Victory and death of Knowledge Management
02-Mar-05
Years ago, business process reengineering was all the rage. You had champions, you had circles, you had a complete and well-manned reengineering structure. About the turn of the century, there was e-business. Companies had e-czars to lead the e-business unit or (in some cases) dedicated dot-com subsidiaries. Not so long ago, CRM took over the agenda. Customer-oriented process, strategies and tools were the difference between the living and the past-date. Management fads come and go as consultants and integrators peddle new and different wares. But most of those fads have some nugget of real value down at the bottom, and they do influence the ways the word does business. Thus BPR (by any other name) is commonplace, e-business is called plain business, and customer management is rather integrated across channels. More to the point of this article, Knowledge Management has passed the stages of buzzword, management fad, implementation, expectations downsizing, and everyday business. In other words, KM has run its course. “KM”, as a buzzword, is not even new. It first showed up on the management radar with the promise to make full use of the accumulated knowledge in the firm through comprehensive documental databases and exhaustive classifications or “ontologies”. That drive is in the root of most modern document management systems. It has not harnessed the firm’s knowledge (rather filled terabytes with outdated documents), but it enabled the digitalisation of business process information. It planted the seed of the modern almost-paperless, e-enabled firm that believes in “enterprise content management”. “Intellectual capital” is another old and famous KM incarnation. It is much more diffuse, and was driven by boutique consultancies rather than big firms. They promised companies (and cities, and countries) that they could find a way to measure the knowledge-derived potential inside them, and thus help them build it faster and better. The idea was bought by many politicians that needed something to fill their “knowledge society” agendas. It gave birth to interesting academic works. But it has yet to produce anything of real business use beyond some common-sense links between training and research bodies, aided by the Internet. Communities of practice are naturally occurring phenomena: when possible, people with the same interests will get in touch and try to solve common problems and reuse the past experience of some members for improving the situation of other members. CoPs were touted as the next great organizational paradigm, where the new All the examples above should not be read as an indictment of knowledge management. The bottom line is that it has worked. It has changed the way in which companies store, access, use, share, build (and even measure) their knowledge. But the superstructure that brought about that change, those consultants and KM departments and CKOs, are finding themselves more and more in the same spot than e-business managers and units five years ago. Their proposal has been put to the test, downsized, and adopted. Now it is standard practice. So the KM department (with capitalized “K” and “M”) is no longer useful. On the other hand, the competencies that were developed by them are in full demand. Document management is in full swing, hand in hand with workflows for business process automation. Document search and retrieval are incredibly efficient compared with the late 20th century. Collaborative spaces are replacing opaque file structures in the company’s intranet. Competence management is now standard HR fare. Communities of practice are expected instead of resisted, and need as much support as ever. No self-respecting corporate strategy or shareholder report is complete without some specific mentions to knowledge management. There are so many companies behind the curve that KM consultants and software vendors of all stripes will be doing a roaring business for many years. But (as happens with BPR and CRM and e-business) they’ll have to get a new set of buzzwords to repackage it. So prepare to see the collaborative workplace, unstructured information management, and even (yes, it’s in the same lot) the semantic web. It all adds up to making knowledge available to the right people at the right time, reusing corporate know-how to improve efficiency. Some firms haven’t noticed yet, but the KM revolution has come, seen, and conquered. © Miguel Cornejo 2004
Victory and death of Knowledge Management
Miguel CORNEJO
miguel@macuarium.com
Some things repeat themselves once and again. The adoption of new management techniques is one of them.
Old-hat KM
IC
CoPs
knowledge workers would finally find their most effective expression. But they have had a hard time proving their value to companies, and the old hierarchies proved more resilient and more flexible than expected. The corporation has swallowed up CoPs and turned them into just another Human Resources tool or, at most, an offshoot of Internal Communications.
KM is dead, long live knowledge management
Knowledgeboard/ H-SIG Home Page
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- Author:
- Miguel CORNEJO
- Publisher:
- KnowledgeBoard
- Date:
- 02-Mar-05
- Categories:
- Human and Social, Human Side of KM
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What is the next step?
Those things happen: taking some time before replying to one's correspondents. That's five days (but there was a weekend)! My apologies.
Nevertheless I worked on the subject. First I checked what glossaries of acronyms there existed dedicated to KM (in particular on line ones -there can exist some in the printed form, but it is not that useful for us, and basically it rarely refers to KM as such).
Then though we are just dealing with acronyms it is probably fair to wonder to which sub-domains we would link them to (eg. marketing, business, human resources...), so as to give not too vague an idea of where those acronyms can occur, contextualizing them, so to say.
Before going any further in the definition of the project, I think we should keep it (the project) as simple and basic as possible. This will increase its feasability, shorten its delays, and might thus be more motivating for lots of us. Any serious and quick success, of course, would encourage us to jump onto something a little bit more ambitious, or give us the necessary momentum to envision a whole programme of short projects (making the bricks -together- for our construction site!).
It will also make us experiment the methodologies of collective and multilingual, multicultural projects, plus the tools necessary for the various activities, without forgetting the way to coordinate such projects and activities.
Do we feel like going ahead? What is the next step?
How to build a KB glossary of KM concepts
I only have time to make a quick comment on this but I hope the suggestion will be useful.
Jacques says we "? could start as a first unsophisticated list, and get bigger and more subtle according to the development of the communal work. KM people of all the diversity of languages could, according to their available time, supply the equivalent acronyms and explanations in their own language." I agree with the general approach and, from my point of view, it is actually the subtle differences in meaning in different languages that interest me.
My thought about how we might do this is to follow the lead given by Wikipedia (and others such as KmWiki) and use a wiki as the basis for building our glossary.
This seems to me to be the obvious way to bring lots of people from different backgrounds together on one project. If you are interested in the idea then an article by Sebastien Paquet - Using an Ontology to Communicate Knowledge Across Disciplines might be of interest.
Does anybody else have any views on the suitability of wikis for this sort of activity?
Let's go on!
As you might well have guessed this project looks quite interesting to me. It might be that one person per language might be interested in the building of that multilingual glossary we are talking about. It would be even better if we had several persons per language, so as to obtain the best level of accuracy we can think of.
The initial list of acronyms would be in English, of course. It could start as a first unsophisticated list, and get bigger and more subtle according to the development of the communal work. KM people of all the diversity of languages could, according to their available time, supply the equivalent acronyms and explanations in their own language. Of course they would suggest new items, not present in the initial list...
That would really be a genuine collaboration, free of competition requirements and dedicated to the sharing of knowledge! A really good illustration of what KM fundamental ethos can lead to!
Let's prepare the first "raw" list of acronyms!
KB glossary of KM concepts
I agree with Jacques’s argumentation and feel it is a good idea to begin with a glossary.
Nevertheless, we have to differentiate ourselves from the current publications; that’s why I suggest that we should embrace our own scheme.
KM is a multi-facet process raw material of which is knowledge (from what?), which needs tools (with what?) and which produces results useful for human activity (for what?). So, the principle of our future “KB-glossary for KM concepts” could be starting from resources, needing tools to transform them and using them into applications as follows:
1. Resources
2. Means
2.1 Roles
2.2 Disciplines
2.3 Technologies
3. Applications
3.1 Functions
3.2 Activities
For instance, you will find
IC in 1.,
GED in 2.1,
SNA in 2.2,
ELS, EWS or BPM in 2.3,
HR in 3.1,
BI, SCM or CRM in 3.2.
In a practical way, we could proceed as exposed in Sami’s comment of 06 May 2005, part 1/2 about the thread “Call for chapters (Case Studies)”.
After Ed’s agreement, we could begin with a thread in which each member of the KB Community could post a definition of ihis own.
We might publish the entire list in advance even if it is not complete or put ourselves the supplied definitions under the suitable headings.
Do you wish to discuss such a project?
Why not?
Thanks Chris and Guy for your suggestions!
It would certainly be very motivating for a number of KM people to take part in a little project such as the TLAs (Three Letters Acronyms) project Chris has mentioned. The results would be very useful.
Plus, since interactivity on KB might "not appeal" to every kind of participant, it would enable some of them to bring their competencies to some direct use on KB, despite their avoiding putting their personal ideas and convictions to the fore. From what has been observed everywhere: a community needs objectives otherwise it will dissolve without even noticing. It also needs common and shared values.
Those common and shared values, we might not know precisely what they are in this KB gathering of ours. Working together is a way of helping shape a common culture. And then it might be agreed that sharing, on KB, is a basic principle, and consequently that we have to share in all the necessary languages. Starting with the "acronyms issue" could be a simple and safe move. Besides it would probably not require too much work.
Further, more ambitious projects, Guy, could be started at a later stage, taking into account the lessons learnt from the first "experiment" and its AAR (After Action Review!). Also it would be quite necessary to define what the work from KB could produce that other people have not already done.
There it could be argued that all the bits and pieces you can collect all over the Internet represent a solid basis for the apprehension of what KM is (if it has an existence of its own?). But then some will prefer the "right thing, at the right time, to the right person" approach. That is why we have portals! and RSS feeds, and newletters, and intranets, and... (?).
Remember we are all spending more and more time surfing on the Net! Up to 50% of our working time, or over... KM must be a tool, a way (?) to save us being overflooded by not so interesting tasks, thus allowing us to concentrate on ideas, concepts, analyses, syntheses, problem solving. KM could be a meta methodology to enable us to use our brains more efficiently and more productively, and more smoothly. Sorry, I could go on for hours like this, forgetting that what is required now is some feed-back.
Perhaps one of the first steps towards constituting the frame of the TLA's project would be to surf the Net (again) to spot the available resources, and see what they offer, and assess what KB people could add, on top of their multilingual approach? Thanks for the first items you reported Chris and Guy!
So, are we going to keep on moving on this subject?
Let us not re-invent the wheel!
Sorry, but I just discovered that this glossary already exists, at least in French; please, refer to
http://solutions.journaldunet.com/0503/050302_els.shtml
But if you prefer English
http://www.nelh.nhs.uk/knowledge_management/glossary/glossary.asp
Toward a KM Encyclopaedia
Hi everybody!
You have good ideas and I presume that Ed will surely appreciate them when he will go by.
An Encyclopaedia accessible from a KM-portal would be very useful for the Community and its guests; it would recapitulate KB results. It could include:
- a glossary of acronyms
- Cmapping of KM concepts*
- Linking definitions to concepts
- Listing keywords extracted from those definitions and referring to them
- More?
See as examples the following incomplete maps:
KM Technologies Stategy v4.1:
http://skat.ihmc.us:80/servlet/SBReadResourceServlet?rid=1112303497476_1056069109_4404&partName=htmltext
Corporate applications:
http://skat.ihmc.us:80/servlet/SBReadResourceServlet?rid=1111076925671_677165869_2209&partName=htmltext
TLAs
A multilingual glossary of TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) sounds like a great idea to me, and as KnowledgeBoard claims to be the portal for the European KM Community, this must be the obvious place to host it!
Clear and smooth
It is very useful to use acronyms, and it is a law of languages to tend to save efforts. So we do not have to pronounce long "lexical phrases" such as "Total Quality Management": "TQM" stands for it in 3 syllables instead of 8!
The trouble is that not everybody can understand those precious acronyms, and sometimes it requires huge cognitive efforts to make sense of them. Especially when those acronyms belong to a foreign language, and do not correspond at all with the ones used in your mother tongue.
A very good example of that is:
SCM: Supply Chain Management (the acronym in French is GCL: gestion de la chaîne logistique.)
And we do get a few acronyms in this thread!
BPM: Business Process Modeling
BPR: Business Process Redesign
CKO: Chief Knowledge Officer
CoP: Community of Pratice
CRM: Customer Relationship Management
HR: Human Resources
IC: Intellectual Capital
Maybe we should create a multilingual glossary of acronyms related to KM (Knowledge Management)?
Fads with work pending
Hi again,
those links were great, Chris :-).
Guy, indeed I believe the knowledge management function is far from dead. What I find a bit exhausted is the usual set of corporate structures, hyerarchies, departments and buzzwords: the "KM" fad as opposed to "knowledge management" techniques.
I don't know what will be the next way to go in order to embed knowledge in processes (or in business :-)). It probably will look very much like the same things we're currently promoting. But the names, and probably even the business logic that is used to "sell" them to decision-makers, will probably be different. Knowledge mediators, collaborative environments, high-productivity tools...
Explicitly managing knowledge is not just a paradigm, it's the defining characteristic of the "knowledge economy". And modern business lives in it, don't we :-) ?
Best regards,
Miguel
What do you think of a Knowledge Mediator?
Victory and death? Victory, surely but not yet over... Death, certainly not!
Miguel used this provoking title but I am sure he is convinced by the contrary as it appears in his comment of March 9th, 2005.
It is true that we gathered a great deal of tools as Miguel explained: KM, IC, CoPs and so on but it does not make the KM Department obsolete; On one hand, you have to take care of knowledge during its whole life-cycle, on the other hand, you have to transform it into value at the business level (or "process level" as Miguel says). The critical issue is to create an interface between KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT (even if it is more or less stabilized and that "the KM Department is no longer useful" as Miguel says, at least in its present shape) and KNOWLEDGE VALORIZATION (which has to live as long as the corporation does); the role of a KNOWLEDGE MEDIATOR seems to be prevailing.He must be transversal (you do not need a CRM mediator, a SCM mediator or a BPM mediator).
The main feature of the Knowledge Mediator is that he will be always necessary because in this field nothing is immutable and everything is evolving.
Management fads, BPR and KM
Dear all,
On the topic of fads, BPR and KM, I thought you might find some of the following links of interest:
The Fad That Forgot People Thomas Davenport, one of BPR's creators, on BPR - "The stars were in alignment and reengineering exploded. Suddenly everything was reengineering and everyone could do it. A modest idea had become a monster."
Knowledge Management: Another Management Fad? Based on annual citation counts, this paper suggests that KM is living longer than most typical management fads and is, perhaps, in the process of becoming a new management paradigm.
and on a lighter note ...
The (now sadly defunct) Elvis Index for KM ranks the popularity of Knowledge Management against the universal reference point of the popularity of Elvis.
Enjoy
What's the scales?
Using the search engine on KB on the word "success" one gets an approximate total of 900 occurrences, 5 of which in document or article titles (you get something of the same kind on "successful"). Try to run a search on "victory": about only 30 occurrences, only one present in a title!
To a certain extent it shows success is something you must always work for, that after one success you must figure another one as a target. It is a never ending story. Victory is more than a target, it looks like something much more difficult to attain.
And all the same when it happens, that is when we are living, reaching a "victory", few people seem to notice it. Some people are still setting themselves targets when some of them are no longer necessary objects of research or work. Miguel's article is telling us that KM workers (and other KM specialists) have done a wonderful job, that they have made KM concepts and paradigms progress in a radical fashion, that a great number of KM methodologies are now commonly implemented. That would call for a big celebration!
On top of that Miguel is scanning the landscape to spot the places where we'll have to improve our efforts and accelerate change. Thanks again for his painting with bigger brushes, on a bigger canvas, using real perspective.
Knowledge in processes
Hi Cindy,
that is a good question. HR Development is indeed a key part of managing corporate knowledge, but I think it is not enough.
These days I'm trying to get people in sales roles to share information among each other in "clinics": best practices and even leads. And then there are "support forums" (CoPs), completely oriented to problem-solving. And "document reusability" that selects good practices for standardisation, and...
In other words, expertise management is HR turf (probably) but most knowledge management needs to be done at the process level (sales process, production processes, service processes). Optimization of knowledge use needs to be taken into account everywhere, just like times and costs: in the end, it is the key to productivity, innovation... the good old corporate bottom line.
So the new job at hand is "change management" of all the organization. KM is more Operations that it is HR, I think. If HR Development worked correctly, it would be the perfect support for it.
But then, maybe it's just the view from these week's work :-).
Best regards,
Miguel
HR and KM
Hello Miguel,
It is interesting you mentioned about Human Resources.
In a nut shell, within HR there is other fights as to who should do what. Technically speaking I would think KM belongs to HR Development. The problem with HR development is they have to get themselves out of the shadow of HR management which in most real situations deal with the money and policy sections of HR.
Cindy
Knowledge and competitiveness
Hi Denham,
thanks.
It looks like the corporate world is doing it / will do it. It's more a matter of names and departments. Human Resources (especially) has fought off the claim to a differentiated "unit" and buried the more destabilising ideas of KM beneath established practice. Marketing departments have got into the game too ("internal communications", it's called) saying KM tools and goals are part of their turf.
So it's not so much a defeat as becoming mainstream... and saddled by all the problems of old ways of doing business, that did not plague KM, as a new approach, at the start.
But since an efficient management of knowledge (knowledge building, knowledge sharing, expertise management) is an evident competitive asset, good companies will keep on extending the practice. And bad ones will have to learn or perish in the long run.
It will be a grey-suited phoenix with numbers in the briefcase and a lot of company-politics savvy, but your KM phoenix will be around, I'm sure.
Best regards,
Miguel
Come, been and conquered
Miguel,
I have to agree with your analysis, but wish the corprate world would turn to the real enduring aspects of KM:
* Increasing awareness. If you are connected, listening, risk taking and willing to experiment, KM has a new vista to offer
* If learning and innovation is your strategy, you need to explore KM as a path to new ideas
* Should your focus be knowledge construction (rather than access to information), KM has many proven practices and approaches to emulate.
I for one, would like to see KM arise like a phoenix from its current state and concentrate on deep learning, knowledge creation, intelligence augmentation and improved sense-making.
In a subtle way, we sure missed the boat the first time around!!
Changing the way business is done...
Thanks Jacques,
as always, that's too much praise. I only comment on what I've seen these months. Companies that would not countenance any guru (or consultant) talking up KM, IC or other buzzwords... are at the same time actively working in embedding knowledge management in their work processes.
About Lisbon, I don't know. EU and government initiatives can show a way, but it's up to companies to decide how they want to do business. Demistifying KM could go a long way to make it attractive to the usual, let-me-get-my-work-done manager, maybe.
Best regards,
Miguel
A very high degree of awareness!
A nice way to see things Miguel. Your capacity to step back and explain us what we are all embarked on is not widely shared. Even if one tries to keep one's sense of criticism, it is not easy not to be blinded by the most attractive fads and enchanted by the sounds of the gurus.
Thanks also for reassuring us: even if we are not quite aware of what is happening we can be optimistic, things, and KM to start with, are progressing. So this could mean we can reach the Lisbon's objectives related to the European knowledge society, could it not?
Evolution not death
Dave Pollard suggests KM is entering it's 2nd generation.
http://denham.typepad.com/km/2005/10/km_waves_more_o.html
He suggests we are seeing these movements:
* from text to multimedia
* from surveys and networking engines to conversations and expertise finders
* from cost savings to personal effectiveness