KM is such a difficult discipline to depend on in moving up to a career ladder. I have been working in this field for the past 6 years (in 3 different industries) and I found this field has a huge potential to rise or fall. High chances that it will fall as it is evident that the top management tends to lose interest and commitment towards KM very easily. They want some quick fix, which at many cases, KM cannot deliver.Â
Out of the three, the only organization that still holds interest and allocates proper resources to do KM is the big Oil Company. But again, if there KM program fail to show any visible impact- value creation and/or some monetary return ( be it in saving cost, faster decision making or innovating new products), top management will one day close down the KM office. Other two almost have the same story- one was a pioneer in KM in Malaysia and started with lots of enthusiasm but after 5/6 years the department closed down and most of the KM staff left the company. Reason being- KM wasn’t considered as a strategic value partner and couldn’t deliver impact on time. The most interesting one, is the one I am currently involved in, where people tried for past 4 years but could never position KM at the right organizational structure, could not come up with a valid framework and never had the leadership. They spent time in offering KM courses for staff but there was never a proper team on work on it. Result- management thinks the organization is not matured enough yet for any KM initiatives and we should fix some basic problems like performance management system etc before embarking into KM or related initiatives.
Now, how can an organization survive without managing its knowledge?
Every organization manages knowledge to some extent; some in a proper disciplined way, some in a chaotic format. No one can operate without the help of employees’ knowledge and organizations intuitional memory. But to introduce KM in a proper format (with good budget) can be challenging for many organizations and here are my thoughts:
KM Fragmentation- Breaking the various components of KM into smaller parts.
( to be continued…in the next post)
7 responses so far ↓
1 KK Aw // Dec 31, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Could it be that much of “mainstream” KM out there is actually pseudoscience?
I have KM initiatives running for 10 now and still going strong.
2 Naguib // Jan 2, 2010 at 8:04 am
Answer to your question- May be. Mainstream KM might be just ‘great to have’ concepts without having enough scientific justifications.
Are your KM initiatives mostly build upon tangibles? Like building portals etc?- if yes, then should not we just call them- Information Management with collaborative capabilities?
3 KK Aw // Jan 2, 2010 at 12:29 pm
I don’t manage knowledge in the heads of people. That’s like putting a net across a stream to catch fish. What do you get - mostly garbage.
Deep sea fishing is where you find the big ones. Japanese don’t even eat fish caught near the shore as they are full of pollutants.
4 KK Aw // Jan 2, 2010 at 12:41 pm
BTW, when poisons gets into your body, they is very very hard to get rid of.
5 KK Aw // Jan 2, 2010 at 12:42 pm
Sorry, my bad English.
when poisons gets into your body, they are very very hard to get rid of.
6 KK Aw // Jan 2, 2010 at 1:35 pm
Here is an interesting golf story:
“A young man found himself with a few hours to spare one afternoon. He figured if he hurried and played very fast, he could get in nine holes of golf before he had to head home. Just as he was about to tee off an old gentleman shuffled onto the tee and asked if he could accompany the young man as he was golfing alone. so he allowed the old gent to join him.
To his surprise the old man played fairly quickly. He didn’t hit the ball far, but plodded along consistently and didn’t waste much time. Finally, they reached the 9th fairway and the young man found himself with a tough shot. There was a large pine tree right in front of his ball, and directly between his ball and the green.
While he debated how to hit the shot, the old man finally said, “You know, when I was your age I’d hit the ball right over that tree.”
With that challenge placed before him, the youngster swung hard, hit the ball up, right smack into the top of the tree trunk and it thudded back on the ground not a foot from where it had originally lay.
The old man offered one more comment, “Of course, when I was your age that pine tree was only three feet tall.”
7 Md Santo // Jan 4, 2010 at 1:08 pm
In my view, the problem is not rooted on how do we put KM enough scientific justification. The problem is depend on the essence different between Knowledge and Data/Information. Data/Information could be treated as object prerequisited to be put into science domain. But, the problem arise because in nature Knowledge essentially is Subject. Knowledge is no longer could be treated as Object, but evolved as Subject having consciousness, free will (mind and value), active and dynamic. Knowledge evolved as emergent behavior in human as complex system.
So, the term Scientific Knowledge may be more appropriate changed into “Knowledgeable Science”. I disagree if someone called KM as Pseudoscience. Let me sharing on this issue with my link http://mobeeknowledge.ning.com/forum/topics/knowledge-management-is-not - KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IS NOT PSEUDO SCIENCE : KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IS KNOWLEDGEABLE SCIENCE
I convince if the paradigm of Knowledge could be shifted as Subject, the implications will be so great to Science and Technology, and the most important for us is, KM will have bright future as “Knowledgeable Science” applied to practical enterprise management (Link http://mobeeknowledge.ning.com/forum/topics/starting-a-km-programme-based - STARTING A KM PROGRAMME BASED ON KNOWLEDGE AS SUBJECT (FEED BACK TO KMers TWEETCHAT – DEC 15, 2009)
As practical approach, I’d like to sharing http://mobeeknowledge.ning.com/forum/topics/webbased-knowledge-management - WEB-BASED KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT 2.0 MAP
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