km (7)
(stole the title of this post from there...)
Let's start these posts by this fantastic recent study by Bain about trends on usage of management tools in 2007.
This study shows usage and usage satisfaction, in different continents, of the main "management tools": Balanced Scorecard, Benchmarking, BPR, Collaborative Innovation, Consumer Ethnography, Core Competencies, Corporate Blogs, CRM, Customer Segmentation, Growth Strategy Tools, Knowledge Management, Lean Operations, Loyalty Management Tools, Mergers and Acquisitions, Mission and Vision Statements, Offshoring, Outsourcing, RFID, Scenario and Contingency Planning, Shared Service Centers, Six Sigma, Strategic Alliances, Strategic Planning, SCM, Supply Chain Management, Total Quality Management.
I like the results! But read the full story, with differentiation of acceptance and satisfaction by continents...
Among existing yottabytes of data, we will use, during our life, billions of information (data becomes information when it correspond to some conscious or unconscious project or objective I have...), but how much tacit or explicit knowledge (information embodied after really using it, "learning by doing"...)?
I always was reluctant to the next word, wisdom, the word appearing a bit too spiritual to me. But competency is a good one. In my opinion, competency emerges when knowledge can, in real life, be applied to some specific and useful process...
In front of a problem, everybody try to find the perfect expertise.
This is not so easy, our mind is always balanced between confidence and doubts. We are tempted to trust some nice sources, gambling unconsciously between pleasure of finding fast and cold and unpleasant hard work...
People are therefore statistically more tempted by "lovable fools" than by "competent jerks"
But KM topic still open !
- How can we separate Wheat & Chaff?
- Back to basics, KM jargon
- KM frontiers always moving, from time to time, need of refocus, its relation with HPT (Human Performance Technology)
- Companies have still to define their strategy on that...
- Some quick wins are possible...
What is real value of KM? It is highly of the type of work model we have in an organization, and alignment of decisions with it...
- Profit/employee becomes a new key indicator, even for Wall Street !
- But can we measure KM?
- Is knowledge sharing so easy?
- Must we collect information or can we get it from other sources? The old connection/collection debate...
And this dream of learning?
Can learning be made, with a good KM system, without human intermediation? I don't think so.
Some steps of learning are:
- Illumination (human based, sort of psychoanalytical transfer mode)
- Deepening (Can be Information based, personal work)
- Project, transforming information into knowledge (Vertical or horizontal human interaction necessary)
And, just for pleasure, why not some contest on KM...?
- Is KM dead?
- Let's kill KMS (KM Systems)
- Let's kill Knowledge Management
- Just found a good new book about KM and performance manager. It examines the partnership between decision-makers and the people who provide them with information to drive better decisions and suggestions for 42 decisions areas, taking into account the need to understand your data, but also plan and monitor performance.
- One way to start KM in an organization is to consider it as a service
- KM often needs technology, what do you do in front of that kind of people (good funny story about relation with technology ! I know so many people like that...)
More seriously, I like Martin Koser blog, with this relevant post on Management tools and Bain article
- The conventional wisdom today is that the flow of knowledge cannot be organized and driven by IT
- Management of K is not enough, you have too to do things !
- ...and always this relation between Innovation and KM techniques
- Librarians are the historically first "knowledge managers" in organizations. Now, all managers are supposed to be ! Are librarians out? Or any manager is the librarian?
- But classification not so easy: look at this good literature synthesis of some connected concepts
- Teaching (I'm a teacher) and KM tools: a relevant list of techniques
- PKM, a new buzzword or individual productivity still a key challenge?
and Davenport's thoughts about it
- Against dominant thoughts, creating knowledge, tagging changes and improves KM...
- I like this idea about KM strategy to capitalize on know-how can be counterproductive, in the case the know-how you store is average, too low level. It can inhibit employee's will to experiment.
- KM, organizational learning gurus still alive, studying how KM can be a link between NGO and companies, in case they want to cooperate.
-...and a good way to use knowledge at the bottom of the pyramid...
- Are incentives on KM good enough to stimulate K improvement?
Is BI so far from KM? Where is the real frontier?
Does BI concerns more "weak noises", unknown things, intelligence of outside and KM more known things, inside existing knowledge?
BI tools can be applied inside, e.g. to discover new concept through BI analysis of internal stream of messages!
So, what new on BI?
- Good strategy and BI: there is a clear convergence between strategy and BI
- Data mining is the central tool of any BI mechanism...
Ultimate and permanent challenge for people, companies, societies is to innovate (to survive?)
This week, a lot of point of view on this topic, re-emphasizing some basic evident ideas:
First, innovation in IT is often nowadays coming from "transgressive renegades".
Continuous flow of new emerging technologies allows permanently unsatisfied end-user to invent their way.
A good IT department must consider/absorb these innovations, considered as valid prototypes, and to transform them into reliable professional solid applications...
This idea is not far from the need, for organizations who want to adapt and change, to capitalize on "change agents" (This way is the only way! Organizations, closed in their today's paradigm, cannot event imagine the methods of to-morrow. Fortunately, some people, these change agents, are already in to-morrow's paradigm....)
Not far too from this idea is the search of "bumpy bits"
If the world is flat, seek out the bumpy bits, in an aligned, flat world....
But innovation must be highly stimulated by collaboration, toward collective creativity. That is a new key mission for CIOs...
Some people can think there is a conflict then between IT Governance (driving to a flat aligned world?) and creativity stimulation (subversive guys...). Good debate, where opinions (and experiences) are mixed...
Informal network concept, illustrated by 1993 famous article "The Company Behind the Chart" in Harvard Business Review, still the key condition, following Booz-Allen-Hamilton, for collective creativity.
Some french thinking now...
Les universités, lieu d'innovation, devraient quant à elles être en pointe. Mais...
Le budget de R&D de la Chine, dont les grandes universités s'inspirent du MIT ou de Stanford, va dépasser celui du Japon... qui achève une réforme sans précédent de ses universités... tandis que l'université de Cambridge investit dans des « hedge funds » pour ses placements !!!
Why did I focus on Innovation this week? Just because a friend of mine sent me a personality test, to check if I was really a "strategist" (my official title on my business card...). And guess what? I am not a "strategist", but an "innovator" !!! And you?
- Is KM enabling more automated decisions? This "old", very good level and still stimulating article on "nonsense of KM", can bring some ideas, with good thinking about what is really tacit knowledge, and a synthesis of a lot of point of views. Nice commentary on it too...
- Sharing calendars and schedule is a good metaphor of som KM challenges
- In the real life, what can be one's personal "rules" for KM? You can apply those one (but who does?)
So much information, so small amount of time to transform it into knowledge, let's go-on zapping !
After conducting this test (takes 5 minutes for the first test..), I must admit I am a typical procrastinator (but maybe you are too...)
(I defer very important thinks to do, creating permanent stress for myself...).
I like this article and formula on the topic.
It is surely too late for me to change !!
My permanent auto-justification is the fact I consider not doing things (at the end, I do some things...) is a way to unconsciously regulate myself, to leave non evident priorities/urgencies emerge, in the increasing stress of solicitation created by new communication world and media.
- A rather good online set of articles on Strategic Planning
- IT Gouvernance: Pénétration d'ITIL en augmentation, et quelques règles utiles pour réussir
- All companies nowadays know that main profit gains can come from supplier side, in a globalized world.
(and ....too bad for some suppliers, many ethics issues, where is win-win strategy?, ...)
This article give some good rules to follow in that perspective:
Strategic alignment, Cross-functionality, Simplification, ICT enabling, Process sourcing (BPO)
KM:
- Killer applications in KM? Good synthesis, but nothing new...
- Information is not knowledge! Wiki example
...and an opposite opinion there...
- As mentionned in my 14/1 contribution, role of KM for economies and ... need of KM adapted to specific cultures...
- About the permanent fight of librarians inside KM strategies...
- Back to basics: Deming on KM and management
- Good synthesis in this short executive abstract of some current IT market heavy trends:
Outsourcing for stable operations, new emerging technologies bundles, software subscription rather than ownership, ...
- Net Neutrality: an permanent issue, not solved...
and...
Some Hi-Tech news for teckies...
- BI (Business Intelligence) data delivered on phones: realistic?
- Moore law again: why not play on connectivity?
- Touch screens for many fingers: applications?
- Bug free software: open source a solution?
Good News: Knowledge Management still alive.
In spite of vendors appropriation of KM logo ( just type "Knowledge Management" on Google and you will find 90% of the connected sites are selling something, products, tools, consulting, ....), fundamentals of KM are surviving.
Recent contributions:
- Relation of KM with semantic web and web2 (with this permanent problem of the balance between "coding the world" and creativity freedom!). See too that nice reaction on this topic
- Thoughts about economy of Knowledge, stimulating contributions and co
- and, and, and, and, and ....
If you want to follow periodically the trends in KM (or anything else!), a good way is to use Google alert , to receive information in your mailbox...
Try too, through Google labs, to see that KM queries are nowadays
- less "fashion" than 3 years before (because we know enough about fundamentals?)
- that queries are mainly done now by far east and emerging countries (does that mean that they discover now the concepts, or that innovation by knowledge will come more and more from this part of the world?)