Dave, i think you have described KM to the T. I believe that KM or the initiatives, once linked to organizational objectives, can be measured within the local context, rather than trying to come to a global measurement framework. And implementation, necessarily, has to be local. I have posted a poll at my blog about what people believe ought to be the right way to position KM w.r.t. Business teams.

Looks good - thanks for doing this.

The only significant quibble I have is in the third bullet-point: "allowing" sounds too much like external control. Perhaps suggest "enabling", "enhancing" or "supporting"? ("Eliciting" is probably even closer, but sounds too pedantic! :-) )

Hope this helps, anyway - and thanks again.

A very clear summary, perhaps the best one I've seen yet.

The guiding principles are also all sound. One thinks the first principle should be a given for any project in any organisation (yet that clearly isn't always the case), and therefore not needed to be stated here explicitly. But perhaps it's worthwhile to emphasize that KM is strategy driven, like any other parts of business operations should be, and not merely an undefined 'support' function

Perhaps it could be stated, that management of the KM function will be strategy driven, and based on a small centralized core, with a wider distributed network.

I would be tempted to add conversation and collaboration to decision-making and innovation as the objectives that KM supports. I'm not sure quite how to do it, but I'd like to see ideas, insights and context added to the 2nd sentence (i.e. in addition to information, processes and technologies). My list of principles would be longer, but that's a subject for another conversation. Cheers,

....Great!

Even though I too, like you, believe that decision-making and innovation are the key objectives that KM must support, I can't help but get distracted by the thought of including "Employee Competence" to the list....

Dave

A definition that any management consultant would be proud of! (Especially the guiding principles: one of the guiding principles for any piece of work in this domain is to have a set of.....er....guiding principles. Clients love them - and they do provide a focal point for discussion, challenge and creative sparking).

As a formal definition, I think this is quite good.

However, for "ordinary" people my definition is:

"Knowledge management is a range of practices used in an organization to collect and share knowledge to help people get their job done"

Dave,
This is a very workable definition that I will happily share with my students. Currently I expose them to several definitions so they get a good diversity of views. My own simplistic version is "leveraging intellectual assets to improve performance" (or the more pragmatic wording of: leveraging what we have create value).

I like the inclusion of projects linked to strategy, something my students are asked to do in their major assignment. Knowledge is required to decide what projects are the best to proceed with and also required to know how to do them well. Projects are how we change the would and introduce new knowledge into our organisations (when they are done well that is - also sometime how we remove obsolete knowledge and processes).

Just another comment on knowledge and strategy, the relationship is interdependent. In a well led organisation there is a continuous positive sycle where knowledge drives strategy and strategy generates new knowledge. I discuss this more in Being a Successful Knowledge Leader.

David,

I was one who was sandwiched in-between decision makers and KM folks, trying at times to save KM folks from the budget ax, and they made it very difficult at times a few years ago....

One of the reasons was due to the strong resistance to define the practice, which was a stronger message to those with a fiduciary responsibility to run the other way -- one universal truth is that if a vendor of products and services cannot define what it is they are selling, then it isn't worth buying.

That said, I also understand the challenge, took some early efforts at defining it a decade ago that I shared in our global network at the time.

If the purpose is only a definition, I would stick to short and sweet -- fewer digits the better -- like your first sentence, perhaps slightly expanded. Best of luck! .02- MM

I can understand why Dave avoided this for so long it is no easy task. That decision making is central to the definition is correct - I would suggest so is sense making as it would be difficult to make decisions without sense making yet Dave appears to omit this - I am not sure why. I am also not quite sure how one manages "human intuition" Maybe Dave you could explain that bit to me. I must say I still find the notion of "managing" knowledge a bit not quite correct - as knowledge in my mind assumes a dimension of abstractness - being embedded in the minds of people - How do you manage that?This is why I have always found so many of Dave's heuristics spot on it challenges some of the traditional assumptions. I need to ponder on this definition more I guess as the concept of information management also comes into play - knowledge and information are concepts used interchangibly at times without in my view clarity of what they mean. One thing is for sure this definition deserves consideration and constructive debate, with the accent on constructive.

Dave,
Good one. I particularly like the second guiding principle.

I think this is a good definition, and I couldn't think of a better one, but I'd like to play the Devil's Advocate: How many organisations have an adequate understanding of their own decision making?

Too many firms live by the simple belief (an 'espoused view' of decision making, in Argyris and Schon's terms) that managers pick up signals from the environment and make choices that fit with strategy. I've always felt this posed KM its biggest challenges when it came to creating congruence within the organisation.

In practice, much of management is Heideggerian - we find ourselves thrown into the world and having to act first and reflect when we have a chance. But if our clients aren't comfortable with that, the "effective management of human intuition and experience" can easily turn into finding who's wrong and preventing them from making mistakes.

I think this revision makes it somewhat more emphatic in the beginning and stronger in the bullet points. I incorporated Tom Graves comment about 'allowing' and used 'enabling'. I don't think 'eliciting' is the right nuance. The meaning is spot on for a KM definition. Thanks -

******

The purpose of knowledge management is to provide support for improved decision making and innovation. This is achieved through the effective management of human intuition and experience with the provision of information, processes and technology together with training and mentoring programmes.

The following guiding principles will be applied
• All projects will be linked to operational and strategic goals
• As far as possible the approach adopted will be to stimulate local activity rather than impose central solutions
• Co-ordination and distribution of learning will focus on enabling adaptation of good practice to the local context
• Management of the KM function will be based on a small centralized core, with a wider distributed network throughout the organization

I think there's an element of the processes and governance structures needed to capture, amplify and disseminate intellectual assets. Call it what you will -- knowledge or intellectual capital -- there's an important strategic dimension for managing this, if investments in KM (infrastructure, integration services, etc.) are to be rationalized.
Even on a personal level, it's increasingly clear that people who can think about and manage their personal intellectual assets are capable of maximizing value through time using asset optimization techniques.

"This is achieved through the effective management of human intuition and experience with the provision of information, processes and technology together with training and mentoring programmes."
I'm not sure I completely understant what this means... Managing human intuition and experience? can you make that a little more concrete? and then "provision of information, processes and technology? - a little explanation of what you mean by this would help.
Overall I like this definition, it is much less technology and content driven, which is what I usually see.

Two comments:
first, the purpose is not the definition of the "object".
second,decision making and innovation are two behaviors among many that KM may enable or support

Great Dave, I am agree with you eventhough for some sentences like : ".....together with ....mentoring programmes." I am not agree.

Kudos, Mike, for an effort that clearly resonates with so many people.

I approach the challenge like this. ask the question(s), "how do you know if you are managing knowledge?"

Of course, that is really two questions: how do you know if you're managing, and how do you know that it is knowledge that you are managing?

For the most part, I see knowledge as a "resource" and management as a practice that pursues the efficient and effective application of a resource to operational performance requirements. But let me be far more specific. As for distinguishing knowledge from other resources, I like the value-chain model that shows data becoming information through modeling, and information becoming knowledge through practical utilitarian relevance to a context or presumed circumstance. In effect, knowledge is a status, not a material, very much similar to "health". This helps to identify what is at stake when managing it.

Dave,

I have a problem with the way you've phrased the first principle: "clear links to operational and strategic goals" seems to run the risk of longer-term knowledge initiatives being excluded, obviously depending on how far-sighted (or not) the organisation is about strategy. Now I've done enough of Cognitive Edge's courses to know that *you* wouldn't intend that contingency and serendipity were obliterated by the hand of Management. Would a revised first principle, [1], "All projects will be clearly linked to organisational purpose", reduce this risk?

Best wishes

Andrew

I agree with everybody else, it's a good definition.

But, only half in jest, I've put a tweaked version below. (I've changed four words and phrases which are in italics).

The purpose of the Training Department is to provide support for improved decision making and innovation throughout the organization. This is achieved through the effective management of human intuition and experience augmented by the provision of information, processes and technology together with Knowledge Management programmes.

The following guiding principles will be applied:

• All courses will be clearly linked to operational and strategic goals


• As far as possible the approach adopted will be to stimulate local activity rather than impose central solutions


• Co-ordination and distribution of learning will focus on allowing adaptation of good practice to the local context


• Management of the L & D function will be based on a small centralized core, with a wider distributed network
  

To avoid any danger of falling into an apophantic trap (HT Gordon Rae) one might need to consider borrowing some techniques from marketing (who may also feel entitled to a good deal of the above definition) and focus on a USP.

If Marketing/R & D are about adding to the store, Learning & Development to the spread, might KM be about the flow of knowledge?

Arthur,

Well said

"...knowledge drives strategy and strategy generates new knowledge"

The way I see it we have broad KM (expert locators, CoPs, lessons etc...) then we have specific KM (fixing a process or intractable problem in a team/project...I guess this also includes "reflective km" AAR, etc...)

Knowledge Management needs to have an equal balance.

And surfing over this we need to create conditions for knowledge to emerge, opportunities to surface, serendipity, accidental collisions, experiment (safe-fail)

I think the original aims of KM are finally coming to light now that workers can enable grass roots efforts, and be connected

If we want people to share, we need them to trust each other, and for this we need an environment to build relationships, and we do this via conversation and participation...and to get people to participate is much easier now as they have the tools to sense-make, and engage.

If KM was just a servant to strategy, we sure hope we have the right strategies. As I said besides enriching strategies KM should be about surfacing new strategies...this way we are agile and adapt to change.

Joe Firestone has a good post on this
http://kmci.org/alllifeisproblemsolving/?p=6

Hi Dave

I am surprised to see this definition on your blog - perhaps I am missing some context.

To quote Schrage “KM is a bullshit issue”. I don’t believe it is an effective organizational function (as compared to marketing or accounting or IT, etc.). If KM is anything it is a set of skills and perspectives on social interactions, cognition, innovation, communication, etc. that enhance effectiveness at both the leadership and do-ership levels.

Now, it may be true that certain organizations need someone (or someones) to champion these skills – but on that basis many organizations also need Leadership Management, Design Management and Customer Appreciation Management. Carrying the flag for these business success factors rightfully belongs at the highest level of the organization – with the CEO and all those who report to him or her.

I would agree that there are worthy technology projects that support better communication and collaboration. And these also may require a central coordinating body but my experience suggests this is a temporary role – perhaps one that is best provided by a project lead during the system’s start up phases. There are also better and worse approaches to building such systems (both locally and centrally) to ensure effective capture and search for data, information and ‘knowledge’. But these are IT or project functions - informed by user needs and good practices. I don’t see why these require a separate KM function any more than hardware deployment requires an Ergonomics Management function.

As to the guiding principles these seem necessary only because they apply to KM as an (as I contend) inappropriately centralized function. In fact, all but the first suggest that KM should indeed be achieved locally and through networks.

As to your first principle it is pap … if a project is NOT linked to an operational or strategic goal what exactly is it for and why would anyone approve it?

Great definitions and perspectives in this thread. I can't believe I missed it until now (December).

Thanks, Dave, for the continued leadership -

I feel the need to respond to Matthew's negative comment on KM, though not in a defensive way; I believe his concerns have a historical basis, or at least, a following. I've experienced push back personally, observing and being subject to Dave's "overall levels of cynicism" -

Here's my thinking as to why -

It seems to me KM was born from a notion that silo'd organizations are, by themselves, ineffective at aggregating and leveraging intellectual capital, aka knowledge. Critical insights too often remain stranded. Trapped. Sometimes, even heavily guarded.

KM attempts to free that stranded knowledge, but in the attempt, exposes and grapples with cultural differences within those silo's. Dealing directly with marketing, service, HR, IT, operations, or finance requires different solution languages .. the ability to frame different paradigms for success .. all the while understanding that problem solving models derived from professional training are often quite different in each.

Sure, the CEO should bring all that together. But that happens at the strategic level. CEO's don't (or certainly shouldn't) develop processes or steward collaboration.

KM, by design, works to solve this. Skilled KM practitioners understand where and how context tends to change across the silo'd organization, and how to navigate those divides. But to date, it hasn't been enough. Given the success of the industrial revolution and the stranglehold the 'factory model' has on organizational design and management philosophy, KM remains at once noble in its aims and doomed to more disappointment.

To truly unlock the potential of KM, we need to address the shortcomings of the silo paradigm, a century-old mindset that's literally baked into our corporate culture.

To me, that's the real elephant in the room.