The fundamental truth of Knowledge Management
I was at a meeting last week, looking at entrepreneurship and innovation in Wales, when a manager from Welsh Government told me that he had heard that I was an expert in Knowledge Management (flattering). He then asked me what Knowledge Management was, as he had never heard of it (deflating).
I took a deep breath. Readied my standard answer. But at that moment conflicting narratives went through my head, one being, "not this question again!" I swallowed my usual response. Smiled. And instead said, "good question." This is why...
Knowledge Management, in its traditional form, is a fallacy that is now bordering on the ridiculous. Too many practitioners are stuck in a SECI/DIKW induced time warp that focuses on IT "solutions" or Lessons Learned programs/Communities of Practice (again IT based) that should have been left behind 10 years ago (this is based on evidence from the 2015 KMO report we published last week).
If you want something better that the "same old, same old" there is fundamental KM truth that you cannot escape, which is this: If you are interested in knowledge as a capability within your organisation, you have to be interested in people - people are the holders, distributors, developers and deployers of knowledge. That simple.
To not accept this is just plain silly. More than this, Knowledge capability (the ability to acquire, share, deploy and develop knowledge) is set against a context of time and place; every layer of human interaction placed between that context and reuse interferes with that capability - try the old trick of Chinese Whispers (form a circle of people, with one person whispering a story to the next person, and see how much the story changes when it arrives back with the originator - the bigger the circle, the more layered the story, the more likely it will dramatically change). This is just common sense.
So, knowledge is about people. Knowledge Capability, the ability to access the knowledge, skills and experience available to the organisation, its ability to anticipate and swarm around problems (some people call this capability, fast knowledge flows) is reliant on people. More than this, it is reliant on their core ability (competency) to acquire, share, deploy and develop knowledge - aided by a reduction in the number of layers between conversations in order to reduce noise.
So, why do so few Knowledge Management programs engage with the Human Resource function? Why do so few KM programs integrate with HR, Project Management, Operations, IT, Learning and Development etc. - KMers often complains that knowledge sits in a silo, without realising that the function itself is in a silo? HR, whether you like it or not, are there gatekeepers to the development of commonly accepted policy and practice in organisations. HR are about the management of people. It's a simple truth when you think about it. Ask yourself, who determine the availability of knowledge, as well as the speed of its flow? I'm pretty sure you'll arrive at one answer, "people."
If you are really interested in High Performance Knowledge Management you are actually talking about Knowledge Capability. If you are talking Knowledge Capability, you are actually talking about a need to work with people and the development of their competencies. If you are not able to influence, motivate, nudge, create, commonly accepted policy and practice, you are not going to create a high performance environment.
More than this, I would go as far as to say that if you are not working toward this, your KM program is in danger of being/becoming a token gesture that isn't adding the value it should.
