Blog>> Knowledge Manager Lifespans Getting Longer?
1 DAY AGO - In 2008 I ran a global survey on knowledge manager professional development and experience. It Expand
1 DAY AGO - In 2008 I ran a global survey on knowledge manager professional development and experience. It found that only 29% of knowledge managers had been in their role for more than 4 years, and only 25% were confident of moving on to another KM role. The average “lifespan” among respondents was something like 2.5 years.
Nick Milton recently surveyed his KM contacts on LinkedIn and found that knowledge managers average lifespan seems to last about 6 years – which shows progress! About 60% will survive beyond 4 years, double my figure a decade ago. However, only about 25% of his subjects are likely to have had a longish (8+ years) career in KM. Progress, but slow progress! Collapse
3 steps to using knowledge management strategically, not tactically
3 DAYS AGO - Knowledge management can be a strategic tool, but too often is used tactically.To add value, Expand
3 DAYS AGO - Knowledge management can be a strategic tool, but too often is used tactically.To add value, Knowledge Management must be strategic. However often its use is not strategic, but it seen as a low-level support activity; managing a generic resource, just as you might manage land or property or money.See for example this blog post from 2011, by Max Boisot and colleagues, entitled "Are you wasting money on useless knowledge management".Most companies recognize the need for knowledge management, but often delegate it to the IT and HR departments without linking it to corporate strategy, often thereby wasting both resources and the strategic options their firm’s knowledge could generate. The problem is that most current knowledge management efforts merely inventory the company’s knowledge, without parsing out the knowledge that is strategically relevant. Strategic management of knowledge focuses only on those knowledge assets that are critical to your firm’s competitive performance — from Collapse
What does a knowledge management officer do? Video from the World Bank
5 DAYS AGO - In the video below, Phil Karp, a Lead Knowledge Management Officer from the World Bank describes Expand
5 DAYS AGO - In the video below, Phil Karp, a Lead Knowledge Management Officer from the World Bank describes how he helps practitioners from around the world to share knowledge and lessons with each other. This is an excellent viewpoint into the role of KM in the development sector. Phil Karp, Lead Knowledge Management Officer, World Bank from GRID-Arendal on Vimeo. Collapse
Extending SECI - 9 transitions of knowledge transfer
26/09/2018 - The SECI model is a common model in KM. This blog post from the archives suggests a way to expand Expand
26/09/2018 - The SECI model is a common model in KM. This blog post from the archives suggests a way to expand this model.One of the basic models of Knowledge Management - often discussed, frequently challenged - is Nonaka and Takeuchi's SECI model. This is a 2x2 matrix, looking at the transitions between tacit and explicit knowledge (and the challenges to the model is often whether tactic knowledge can ever be made explicit, or whether it needs to be, or whether explicit knowledge is the same as documented knowledge).I would like to extend this model, because when we start to work with Knowledge Management in organisations, we find that knowledge actually lies in three natural states rather than two, and that we therefore need a 3x3 matrix rather than a 2x2.The three states are as follows;1. Unconscious "Knowledge in the head" - the things you don't know you know.2. Conscious "Knowledge in the head" - the things you know you know (of course the boundary between states 1 and 2 is gradual, and Collapse
Blog Post: The Henley Forum Listening Project
25/09/2018 - By David GurteenThe Henley Forum is researching Knowledgeable Practice for the next 10 Expand
25/09/2018 - By David GurteenThe Henley Forum is researching Knowledgeable Practice for the next 10 years.
They wish to understand how knowledge, learning and change practice might develop over the next 10 years. They are asking practitioners two key questions:
What key qualities and skills have you relied on in doing your best work?
What qualities and skills do you believe will be most useful and important for practitioners over the next 10 years?
They have created a questionnaire to solicit some input. Please it would help tremendously, if you would complete the questionaire.
In return, if you include your contact details, you will receive a summary of the report. Collapse
Blog Post: It may sound corny but love is the answer
24/09/2018 - By David Gurteen
It may seem corny, but love is the answer.
I have long thought that to help Expand
24/09/2018 - By David Gurteen
It may seem corny, but love is the answer.
I have long thought that to help cure many of the ills in the world that all we needed to do was "to care more." To care more about each other and to care more about our planet.
To say that "love is the answer" seemed a little too twee especially in a business context.
However, since I discovered that Elon Musk using the phrase in a recent interview with Joe Rogan I am having second thoughts - maybe "love is the answer" conveys the message far more effectively.
Here is a clip from the interview where Elon and Joe talk about the future of humanity and "love is the answer."
And here is the full interview (beware 2 1/2hrs long but well worth the time)
Joe comments at the end of the clip "How do you fix that - do you have a love machine you are working on?" Elon laughs and suggests you should spend more time with your friends and less on social media.
However, it has got to be far more than that - how do Collapse
Blog Post: We are what we think about all day long
23/09/2018 - By David Gurteen
A man is what he thinks about all day long.
Credit: Ralph Waldo Emerson
This Expand
23/09/2018 - By David Gurteen
A man is what he thinks about all day long.
Credit: Ralph Waldo Emerson
This is one of my favourite quotes.
When I find my mind wandering to trivial matters or worrying over things I have no power to control, I think of this quote and consciously change what I am thinking about to something of value. The more I do it, the better I get at it.
Oh, by the way, I am sure this applies to women too. Annoying that quotes from even a few years ago are sexist but I think it would be wrong not to use the original words. Collapse
Blog Post: Gurteen Knowledge Tweets: September2018
22/09/2018 - By David GurteenHere are some of my more popular recent tweets.
Take a look, if you are not a Expand
22/09/2018 - By David GurteenHere are some of my more popular recent tweets.
Take a look, if you are not a Tweeter, you will get a good idea of how I use it by browsing the list of micro-posts.
A big difference maker is when participants in a network (or an organization, for that matter) embrace new ways of seeing, thinking, and doing. https://buff.ly/2o0J13f #ConversationalLeadership
Thought is not just reflecting whatever is there, but on the basis of what is known from the past, it helps to create the impression of what is there. It selects; it abstracts; and in doing this, it chooses certain aspects, which then attract our attention. – #DavidBohm
Jordan Peterson: Overcome anxiety: Articulate your rationale by journaling to lessen your doubts https://buff.ly/2Mdhsx6 /interesting - watch the video
The Knowledge Café: Preparing graduates for the real world https://buff.ly/2x07bj1 #KnowledgeCafe #ConversationalLeadership
Dilbert thinks Brainstorming ineffective but he Collapse
The secret to successful KM communication is repetition
19/09/2018 - When communicating about KM and its benefits, you need simplicity and lots of repetition! image by Expand
19/09/2018 - When communicating about KM and its benefits, you need simplicity and lots of repetition! image by Ghozt Tramp from wikimedia commonsAre you tired of repeating the same old Knowledge Management message within your organisation? According to an interesting article from Ramon Barquin and Chris Coleman, you may just have to keep on repeating - 151 times!Their central message is not only that you need a simple, understandable message (see my tips for the KM salesperson) , but that you also need constant repetition. Here's some excerpts from the article.A memo from the CEO isn’t enough to build support for knowledge management. Constant repetition from a variety of sources, both spontaneous and carefully strategized – meetings, memos, word of mouth – is the only way to do it, and this brings us to the Rule of 151.Scientific? Maybe not, but the Rule of 151 goes something like this. The first 50 times you talk about the business advantages of (KM), nobody seems to hear you. The Collapse
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Lesson learning as a supply chain
1 DAY AGO - Another reprise from the archives - the idea of lessons being the "car parts" of knowledge This Expand
1 DAY AGO - Another reprise from the archives - the idea of lessons being the "car parts" of knowledge This post is a combination of three ideas, to see if they come up with something new.Idea number 1 - the idea of an organisation as a knowledge factory, sparked by Lord Browne's quote - "anyone in the organization who is not directly accountable for making a profit should be involved in creating and distributing knowledge that the company can use to make a profit" Idea number 2 - the idea that corporate process is a compilation or synthesis of all the lessons learned over time Idea number 3 - the idea that we can treat knowledge management as a supply chain, designed to get the right knowledge to the right people at the time they need to make decisions.So the combination idea looks like this;The inner ring is a supply chain where components are manufactured, and assembled into products (like a car plant, or a construction site).The outer ring is the lesson learning cycle, one of the Collapse
Estimating the "Cost of not Knowing" as a proxy for the value of KM.
4 DAYS AGO - When estimating the potential value of Knowledge Management, perhaps we can start by looking at Expand
4 DAYS AGO - When estimating the potential value of Knowledge Management, perhaps we can start by looking at the cost of not knowing.It's not always easy to put a value on knowledge, or on knowledge management.However it is easier to put a cost to the lack of knowledge, through asking the question"How much would you have saved, if you had known what you know now, in advance"?The answer to this question represents the "cost of no knowledge"We recently asked this question of a project manager, at the end of his project, once he had identified the problem areas with the benefit of hindsight. His reply was as follows;Savings of $30 m by avoiding sanction delays - "The 8 months hiatus may have cost $30 million, that is just off the top of my head, no science” Savings of $.5m in better involvement of the operations staff “The documentation issue may have cost the project about $0.5 million”. $.5m in commissioning + $2-3m lost revenue - “The cost to the project would be an Collapse
How long does a Knowledge Management career last?
28/09/2018 - KM careers last on average 6.3 years, or else become semi-permanent.For very many years, on Expand
28/09/2018 - KM careers last on average 6.3 years, or else become semi-permanent.For very many years, on Linked-In, I have been seeking connections with Knowledge Managers from around the world, in an attempt to understand the global KM industry a bit better. Recently I have noticed that many of these connections no longer work in KM, so I decided to do a quick survey to see how long an average KM career lasts.I started working through my Linked-In contacts in alphabetical order, to determineIf they no longer worked in KM, how long their career in KM had lasted (taken as the length of time they had held a job with "Knowledge" in the job title, orIf they still worked in KM, how long their KM career has lasted to date.I chose the first 40 people in each category, and the results are shown below.For those who are no longer working in KM, the average length of a KM career was 6.3 years, and the modal length (most common) was between 4 and 6 years. There is a "hump" of between 0 to 8 years, and a Collapse
Blog Post: Future Café: the future of visual collaboration tools
26/09/2018 - By David GurteenOne of the challenges I have in seeing the Knowledge Café more widely Expand
26/09/2018 - By David GurteenOne of the challenges I have in seeing the Knowledge Café more widely adopted is conveying its power as a "group thinking" or "group sensemaking" tool and how it can be adapted for a wide variety of purposes.
To this in end, in my blook on Conversational Leadership, I have two chapters, the first describes the various Café applications and the second is a collection of stories of how the Café has been or is being used in practice.
What I consider to be one of the more powerful of the applications is the Future Café - a Café that is intentionally designed to explore trends and issues that shape, influence or in some way impact the future.
It is not very often that I get to run such a Café at a public event but on the 28th November in central London I am facilitating a Future Café at the Visual Collab 2018 event that will look at the future of Interactive Flat Panel Displays as visual collaboration tools and their Collapse
Blog Post: Would you like to learn how to design and run a Knowledge Café?
25/09/2018 - By David GurteenWould you like to learn how to design and run a Knowledge Café and how they Expand
25/09/2018 - By David GurteenWould you like to learn how to design and run a Knowledge Café and how they can be applied?
I'll be giving a Knowledge Café masterclass at CILIP in central London on Thursday 1st November 2018.
The thing to note about my Knowledge Cafés is that they are more than just about sharing knowledge and building relationships.
They can be applied in a wide variety of ways and at their best are a powerful sense-making tool.
Here are some real-life stories to help you better understand the versatility and the power of the Café.
Take a look, I think you might be surprised.
You can find more information and can register here. Collapse
Context in narrative work
24/09/2018 - One quote from my contribution to the ‘StoryTheFuture’ event was picked up in social media.… Expand
24/09/2018 - One quote from my contribution to the ‘StoryTheFuture’ event was picked up in social media.…
The post Context in narrative work appeared first on Cognitive Edge. Collapse
The liminal nature of narrative
23/09/2018 - I’ve been delayed in getting this second post in the series of the role and…
The post The Expand
23/09/2018 - I’ve been delayed in getting this second post in the series of the role and…
The post The liminal nature of narrative appeared first on Cognitive Edge. Collapse
Why knowledge re-use is such a barrier in KM
21/09/2018 - Unless knowledge is re-used, KM adds no value. Why is this final step so hard, and what can we do Expand
21/09/2018 - Unless knowledge is re-used, KM adds no value. Why is this final step so hard, and what can we do about it?Roger by ZapTheDingbat, on FlickrI was having a great conversation with a Knowledge Manager recently, who was grappling with the final, and most difficult, step in the Knowledge Transfer process, the step of knowledge re-use (what Nonaka and Takeuchi call the Internalisation step).She had a great system of collecting knowledge, and a great system for synthesising knowledge, and when she showed the knowledge to the users they said "Wow, great, that's very useful", but when she asked them later whether they had actually used the knowledge, they said No.We had a look at the reasons behind this. There were several blockers -The knowledge was not to hand when they needed it - they needed to go look for itThey had no time to go looking for the knowledgeThey may not trust the provenance of the knowledgeThe knowledge did not solve an immediate pain, but was more of a long term Collapse
What Makes a Compelling Story? Here are 6 Key Elements
19/09/2018 - I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what makes a compelling story and I’ve come up with a Expand
19/09/2018 - I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what makes a compelling story and I’ve come up with a shortlist. Safe to say, if you’ve found a story which has all, or most, of the following characteristics, it’s a great one to add to your story bank. 1. Something Unanticipated When I first started thinking about […]
The post What Makes a Compelling Story? Here are 6 Key Elements appeared first on Anecdote. Collapse
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Why so much knowledge sharing, so little knowledge seeking?
2 DAYS AGO - Knowledge Management requires knowledge seeking and knowledge sharing. But why so much focus in Expand
2 DAYS AGO - Knowledge Management requires knowledge seeking and knowledge sharing. But why so much focus in internal processes on sharing and so little on seeking?Learning Happens by shareski, on FlickrOne of the standard models for Knowledge Management in project environments is the idea of "Learning Before, During and After". Ideally these three activities should be embedded in project process, so that a projectStarts by reviewing and accessing all the knowledge it needs,Learns as it goes, improving its processes during the course of the project, andIdentifies, analyses, documents and shares the new knowledge it has gained, for the sake of future projects. For the project itself, the most powerful of the three is "Learning Before". If a project can maximise it's knowledge up front, especially if the team can discover the things it doesn't know that it doesn't know, then success is much more likely. "Learning Before" activities such as Knowledge gap Analysis, KM planning or Peer Assist can Collapse
Socrates on Explicit Knowledge
5 DAYS AGO - Here's a reprise from the archives - Socrates on the limitations of the written word.Socrates, as Expand
5 DAYS AGO - Here's a reprise from the archives - Socrates on the limitations of the written word.Socrates, as reported by Plato in The Phaedrus, was not a fan of explicit knowledge. Explicit knowledge, in those days, meant Writing, and Socrates never wrote anything down - he had a scribe (Plato) to do that for him. He mistrusted writing - he felt it made people stupid and lazy by giving them the impression that they were recording (and reading) real knowledge.Here's Socrates"He would be a very simple person...who should leave in writing or receive in writing any art under the idea that the written word would be intelligible or certain; or who deemed that writing was at all better than knowledge and recollection of the same matters..... Writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence.... You would imagine that they had intelligence, but if you want to know anything and put a Collapse
Design, value & constraint
27/09/2018 - The pictures here are from the first ever Cynefin Retreat in Snowdonia last year; our…
The Expand
27/09/2018 - The pictures here are from the first ever Cynefin Retreat in Snowdonia last year; our…
The post Design, value & constraint appeared first on Cognitive Edge. Collapse
Narratives of & by the Leader
25/09/2018 - I left the question of the role of the leader in story telling open in…
The post Narratives Expand
25/09/2018 - I left the question of the role of the leader in story telling open in…
The post Narratives of & by the Leader appeared first on Cognitive Edge. Collapse
How the perception of KM barriers changes as KM develops
25/09/2018 - As our KM programs develop, our perception of the main barriers and enablers changeOur Expand
25/09/2018 - As our KM programs develop, our perception of the main barriers and enablers changeOur Knowledge management surveys in 2014 and 2017, responded to by over 700 knowledge managers world wide, addressed (among many other things) the issues of barriers and enablers to KM programs. You can see the results in an earlier blog post "KM's biggest barriers and enablers - new evidence".Recently I experimented with crossplotting these barriers and enablers against the length of time the respondent's organisation had been doing KM, to see if the perception of these barriers and enablers change over time. Results are shown below.These graphs show the percentage of respondents, for each length of time doing KM (half a year, 1 year, 2,4,8 and 16 years) choose each of the barriers and enablers as "the most important".Some of the key results are as follows:"Senior management support" grows as a perceived barrier as time goes by"Senior management support" decreases as a perceived enabler as time Collapse
Is knowledge management part of the 4th wave of technological revolution?
24/09/2018 - According to a recent blog post, KM is the human-centric response to the 4th technological Expand
24/09/2018 - According to a recent blog post, KM is the human-centric response to the 4th technological revolution.Breaking Waves by Bernd Thaller on FlickrThe blog post, entitled What explains the evolution of management models over the past two centuries? is from the Business Review of the London School of Economics, and is written by Latko Bodrožić and Paul S. Adler Bodrožić and Adler suggest that new management models emerge in response to the organizational challenges created by technological revolutions, and that KM is associated with the fourth and most recent. They also suggest that each revolution is accompanied first by a new organisational paradigm or management model, and then by what they describe as "a secondary cycle which generated another model that consolidated the new paradigm by mitigating the dysfunctions of the primary cycle’s model".The revolutions, models and second cycles are listed in the table below.Technological revolutionNew management model Second cycle Collapse
Blog Post: Updates to my blook on Conversational Leadership September 2018
22/09/2018 - By David GurteenI have made a number modifications and additions to my blook over the last month. Expand
22/09/2018 - By David GurteenI have made a number modifications and additions to my blook over the last month.
One key new feature is the ability to see the most frequently visited pages.
The three most popular pages of my blook over the last 30 days were:
Shared meaning
The Enlightenment Coffeehouses
Benjamin Franklin's Junto Club
It's not so much that these pages are the more interesting but that Google gives them a high ranking.
These two new Sales Café stories may also be of interest:
IBM SE Asia Sales Cafés
Groucho Club Sales Café Collapse
How to identify your critical knowledge - look for the areas with greatest room for improvement
20/09/2018 - KM should prioritise critical knowledge, but how do you tell what knowledge is critical?Any Expand
20/09/2018 - KM should prioritise critical knowledge, but how do you tell what knowledge is critical?Any Knowledge Management strategy, system or approach should be based around, and focused on, the knowledge which is critical to an organisation.At one level, we need to focus on critical knowledge when piloting and implementing Knowledge Management, so that we address the knowledge of greatest value first.At a second level, we need to think about the type of knowledge which is most critical, when it comes to developing our communities of practice, and the structures and taxonomies that underlie our knowledge management framework. Let me give you an example.In the British Army, the primary structure of their lessons management system is a Practice based structure. They have broken down all the Army activities into a process map, and used this breakdown or processes and practices as the structure of their lessons system. This is because they want to use knowledge and learning to improve their Collapse
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