Time, Process, Quality and Knowledge!

I was taught that there are some timeless management perennials, way beyond the fads, and that every leader and manager should ask :

For how long are we interested in

- improving our creation and application of knowledge?
- better managing our time?
- improving our quality?
- developing better relationships?
- increasing our productivity?

The answer of course is for ever.

Yet people have often said to me 'I went on a time management course twenty years ago' and
'we did process reengineering ten years ago' and 'quality management five years ago' and we did 'knowledge management two years ago'.

Yet, respectfully, I have concluded that in this age of a global twenty four hour day we are finding it even more challenging to manage our time , tasks, projects, processes, people, information and knowledge than ever before! Respectfully, I suggest that we have only just started to understand how to become effective virtual teams and knowledge workers .

The continually emerging knowledge technologies will always provide us with a tremendous new potential to better communicate, collaborate, learn, share and apply our knowledge, but we need to know how to redesign our work and how to use these tools.

But, more importantly, we need to understand and wisely apply the timeless principles behind the processes, methods and tools.

Knowledge is a timeless perennial for management and, for me, Knowledge Management is the warm up act for the main act yet to come. What will we call this one?