1.

Learning from the edge 30 Jun 2011
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.
Relevance:

2.

Stuff management 30 Jun 2011
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.
Relevance:

3.

Metaphorically speaking 1 Jun 2011
Knowledge is like electricity: provide a conductive environment and it can enlighten. However, also like electricity, knowledge flows can be dangerous or easily disrupted through insular agents.
The greatest conductor of knowledge flows is face-to-face conversation between people in an environment of mutual trust. Although there are many media through which knowledge can adequately flow, they are just useful sideshows in comparison to the power of a trusted professional (or personal) network.
Relevance:

4.

Slimming down 10 May 2011
The new reality for all organisations, whether public or private, is that all business processes need to be optimised.
With the world economy contracting by three per cent in the next 18 months every organisation must manage information as an asset throughout its operations, developing leaner information processes to deliver better intelligence. This will underpin the retention of competitive advantage during tough times.
Relevance:

5.

Knowledge works 10 May 2011
Reflecting these times of austerity, the overarching theme of the conference was on improving results and inspiring thought about how knowledge works. In a departure from the conference format of previous years, the programme enabled speakers to apply a broad knowledge lens to the gamut of business activities, which covered strategy and leadership, HR, IT, creativity and physical assets such as buildings and workspaces. The need for entities to grow and innovate, while operating leanly and efficiently, was acknowledged.
Relevance:

6.

Four four two 1 Mar 2011
New Year, new challenges. But the more things change the more they stay the same. I was skimming through a KM report which brought it home. It concluded that after all these years, while the technology has matured, the biggest barriers to effective implementation remain cultural – such as organisational politics and the need to change working practices.
Relevance:

7.

Eight questions: Part II 1 Mar 2011
What we have seen is the mainstreaming of social media tools supporting KM. There’s a higher level of acceptability and acceptance and a growing expectation amongst employees, who want to see some of those features available within their organisations as well as operating outside the boundaries. I’m seeing organisations rehabilitating their strategies in order to formally embrace social media and Web 2.0.
Relevance:

8.

Flirting with disaster 1 Mar 2011
Would you consider Apple CEO Steve Jobs a failure? Maybe the biggest in the world? Probably not. But he is almost certainly someone who has failed. And because he has been prepared to fail and, more importantly, to learn lessons and understand intelligence provided from these failures, he is now one of the leading thought leaders in the world of business and leisure technology.
Relevance:

9.

Knowledge gaming: Part II 4 Feb 2011
Currency has two basic functions: as a medium of exchange, and as a store of value. There are two types of currency: public currencies regulated and backed by governments, and private currencies used for group peer-to-peer exchange and valuation. This article asks whether in times when public currency is very scarce, private currencies can be deployed to motivate productivity and increase economic value. And whether serious games can be used to make the process fun, as well as rewarding.
Relevance:

10.

Intelligent organisations: Inflection point 25 Jan 2011
There is a spectre haunting every major organisation. With every new e-mail saved and every new duplicated business record, the organisational knowledge system nears a point of fundamental change. The next year will see the next step towards a major information overload crisis for a number of ill-prepared organisations. Some will respond to the challenge; others will be taken down by it. This point could be a revelation or a collapse – this is the inflection point.
Relevance: