Library clips

The May/June issue of Melcrum’s KM Review (subscription required) has an article by Raj Datta on the addiction to supply side KM.

Organisations that run on predictability encourage supply side KM, ie. KM practice that is focused on explicit knowledge (information) like best practices, lessons learnt, etc…personally I think this is information management. The idea is that capturing and documenting this information can be used for similar situations that arise in the future.

Raj mentions that this concept is focused on learning from the past, he says, “Demand, it’s assumed, is automatically created.”

He alludes to this being more a process of content management or information management, rather than KM.

This article isn’t focused on whether people actually visit these databases, but his tone assumes that people rather be connected to other people, having information coming to them, rather than search a database…shared context, peripheral knowledge, high abstraction, trust all come into that equation.

The focus of the article is on how we learn and innovate by generating a culture of knowledge creation.

An organisation run on predictability already has all the answers from the past, which is OK in a predictable and static market, and you are happy to not keep up with the cutting edge. But, he says:

“We may get so focused on analyzing the past and documenting every possible learning or best practice, that we may not foster creative design and focus on the future.”

The more likely scenario is that we live in a fast paced world, where we have to adapt with new and changing demands, and this requires a need to continually create new knowledge to add to the supply.

Common sense

This is common sense:

1. keep your solutions in a database that you can dip into in the future

2. we need to be agile and adapt to the market and respond by creating new solutions and capabilities which are in turn added to the database (responding to the market may involve using past information as well as creating new information).

The reason I say this is common sense is that we don’t live in a static world, no matter how much we try to control circumstances, life has plans of her own for us. So we need to adapt to this realisation, and respond.

Personally I don’t think the supply side view is seen as or considered to be a one-time program, but rather an ongoing process, so there is nothing really new here.
I mean there is no stage where you stop learning lessons, or refine your best practices (keep current and new contexts), so it seems normal you would collect this information and keep creating it, and keep collecting it.
Basically all the answers are not in our best practices database, we need to create new knowledge/information just as much as we store it.

But isn’t this natural, if you don’t have a stored answer, you have to create one…usually the problem is in knowing you already have an answer to prevent re-inventing the wheel.

The question is how do you make sure new knowledge is always being created?

How do you make sure you have an adaptive environment where you swim and don’t sink?

Not only that, but how well you swim?

That is, how do you go about effectively creating new knowledge?

Where do you focus your energy?

OK so now I get it.

The article is about how much time and energy we devote to:

Capturing and storing vs Knowledge flow

Hoping people will refer to it for future use vs Adapting, being aware and in the loop, and learning off each other (participation)

I think there is room for both.

I don’t really think this is Supply side store approach vs Demand side creation approach

I think the learning approach is balanced in itself, for example, a blogosphere, community of practice, social network are all examples of learning off each other and being aware, and creating knowledge, but at the same time you are sharing knowledge.

Perhaps we might say, is there a need to store and capture as much, as this happens by default anyway when you take a creative learning approach.

Even better, in a learning organisation you are aware of solutions as they happen, even if you have no use for them at the time. You can connect to people involved in the solutions, and you are connected to people in general. The act of participating gives more chance of solutions coming to you more easily…and as we mentioned earlier you have more of a chance of shared context and the peripheral information around a solution.

We don’t need to mention that by participating we have conversations and create and evolve ideas, become aware of ideas.

We can be pro-active and innovative.

I think this is what the article is all about; as well as adapting and storing information, we need a practice or ecosystem, like a university, where we perpetually learn and develop capabilities that can help us be more prepared when a problem arises. The more aware we are, and the more we know, the more chance we will have the skill or know-how in dealing with a situation or issue that comes to our plate.

Raj says:

“Companies that are able to foster knowledge creation, alongside the more traditional view of KM, are able to strike a balance between effectiveness and efficiency and between innovation and productivity. This is a necessary condition for longevity in a global knowledge economy.” This can all happen with participation enabling tools.

It is mentioned that a good indicator for focus on innovation is to see how ideas generate, evolve and eventuate in an organisation…R&D shouldn’t be the only department that is innovative.