Rob Paterson left this comment at my earlier post on Denham Grey's Knowledge Management Mapping.  I think its really a neat perspective that puts into words an issue many KM bloggers have been discussing. Am quoting excerpts - see the full comment here (Rob always has this knack of making me think! ) :  

For me the bigger questions are about why and what is happening. So here are my 2 cents ot 2 rupees worth.

Why - Things are changing at an exponential pace - faster than our conventional knowledge transmission system can cope with. Put in real English. If you went to a technical college you could learn enough to fix a car and you could have gone 60 years ago and still know enough. BUT no one knows how to fix a hybrid car and the technology will not slow down enough to make a conventional curriculum up. No one will take a year off work as a mechanic to sit in a classroom either. In 2 years, the fuel cell car will be upon us and will make the break even wider.

So the "why" is that, until now, things moved so slowly and were often evolutionary that we could buiold on prior learning and go to school. Now much of what is new is disruptive where prior learning could hinder you.

 ....... So the why of KM is to set up a learning system both inside your organization and that reaches outside as well so that you can keep abreast of the changes that you will have to master to survive. It is in effect setting up a nervous system and making the organization alive to its environment. Planning in its conventional sense is dead and will have to be replaced by a true learning process. We cannot plan conventionally any more we can only react better - too many key assumptins change to plan or to teach from a curriculum.Michael dell states that he cannot predict the future of PC technology - but he does know how to follow the trend exactly.

Now what about the "what". The even deeper shift in organizational life today is a shift in culture and relationhsips. People (Cluetrain) are turmed off by the corporate voice and attitide. Those organizatins that establish legitimate human relationshsips inside and out will destroy the others. We see it already happening. Legitimate relationships are peer based and make departmental and organizatinal walls very porous. They as a by product enhance learning.

You cannot buy my custom away if I have a genuine relationship with a supplier defined as I have become part of the supplier such as a reviewer at Amazon or a player on eBay.

So Dina this is why I feel that all the talk of process and tools is so fruitless. After all KM is not making the gains that its advocates wanted. I think that the reason is that the tool makers and the process builders have not spent enough time working on what it will all be used for and what will the difference be to those that master the art.

Much much more than 2 cents or 2 rupees Rob :):):)

I do feel KM, if viewed in the conventional sense, has little ground to stand on today.  I think its something all KM professionals are grappling with, and the resultant "bad word" image it has.  I personally don't like the term myself - the very fact that its called Knowledge Management irks me - how can something like "knowledge" be "managed" - knowledge is flow and management somehow implies control - dichotomous to say the least.

Still, the vision of KM (i continue to use it for want of a better term - perhaps we need some brainstorming for more appropriate nomenclature) that people like Seb Paquet. Lilia Efimova, Ton Zijlstra, Stuart Henshall, Terry Frazier, Dave Pollard, Denham Grey, Jim McGee, Phil Wolff, Spike Hall and many many others, is of a system that helps users experience, welcome, and embed, within themselves or their organisations, flow.  Evolutionary or disruptive - inward or outward - be that as it may occur. 

The attempt is to develop systems and processes that engender the spirit of learning - much like Rob's metaphor of a nervous system.  Current processes and systems fail in doing this - simply because as Rob says - they donot really understand what its going to be used for and how it will make a real difference.

I personally feel, and Terry and I did discuss this when we chatted on Skype earlier today, (which was really neat, by the way) that the challenge is to chunk down the 'why' and 'how' - by that i mean get away from 'meta-KMisms' - whether in tools, processes or systems. 

While meta-KMisms are great for debate and dialogue, and are more useful in academic circles, and tools get techies excited - they can be overwhelming for an individual or the organisation. How often do we see companies going in for really expensive KM software that is underutilised or sometimes not used at all, except by the HR department.

IMHO - what is really critical are these steps :

1.   Understanding the culture within which we are building these systems - at the individual level, organisational level and regional or more country-specific level.  Reminds me of Geert Hofstede's study on IBM in 72 different countries, where he identifies five differences in mental programming - his five dimensions :

• power distance - high vs low
• collectivism vs individualism 
• femininity vs masculinity
• high vs low uncertainty avoidance
• short-term vs long-term orientation

My adds, in today's world - collaborative or competitive, open or closed, evolutionary or disruptive, static or dynamic, global or local. 

3. Keeping culture and individual and organizational needs in mind, the KM professional can then look for tools, processes and systems - that really fit the need of the specific organization.  And only then is there some worth in considering, developing and embedding into the system tools like blogs - individual, team, project departmental, consumer empathy blogs;  Ryze-like soft human profiles; Innovation panels; Digital Aggregators like the People Aggregator Marc's working on developing, News readers and Aggregators, and so many others.

4. Keeping the flow going - its not enough to set up a system - the system must be kept in flow and must be dynamic.  It is here that i see the true value of and potential for adoption of tools like blogging and news aggregators.

I'm not a KM specialist myself - no degree, no formal training, no real experience in this area - i'm simply drawn to this field ever since i got blogging, for the simple reason that i recognize the potential for collaborative learning and sharing through this simple act of blogging.  

Nor am i a techie - yet its exciting to see so much development in the area of social software and experience it first-hand in some cases - and recognize that these tools can be powerful and have the potential to take KM into a whole new realm. 

What i have and can offer, through 15 years of qualitative research experience, is the perspective and acknowledgement of how important it is to really understand consumer needs, within the context of the individual, organization and culture. 

Only then can the appropriate tools be selected, only then can we get a fix on how to keep the flow going both internal and external.

UPDATE : Rob points to a neat summary of Geert Hofstede's thoughts. 

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