I got sent a link this morning to a fascinating conversation on KM between Patrick Lambe with Dave Snowden and Larry Prusak. (it last 42 mins)

In the video they talk about the history of KM and whether KM is an idea that is dead. They speak about the 3 generations of KM: (i) just information management; (ii) collaborative technologies, and (iii) now an approach which is more set of principles - not one size fits all - and is more organic.

Dave Snowden points out that the fundamental assumptions of the dominant theories of KM don’t match the organic nature of human interaction. Building on this idea they say that the traditional view of KM is dead but wont lie down: What’s dead?

  • that it is mostly a technological subject;
  • that documents in repositories equals knowledge;
  • taking IM and calling it KM;
  • that a large Bureaucracy, run by the central part of the organisation, is a good idea for working with knowledge;
  • that knowledge exists outside of people;
  • that knowledge itself can be measured in some way, that you can ROI knowledge.

Asked, will still be Knowledge Managers in 5yrs time ?

Dave said Yes, but they will be junior members of IT department. Larry, on the other hand thought the job title would die, and they would be called practice coordinators/knowledge brokers - whose job it would be to keep track of ‘ the knowledge of the group’ . Patrick chimed in here with “or even librarians.”

This was interesting as they then made the point that librarians who are interesting in knowledge often leave librarianship in order to seek roles within KM. The reason’s they see for this are that: whilst being a librarian is very valuable work , it’s often a poorly paid position, with low status within the organisations, and as Larry quips, is also something everyone thinks they can do.

The latter point is certainly a true one, although I sometimes think that we librarians are partly to blame for this, as we often fail to promote ourselves and what we do within an organisation. How is the head of the organisation to know what you ‘actually’ do and the ‘actual’ value you provide without highlighting these aspects of our work, our skills, and the resources that we utilise. The initial point of librarians often leaving the profession in search of knowledge (so to speak) is, again, one with which I am all too familiar. We do have a profession that puts you in a box and wants to keep you there, and it is often only by dropping the ‘L’ word, that more expansive and challenging roles and opportunities present themselves. This in some ways could lead onto a question , not of is KM dead, but are librarians and librarianship dead or dying? One to ponder.

Patrick, Dave and Larry also discuss the codification concept of KM, and how blanket codification of things doesn’t work. Larry argues that whilst codified repositories, are not bad in themselves, they are often mistaken for being actual knowledge. He states it is “wrong to say you are going to work with something as elusive, human, complex, contextual and local as knowledge, by managing knowledge in a repository - It’s like saying I’m going to mange an apple tree by building a cabinet”. He see this as part of the myth that knowledge, which is a very human thing, can be managed by technological means.

Dave is even more forthright stating there is “no excuse for document libraries other than as archivists. Active documents should now be in dynamic information structures, which is the wiki type concept, and variations - possible with publication points, possibly with authorisation.” This is an interesting view, which basically sees two type of document: - active and archive. I think this is a good approach, although people like the think of things as finished/final/complete, and not as a work-in-progress. You want to say: look these guidelines are finished. In truth the guidelines almost always will not be finished, and the document for them should be live and open, until the need for the guideline has ceased.

Dave comments - and this is something I agree with wholeheartedly - that social computing is doing a lot of what were the original intentions of KM, but accidentally, and from the bottom up. He sees blogs as replicating the school/university common room - bringing together people from different disciplines to chat and exchange ideas. This, for me, is right on the money. Social computing allows KM to be transformed and allows for that organic growth by allowing networks to form in organisations, and for the learning and exchanging of ideas to no longer be confined to set groups who purportedly ‘know’ about the subject matter under discussion.

It isn’t a panacea for everything, but it starts to capture and replicate the way people interact in ‘the real world’ , and how they really think - the terms someone might use to tag a document/web page etc says a lot about how that person’s mind operates, when not tied down by rigid taxonomies. This is why facebook etc work and most organisation intranets don’t, because the trust is being placed with the individual to manage their relationships instead of the organisation trying to manage their relationships.

I could go on and on, but I will just say that if you have any interest in how knowledge and information are handled within an organisation, then listening to this is a must. I will also add that there is - some might say controversial - stuff in the discussion that I would have liked to have heard Dave and Larry expand on, especially their views on eLearning (which they think is a waste of time), and Myers-Briggs (ditto). I obviously need to go in search of more of their work.