The end of professional KM certificats

This is a message I just posted at KM4Dev about why I don't think we should teach KM themes through professional KM certifications:

I think, first of all, when you are talking about professional certifications you need to ask yourself: why do we need it?  For the sake of having an agreed standard in KM, or just to understand KM and getting valuable ideas how to implement knowledge sharing activities in your own business?

I think this is a key question you should ask yourself, because why do we want to let people share and create new knowledge?  In my view this is because we need to become more creative and innovative to make sense of a fast changing environment. And because not one person alone can make sense of the messiness we are getting in, we need to collaborate.  As a result, decision making occurs through diversity.  And how can we work with this diversity? By attending an off-the-shelf course, do the standardized work?  Of course, it will eventually result in a certificate - a paper you can show your peers. But is the stuff you have learned during such a course still valid in two year and do we want to have the standardized thinking? No, not if we want to have different thinking patterns in order to move through a changing environment! Therefore I do not believe you should focus yourself on KM certifications, but more thinking how you can enlighten your colleagues about the topic on a ongoing basis by which knowledge sharing will become a part of your business culture.

This might sound awkward out of the mouth of somebody who attended a MSc in Information and Knowledge Management in London and is currently working as external teacher in KM at the Hague University in the Netherlands. Probably experience is proving my point.

Instead of approaching KM as a discipline, I teach KM more as a philosophy that should become a part of every individual: from top management to the lower levels. In an interview (http://greenchameleon.com/gc/blog_detail/dead_km_walking/) with Dave Snowden and Larry Prusak they argue that KM does not have a guru who is saying what to do. KM is more complex than you think and therefore it is an interdisciplinary activity. That's why there are many people (from Prusak to Snowden to Stewart to Takeuchi) who are adding into the topic from various backgrounds.

So what is my role as external teacher and what do I think you should do?  I am teaching the students to become the knowledge worker of the 21st century, a networker, or in the words of Seth Godin's latest book a 'linchpin' (http://mashable.com/2010/02/14/seth-godin-linchpin/).  By successfully using networking tools and techniques, we are able to create and share new knowledge and - as a result - have more insights to make sense of and decide over new situations.  Therefore I am teaching students how to use information sharing and networking tools and techniques.  But of course before doing so, students should understand why this is so important.  They need to understand why "knowledge is the new factor of production, with a focus on the intangible instead of the tangible, through which organizations are moving to services rather than goods" (Daniel Bell about the New Economy, 1976). So I always start outlining what happened in the past, what went wrong and what is happening now. I call it the KM evolution.  After that I let students experience how to use technological solutions (like social media) and how to use socio-cultural solutions (like storytelling and the Future Backwards technique). Of course, both solutions are a selection of how you can create and share new knowledge.  

So, to finish this message properly: I think you should use your network and invite different persons who can show the various aspects of knowledge creation and sharing. From social media guys and girls, to guys and girls working in branding (because staff members should know how to use social media as a tool and technique to share knowledge and collaborate, but also how to act in the open and public environment of social networks in order to maintain and strengthen the brand of the business, and encourage external stakeholders sharing their knowledge with you - because nobody is going to share to share, they need to have a kind of trust).

I believe only then the culture is moving from 'holding knowledge' to 'sharing knowledge'.