Wonderful short article in Harvard Business Publishing by Freek Vermuelen describes how top-down informationbases actually get in the way of doing business.
The advice to derive from this research? Shut down your expensive document databases; they tend to do more harm than good. They are a nuisance, impossible to navigate, and you can’t really store anything meaningful in them anyway, since real knowledge is quite impossible to put onto a piece of paper. Yet, do maintain your systems that help people identify and contact experts in your firm, because that can be beneficial, at least for people who lack experience. Therefore, make sure to only give your rookies the password.
Lately, I’ve been thinking we’re ready to pull down the silos housing, respectively, Training, CLO, KM, OD, and Corporate Communications. Often, marketing would be lumped in, too.
Strategically re-configuring the CLO+KM+OD+Com function needs to bolster the worthwhile functions and shut down the unworthy ones. KM seems poised for a slowdown, the weakest sister in the CLO+KM+OD+Com Learnscape.
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There is an interesting comment below this article by Kirshan. He considers a knowledge framework (domain) and a strong community of practice (relationships) to be the core of KM. The documents are just an add on.
Jay,
I agree KM has been the weakest in the CLO+KM+OD+Com Learnscape. However, rather that slowing down I would imagine, with help of web 2.0 tools, KM would noe be growing faster than ever.
As I understand the advice coming from Freek’s article is:
- Avoid documents and ensure identification of experts is possible
- Become conscious of who should use it and for what purpose
KM would always need user discretion like we all do when Googling. For that matter isn’t Google the world’s largest KM system?
i so much agree , this is the is so true, always this has been the neglected part.i was searching for property to let in central london for quite some time and i accidentally found this amazing website no agents 24 with loads and loads of information about tips for tenants, tips for moving, hips. I really like my new house. i went out for some fresh air today early morning, although i am generally not the morning person type but i have to admit i really enjoyed it.