New reports from Jerry Ash and Stan Garfield

By Graeme Burton

The not-so-long-awaited sequel to Next Generation Knowledge Management from prolific knowledge management (KM) writer and Inside Knowledge special correspondent Jerry Ash has been published by Ark Group, just six months after his sell-out debut.

Called Next Generation Knowledge Management II, the report carries on from where the first left off. It features interviews with a wide-range of well-known KM ‘gurus’ on such subjects as the seven steps to personal KM, moving from a command-and-control hierarchy to knowledge sharing, and the creation and re-use of knowledge.

Contributors to the report include David Snowden, Robert Buckman, Patti Anklam, Verna Allee and Nick Milton (see also this month’s Masterclass on page 32) among others. “Volume one was an introduction to the full scope of KM. Volume two focuses on who gets to manage knowledge and how,” says Ash.

Particular highlights include Jerry’s interview with Robert Buckman, the pioneering former CEO of pharmaceuticals company Buckman Laboratories, who gives a straightforward commentary of how Buckman became a Most Admired Knowledge Enterprise (MAKE) Awards winner. The report also includes the analysis of other practitioners, too, who joined Jerry in the interviews.

“The future will be determined not by outdated frameworks, eye-watering content aggregations and portal monoliths, but by social visionaries, collaborators and coaches who focus directly on networks, conductivity, adaption, morphology and, above all, authentic conversation,” concludes Jerry.

Also released at the same time is Implementing a Successful KM Programme, a report from veteran practitioner Stan Garfield that distils everything that he has learnt from implementing KM at Digital Equipment, Compaq and Hewlett-Packard.

Garfield’s report offers straightforward advice from planning and strategic direction all the way through to programme implementation and the various technical components that many organisations use to underpin their KM strategies.

The strength of Garfield’s report is its no-nonsense advice, packed into just over 150 pages, which ought to provide readers with the framework they need to scope out a basic KM programme, without overwhelming them with needless trivia. Garfield also provides a copious volume of references and further reading.

To find out more about both reports, please contact Adam Scrimshire at Ark Group. His e-mail address is ascrimshire@ark-group.com.