Arranging ideas: KM in human terms
A wonderful explanation of KM by Amy Garhan. She likens KM to arranging ideas, which consists of 3 core tasks: 1) recording your thoughts, 2) organizing and storing your thoughts and 3) sharing your ideas and observations. The arranging ideas concept not only represents a refreshing way to look at KM but also provides a different framework for analyzing existing KM efforts. I would like to add that arranging ideas can be considered to be a core activity of 'idea practitioners'. The idea practitioner concept represents a different mindset, one that focuses equally on the self and on the image of the self as manifested by social networks. Thus when an idea practitioner contributes an idea, he/she takes special care to make that idea sharable -- by 'arranging ideas so people can use them'. This is also the core of what bloggers do, and thus one can say that bloggers are idea practitioners too. But this is not the case in organizations. A manager at a large control engineering group recently discussed some of his KM related problems with me. His main problem was trying to get engineers to 'arrange ideas' for reuse for the benefit of the organization. The engineers refused to work in the 'sharing ideas for reuse' mode and stressed the importance of working in the 'ideas for me and my project' mode. Now because of this difference a lot of know-how is locked up in project-based silos and this can be only be comprehended by the project members themselves. Now who or what is to blame here? The organization thinks the engineers are the ones not adapting and the engineers think that the organization is not making any sense. Now, although these differences can be reconciled by some extra effort from both sides in the long term, there's a simple quick win solution -- provide a separate space for idea practitioners and grow the sharing culture in a bottom-up, emergent fashion. This space is commonly referred to as communities of practices (CoPs). Thus, the organization should not create CoPs for CoPs sake, but to cultivate and grow the knowledge sharing idea virus to permeate the entire organization. In the engineers' case, it would be best to have the CoP take the initial responsibility to transform the documents from a project based mode to a sharing base mode and thereby start a practice of knowledge sharing.Permalink | Saturday, July 17, 2004
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