The Obama Affect – Knowledge Sharing and Reuse

An important aspect of any knowledge management strategy is to establish an environment of continuous sharing, collaboration and knowledge reuse. During the democratic primary and the presidential campaign the Obama team leveraged email list gathered partly through their internet site and their push for campaign donations through the mail, including list harvested during Obama’s run for the United States Senate. The emails were leveraged (and are still being leveraged) to push out information and knowledge to supporters, solicit donations and to solicit additional email list of people that want to get involved, partly enticed by the possiblility of winning certain promotional items identified by the Obama email (see example - http://www.pic2009.org/page/invite/tickettohistory).

The Obama team would utilized these email list, determine where in the country these supporters live and dispatch teams to these locations to mobilize these and other supporters to get out the vote for Barack. This process was repeated (reused) all over the country. This created a “grass roots” effort to gain support and votes for Barack Obama. The emails served as a vehicle to build organic Communities of Practice (CoP) for Obama, to disseminate knowledge and build support for the Obama campaign and subsequent presidency. This strategy empowered supporters to hold their own functions (lunches, dinner parties, other special events) to showcase Barak Obama’s message and to talk about the issues.

Through targeted email marketing, development of communities as vehicles to share knowledge, and creating and executing a repeatable process, established a foundation to a knowledge management strategy that was able to expand. I will post more about this iterative expansion of the Obama Knowledge Management Strategy as we continue this dialog. I look forward to all thoughts and comments.

Happy New Year!

The Obama Affect

Happy Holidays to All!

During the next several post I would like to examine the affect the Obama presidential campaign, cabinet selections and governing strategy is being shaped by the principles, practices, and technology of Knowledge Management (KM). I am referring to this as "The Obama Affect". This is the first time in the history of American politics that someone has leverage KM in a political campaign and has ultimately changed how politicians will be elected. KM has many facets. Among its many facets KM includes knowledge acquisition, collaboration, knowledge transfer/sharing, and the technology and strategy to effectively leverage knowledge to shape decisions.

The Obama Team has instituted a push strategy executing a knowledge sharing policy that includes disseminating information about the the campaign, transition team, cabinet selections and future policies via , email, mobile devises, and Internet. As the Obama Team continues to add cabinet positions and shape their policy decisions the following links provide some insight into their strategy:

http://change.gov/

http://www.barackobama.com/index.php

http://www.ontheissues.org/Barack_Obama.htm

A good KM strategy Includes:

KM Vision
Valuation of Knowledge Assets (People, Process and Technology)
Conducting Knowledge Audit
KM Strategy Details
· Knowledge Acquisition Planning
· Knowledge Transfer Planning
· Knowledge Sharing/Collaboration Planning
· Knowledge Management System Planning

We will examine each aspect of the Obama KM Strategy and I welcome your comments and suggestions.