM) is a discipline that improves the ability of organisations to solve problems better, adapt, evolve to meet changing business requirements, and survive disruptive changes such as staff turnover.

Knowledge Management recognises that organisations are a complex system made up of both the people that work for the organisation, and the processes, procedures and information systems that drive our actions.

The revolution in communications over the past 50 years (email, internet, telephone and fax) now allows people to talk directly to each other without the use of intermediaries such as managers or team leaders. This allows organisations to be more efficient by bringing together needed expertise and knowledge on demand.

However, with this new approach, knowledge gained and lessons learned are not always shared across the organisation. In other words, some people may know the solution to a particular problem, but the organisation as a whole may not be aware. This can lead to loss of critical knowledge when staff leave, and for inefficient practices to remain despite better solutions being available.

Steve Barth has posed 14 KM koans on his website, which I found to be both interesting and thought-provoking. These ones particularly resonated:

3. If work is more collaborative than ever, why do I have to work so much harder and learn so many new things myself?
5. If we share knowledge because of its value, sometimes we need to steward that value by not sharing.
6. We think technology makes it possible, but it's all about tools.

Despite the many problems with the flawed DIKW pyramid, it just won't go away. In fact, people seem to like the model so much they are extending it!

The attached paper, "Using Monte Carlo simulations to predict outcomes of KM interventions" is a brief summary of the results of some exploratory research I have been doing in this area.

Monte Carlo simulations are a very useful way to explore non-deterministic systems using a combination of deterministic calculations and random numbers. In particular, the outcomes of my experimentation suggest that many across-the-board KM interventions are are risk of being dropped due to lack of results.

For a while now, I have been thinking about the seeming conflict between the safe-fail experimentation approach advocated by Dave Snowden and Patrick Lambe's push for better accountability and professionalism in KM.

This is a presentation that I did for the Ark Group seminar "Strategic Email Management" back in March 2007. The presentation deliberately steers away from any mention of specific Web 2.0 applications (eg no Facebook or Twitter). However, I think it's still pretty relevant today as a useful intro on how an organisation can change its mindset around email.

Is telecommuting a Knowledge Management issue? On the face of it, it would seem not. Surely it's just a technical question of plugging router A into slot B and typing password C.

But it's not that simple. As anyone who has ever worked for a multi-site company knows, those at the smaller, remote sites can easily feel excluded from the decision making process that goes on at Head Office. And really, what is telecommuting but an office of one?

I was a little surprised that Tom Davenport's post about basketball analytics and the New York Times story it was based on didn't get better coverage in the KM community.

In my previous post on justifying KM through demonstrating reduced rates of critical failure, James Grey wrote:

in the current financial circumstances, I think a horizon of 5 years is way too far in the future to consider. We are looking at how we can apply current knowledge quickly to realise business benefits ... looking for [knowledge] gaps and how to fill them. By doing this you can quickly realise benefits for the organisation based on cash saved or generated rather than claiming you prevented something that [might] or might not have happened in the future.

Applying current knowledge to realise business benefits is a useful and valuable activity, of course.

However, there are dangers in this approach when trying to justify KM: