Tuesday, January 31, 2006

KM and the next step forward

I am so glad to be working with Hull University Business School on the development of their MSc in KM to be launched at Easter 2006.

What excites me is that this higher degree has two modules on KM, a module on Organisational Development and Learning, a module on Systems Thinking and a module on Corporate Strategy.

Such a powerful combination. Combining the systemic and the systematic, combining the strategy, people, processes and technologies - a well balanced and holistic approach.

But, surely, this needs a new term beyond the Knowledge Management?

Monday, January 30, 2006

KM and Web 2.0

One of my favourite thinkers of today is Peter Russell (www.peterussell.com).

His work on 'The Global Brain', as a living and self regulating organism made me think hard about the evolution of increasingly complex global information and communication technology structures.

Since the early 1990's we have seen an evolution from the 'broadcasting' of information (the push/send model) to the 'shared workspace' with collaborative working, learning and sharing models (the share/pull model). Increasingly, we refer to these more highly interactive and collaborative models as major characteristics that define web 2.0 capability and functionality.

In my work with organisations that seek enterprise wide knowledge management I have tried to bring about more learning and knowledge sharing across and between collaborative teams that share a common interest or 'key knowledge area(s)'. In turn, these key knowledge areas are derived from the organisations objectives i.e. what key areas of knowledge do we need to create, transfer and apply to help us better achieve our objectives?

Maybe this will be a characteristic of web 2.1?

I think that knowledge management, as a discipline, is moving faster in the world of increasingly complex systems of communication, learning and knowledge sharing than the evolution of the web - in terms of theory and process - but, of course, without the support of the appropriate web technologies and tools to support and enable the process - it will not go to far beyond theory only?

Sunday, January 29, 2006

Wiki and Global KM

I am simply fascinated, and somewhat in awe of the tremendous developments of wiki's and blogs in the context of knowledge management.

Recently, after years of KM consulting to help organisations better capture, store, share, create and apply new knowledge, I came to the conclusion that self-organising global wiki' s will simply transform the creation and distribution, at least, of knowledge bases.

The argument today centres around the more traditional KM practice of harvesting new learnings and ideas and 'critically' reviewing them with a view to improving the knowledgebase under the supervision of a knowledge base owner, versus, community added and edited, democratically created open source information content.

My initial conclusion is that the wiki world, and all that it represents, will grow exponentially as a key component to creating and sharing our global knowledge. However, I don't think its an 'either/or' situation at all, but inevitably it will become a 'both/and' situation - knowing when to use wiki tools to collaborate and when to use critical expert reviews to create new knowledge.

I am more excited by these so called web 2.0 tools than I have ever been in the KM development arena.

Tuesday, January 10, 2006


Ron Young Posted by Picasa

KM technologies - videomail

Today, I temporarily got away from thinking about KM strategies and processes and indulged in subscribing to helloworld.com.

A consulting colleague in france recommended this technology for sending short videomails.

Its very simple, very cost effective, and I was sending my first videomail in a few minutes.

Now my head is buzzing with how to effectively use this tool. Short presentations, distance learning and lectures in small chunks and even the simultaneous videoconference sessions (yet to try this)?

I will certainly add this to our KM/Kworker technology toolkit. I also have an intuition that it will be a good capture tool for learnings, ideas and even inspirational moments.

Sunday, January 08, 2006

An experiment with k-logs for KM consultants

A space to capture my new learnings, insights and ideas whilst conducting Knowledge Management consulting engagements. Of course, the information is sanitized and therefore, anonymous, so as to fully protect client confidentiality.

This is an experiment to evaluate the effectiveness of blogging or k-logs in KM consulting for a team of consultants.

Step 1 is to evaluate the tool for personal knowledge management, then team knowledge management.