The Million Dollar Question

If I’m a subject matter expert – and I’m recognized and rewarded for what I know – what is my motivation to share? Is it for the good of humanity, or the business, or my fellow employees? Is it to leave a legacy? Is it just because it’s the right thing to do? For most people, none of these reasons are compelling enough to stop the knowledge hoarding madness.

Social Innovation can be defined as “the systematic disruption of social norms to effect social change.” As knowledge managers, we are quick to learn that much of the work we do involves not simply designing better processes and using technology advantageously, but disrupting the social and behavioral norms of people in our organizations in ways that enable their successful participation in new processes and technology related changes.

Check out highlights from the KM Showcase 2019.

Save the date - March 4-5, 2020 - for the next Showcase!  The 2-day event will be held at the Westin Arlington Gateway. 

You won't want to miss it!

Creativity and Innovation for KM Programs

The second in a series of videos about knowledge management, creativity, and innovation. In this episode, Stephanie Barnes (www.realisation-of-potential.com) and John Girard (www.johngirard.net) discuss knowledge management and why collective intelligence is worthy of note.

Recently scientists discovered a new organ in human body “Interstitium”, probably one of the biggest. It was always in the plain sight, but it was never recognized as an organ. Knowledge is also probably suffering from this overlooking. While it is underlying any activity done by organizations and the ability to manage knowledge directly impacts performance and competitiveness of an organization, this is completely missed.

If you have Netflix, you’ve probably seen Tidying Up pop up on your feed. It’s a new series based on Marie Kondo’s book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, which presents her methodology for clearing your clutter, getting organized, and creating space for only the things that still and will continue to serve you and “spark joy” in your home.

When charting a new destiny for KM, it is important that we get the basics right. The basics involves understanding what Knowledge is for organizations. Anything and everything within an organization are expressions of knowledge, be that the ability of an employee, approach/process adopted to perform an activity, culture of an organization, how employees come together, the products or services.

I’ve been in the business of Knowledge Management Consulting for the vast majority of my career and, in my experience, one of the most challenging aspects to KM is its intangibility. I’ve helped an array of organizations to define their KM Success Metrics and KM Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in order to make KM measurable and tie it to business value and hard return on investment. In these cases, though, many of these KM KPIs are only measurable over years and often have a stronger demonstration of value to the organization rather than the individual. 

For this first in a series of videos about knowledge management, creativity, and innovation Stephanie Barnes (www.realisation-of-potential.com) is interviewed by John Girard (www.johngirard.net) and shares her thoughts knowledge management’s challenges and the possible role creative leadership plays in creating a culture that supports organisational learning.

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I find that quite often when we say Knowledge Management, we actually mean Content Management or other aspects of explicit knowledge. That is a logical starting point for most of us, for historical reasons but also because it is the easier of the two knowledge dimensions to quantify and measure both progress and business impact.