KM - You cannot fit an organism into an organization

A human being is an organism. People working together are organisms
collectively communicating, collaborating, learning and sharing knowledge.

Many clients, when they are starting to learn about KM, try to fit what they are learning into their existing 'organizational' structure and paradigm. It's an old paradigm. It's wrong thinking. It will fail to reach its full potential. Organisations and organising are sub-sets of the fuller functioning of a living organism.

The problem is that the word 'organization' is not suited to knowledge management. Information based organisations are fine because we are talking about 'organised bodies which give orderly structure to components'.

But organisms are 'entities that take the organised body further by connecting parts that are interdependent and share a common life'. So using the term 'management', which is more effective for information but not knowledge, doesn't help either.

We need to create a new and easily understandable and acceptable term for 'knowledge based organisms' to bring this new knowledge creating/sharing/applying paradigm more easily to life.

Open Source KM Consulting Methodology at:
www.knowledge-management-online.com

KM Consulting at:
http://www.knowledgeassociates.com/