KMUK 2011

And that is the beauty of KM – and ultimately why it has survived its own demise, in the eyes of many. There is a good balance between old hands and newbies, bolstered by a plethora of shiny new technological tools, which make the job so much easier.

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In search of understanding
David Gurteen wonders whether better knowledge necessarily makes for wiser decision making.

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Quality control
The organisation’s information quality journey began in 2002 when Russo began tracking error rates in the data that Tele-Tech Services provides to its customers to see if they could actually measure accuracy rather than just claiming it. The initial findings were good, with accuracy rates (calculated from the number of errors detected by the quality control process divided by the number of files) running at 99.75 per cent.

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Learning from the edge
Knowledge professionals must be strategic to their businesses or face extinction. That’s the current mantra. But what do strategically significant leaders require to thrive in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world? Who are the role models KM professionals can learn from? From my experience those who have operated at senior leaderships levels in the elite Special Forces represent the benchmark.

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White spots and black holes
Even big multi-nationals are no longer capable of retaining all the internal expertise they require. The increasing popularity of flexible working, virtual teams and collaborative working also present their own challenges. Knowledge economy is the talk of the town but few know what it really is, how it affects their organisation, or whether it is a necessity. Perhaps it is an intermediate result, rather than a real objective.

Regular
Stuff management
A few years back, I was discussing knowledge management (KM) with a knowledge manager I knew. I explained how difficult it was, at a practical level, to separate knowledge from information. In any form of document, information and explicit knowledge are intertwined and it makes no useful sense to try to distinguish the two.

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KM is dead!
Ask yourself, why does KM exist in the first place? You will probably arrive at the conclusion that it is in response to the demands of the knowledge economy, one that drives knowledge intensive organisations to adapt and to become more dynamic. What is it that enables the dynamic capability of a knowledge intensive organisation?

News
News: Cloud comfort
The cloud is creating a greater sense of capability and collaboration, which could result in contractual and operational ambiguity, according to research by the Cloud Industry Forum.
Published in the third of a series of white papers scoping cloud adoption attitudes and trends, the findings point to a transformation in the way that IT services are procured. It shows that end users seek comfort, reliability, control, integration and security of hosted services.

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News: Productivity drain
Collaboration and social tools designed to increase productivity are costing businesses £57.8bn per year in lost productivity.