Frustration in KM world

It is just 9h00 in the morning and I already got frustrated twice. It is not the weather that makes me annoyed. NO!

First I read an article about a recent OECD report. This report contains a 'easy-to-digest' list of countries. The higher a country is placed on the list, the better it is doing in innovation.  Innovation could be seen as the end-product of two important disciplines 'learning' and 'knowledge sharing'. So if a country is performing bad on this list, one of the conclusions can be that innovation, knowledge and learning are underperformed. This is exactly what is happening with Denmark. Denmark moved from place 6  to place 12.

On one side this can be seen as an opportunity because knowledge-societies such as Denmark understand the importance of learning and innovation. They understand that without controlling innovation, it becomes difficult to compete on a global market. It feels like falling in between two stools: between the knowledge societies that outperform you with innovation and new knowledge and the industrial societies that outperform you with the production of cheap products.  Do Western countries have a choice to become or a knowledge society, or a industrial society? No, they don't! Western countries were already once on the path of an industrial society.  They were successful, but with the globalisation it cannot bring any future anymore. Therefore are Western countries focusing on the knowledge society.

However, on the other side, creating an opportunity out of this development is far from easy for many of the professionals. Some days ago I already showed my frustration about the implementation of SharePoint.  It is exactly what happened with KM in the period 1995-2001. Let's first describe what happened when KM was seen as a fad management disicipline:

What will happen with the organisation if all the senior people are leaving at the same time? This would cause a knowledge-drain and, of course, organisations began to look for opportunities to maintain their knowledge.  Initially, the aim of this strategy was the change knowledge from an organisational liability to an organisational asset. Organisations started to optimise the delivery of existing organisational knowledge to staff members so that they can function successfully in organisational processes.  This is why technology has played such a dominant role in KM to date. Consequently, consulting firms and software developers jumped into the market of total KM and the discipline took off as a technical solution. However, KM failed to show its value. Organisations had spent a large amount of money on setting up the technology to capture and codify knowledge, but unfortunately - in most cases - the technology was not being used.  Hence, KM had neglected the social-cultural factors.

Even though this is a story from more than 10 years ago, it can still be applied. It is SharePoint that is now being used in many of the organisations to run KM initiatives. But what is KM? It is no longer key to control information or knowledge, but it is key to get it moving in the organisation. Therefore, knowledge management is already giving a wrong impression what it should do. We need to see it as knowledge facilitation, or just in plain English: learning. In my eyes, Dave Snowden is describing this perfect:

The purpose of Knowledge Management is to provide support for improved decision-making and innovation throughout the organization.  This is achieved through the effective management of human intuition and experience augmented by the provision of information, processes and technology together with the training and mentoring program

This weblog post also answers the question I received today: is KM still alive in the Netherlands? No, if we are repeating history. Yes, if we grasp the the meaning of the KM discipline: facilitating learning so that staff members quickly can make sense of and decide over a new problem/opportunity.

SharePoint vs Personal Learning Environments

VidenDanmark is a network which aims to bring people together who are working or interested in the disciplines of innovation, learning and information and knowledge management.  Every now and then they organize meetings where peers discuss the latest developments within their own organisations. Even though I do not want to label myself as knowledge manager, I attend meetings hosted and participated by knowledge managers. I am very pleased with the opportunity to meet peers in Denmark. However, I am amazed to hear and see which projects/initiatives are being launched in order to promote learning and create innovation. 

One of the recurring initiatives to push and pull new information and knowledge is the implementation of Microsoft SharePoint.  As a result, VidenDanmark launched a SharePoint group in which peers share their experience in designing, maintaining and launching SharePoint. They meet every second month, some are travelling to San Francisco to attend a SharePoint conference and this is all being done to improve the organisational ability to effectively share information and knowledge. It is sad to say, but even though it is good that people meet each other in order to get to know a product/service better, I do think this is not what the experts in innovation, learning and knowledge should focus on.

I believe we should encourage organisations to let every staff member make its own learning environment. This is also known as personal learning environmet. In the next blog post I will explain why I favour personal learning environments more than SharePoint applications.