KM Blog in Review 2011

It has been an interesting year for me as a knowledge management consultant and educator, I had the pleasure of working with a leading on-line financial brokerage company, teaching knowledge management at the Knowledge Systems Institute, in particularly knowledge management within healthcare, developing KM processes and tools for my latest venture Tacitware as well as presenting at the KM World Taxonomy Boot Camp.

Along the way I presented several topics in this blog for discussion and comment. I would like to thank all those who have made comments and have taken the time to stop by and read the postings. I sincerely hope that each posting stimulated some thought and that by reading it you were able to take something away in which you can apply to grow your own KM practice and/or enhance your understanding of KM.

The topics I presented ranged from knowledge management at your organization to details about taxonomies and search engine optimization and content management to the challenge of capturing tacit knowledge and wondering “where have my experts gone”. I also presented the seven steps of the Knowledge Acquisition Unified Framework (KAUF), which is a comprehensive and repeatable KM process for capturing knowledge. I rounded out my postings with talking about social media and its role in collaboration, KM for collaboration and innovation, KM trends for 2012 and my personal favorite “Drinking the KM Kool-Aid”.

Although I do not post as many blog entries as others, I will continue to post information that I believe will add value and stimulate conversation. I wish everyone the best year ever in 2012 and I look forward to hearing from everyone throughout the year!

What’s Hot in KM for 2012!

As we close out the year and start to look forward to the new challenges of 2012 I want to take a look at what will be Hot in Knowledge Management (KM). In other words what will be the trends in KM as we enter into and progress through the year 2012? Here are a few trends in what I believe will be relevant in KM through the next year:

-          KM in the Cloud: Leveraging and continuing to evolve cloud environments and mobile devices to capture, collaborate, and share knowledge

-         KM in HR: As the baby boomers retire and the workforce becomes more transitional human resource departments and organizations will leverage knowledge management to capture relevant worker knowledge before it leaves; understand who are the key knowledge holders and where new knowledge for innovation will come from

-          KM in Customer Relationship Management and Service: Customer facing organizations across all industries (Financial, Retail, Insurance, Healthcare, etc.) will look to knowledge management in order to get knowledge to the customer service rep or directly to the consumer in a timely (close to real-time) manner in order to make better decisions, improve the customer experience and increase revenue

If you know of other KM trends for 2012 and/or want to comment on the ones I have posted, feel free.

I look forward to hearing from you.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

Drinking the KM "Kool-Aid"

Many organizations have begun to understand the value and promise Knowledge Management (KM) can bring to their workforce. Delivering innovation through collaboration and sharing remain the cornerstones of KM. However, once your organization has established its KM Strategy, and/or rolled out it's initial KM offering (i.e., KM System, KM Process, Tools, etc.) what happens next? What happens next is the adoption process. Whether its a new process, procedure, or system; getting your workforce to leverage and use it in the course of executing activities and delivering on their task will be essential to your KM program's success. In order to achieve this there must be processes and vehicles in place to allow, encourage and reward staff members as they work within this new paradigm. It will not be easy. As with anything new it will take some time for adoption to occur. To move this along there must be KM supporters, mentors, and/or evangelist at all levels of the corporate infrastructure to encourage the workforce to "drink the KM Kool-Aid". In other words buy in and practice KM in all aspects of performing tasks and activities.
Developing an organizational culture of knowledge sharing, collaboration and lifelong learning should be the goals of any KM program. Organizations such as Fluor Corporation have been successful in infusing KM within it's culture. From human resource activities, to leveraging knowledge for strategic purposes to engaging with clients, Fluor remains an example of how KM can be leveraged effectively at an organization. Drinking the "KM Kool-Aid" is a slow and deliberate activity grounded in a basic KM process of Connect-->Collect-->Catalog-->Reuse-->Learn and Innovate. When practiced effectively this process will be a cornerstone to enabling the adoption of Knowledge Management throughout your organization. I am very interested in hearing comments on this subject as well as examples of how your organization has or suggestions or will adopt KM.