Will Knowledge Management Disappear?

Below is a summary of the virtues and gaps in KM based on my blog posts from October 2008 to May 2009. Note the embedded links that show up as colored text below. To read the blog posts referred to, press “Ctrl” while you click on the link to reach that post in a new tab.

Virtues of KM and OL (organizational learning):

• In the global knowledge economy, value is being created more by intangible assets, which include knowledge assets, than by tangible assets. KM can help managers address value creation more effectively and comprehensively.
• A value added from KM is an integrative framework that cuts across HRD, IT, QM, etc. — management tools that look at “slices” of organizational reality.
• Examining the validity of our often unstated or unconscious assumptions and beliefs that affect our decisions and actions is a valuable process in OL. This is true whether applied at the individual, corporate or international level.
• Innovative OL tools developed by Senge and his colleagues are in the area of innovation itself: sensing the emergent, and actively participating in bringing the emergent future into present reality.

Gaps in KM and OL practice:

• The use of the common word “knowledge” predisposes to much confusion and misunderstanding because among KM practitioners “knowledge” has a specific meaning different from the common meanings of the word.
• KM focuses on cognitive factors, and tends to ignore affective, including motivational factors that also determine performance.
• KM does not address the more important and prior question of “for whom?” and “what for?” KM to support creation of market value could lead to different management decisions from KM to support creation of social value. KM for the development sector is complicated by the different interests and goals of the many actors involved.
• Some KM practitioners fail to align KM to organizational goals. They use supply-driven KM instead of demand-driven KM, or knowledge-push instead of knowledge-pull approaches. Good KM that starts with what internal and/or external customers want is not always practiced.
• Corporate KM can unwittingly support sub-optimization, or corporate value creation that entails social costs outside the corporation.
• Double-loop learning is well-known as a concept but its practice seems rare. Double-loop learning looking at internal root-causes of a problem is an even rarer practice. OL has tools to bring out people’s unconscious/semiconscious limiting assumptions, yet it seems the practice of those tools is also rare.
• The plethora of KM frameworks is confusing. Examples are the knowledge cycle and maturity models where explicit alignment with organizational objectives is missing. We need a KM framework generic enough that it can be applied at the organizational, community, national and planetary levels.
• The intellectual capital framework is excellent for pointing managers’ attention to intangible assets. However, there are many other forms of assets or factors that contribute to value creation than the three categories of intellectual capital.
• Some qualities of human capital (e.g. corruption) and of social capital (e.g. factionalism, conflict, ill reputation) result to value destruction.
• Knowledge is not the only ingredient for effective action and value creation. Intent is the second ingredient that KM practitioners must also recognize and manage. This is the reason why KM practitioners discover that (a) motivating knowledge workers often should accompany KM, and (b) power relations affect KM outcomes.
• Managing knowledge that is already there is not as important as creating new knowledge; personal and organization tools for accelerating innovation are important.

What we need next, a new KM or the next discipline after KM:

• KM is about improving how team members work together. We need smarter ways of sensing and understanding each other’s meanings and values in order to better work together or at least to avoid wasteful conflicts.
• If KM is about seeking “what works better”, then we need a kind of KM that looks into how we structure our institutionalized goals. For example, a “triple bottom line” works better for the greater majority of the population than a purely financial bottom line.
• Mankind’s unlearning cycles take years, decades and even centuries. We need new and better tools for voluntary and conscious paradigm shifting.
• Learning in a group context is potentially superior to individual isolated learning. We need more and better tools for group learning particularly in groups that consist of people with diverse interests or conflicting values.
• For the sake of individual and world peace, we need new and better tools to enhance bridging social capital: generative dialogue, dialogue of civilizations, bridging leadership, etc.
• Since KM is for effective action, we need a deeper KM that can extend the limits of human performance, such as by extending the ability of a person to control his own inner states.
• We need a new and better OL which can extend our individual capacities to learn from daily life. We need a “finer-toothed comb” for maximizing our individual processes of learning, for understanding the broad scope of learning and for improving our operational knowledge of group memory and intra-organizational knowledge flows.
• We need to understand the deeper nature of human creativity and innovation, and apply that in solving many serious problems in our planet.
• Because power affects KM outcomes, we need a new analytics of power in relation to value creation and value destruction. Social innovations can be better understood in terms of a scale of value creation/destruction.
• Innovations most crucial for solving serious world problems lie along tacit-group processes, which I labelled “indigo practices.” We need a new science and technology for innovating indigo practices. New paradigm shifts are required for this to happen, including at the very foundations of current scientific practice and current left-brain dominant educational systems.
• The term “knowledge management” may not last long but I believe the underlying need to create and manage intangible assets in the new global economy would stay much longer (74% of Gross World Product is created by intangible assets).

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Comments/responses through “Knowledge Management Experts” group in Linkedin:

Dear Mr Serafin

That´s a very interesting and strong material about KM. I will use this material to promote discussions in my blog in portuguese.

I would like to show you a framework in what I try better define the role of KM:

http://kmgoldman.blogspot.com/2009/06/goldmans-model-dynamics-of-relationship.html

I suppose this framework is in line with most of yours ideas, but it points out the recursive character between a efective KM and strategic organizational goals, defined by knowlodge processes.

Best regards

Fernando Goldman
Engineer at FURNAS CENTRAIS ELÉTRICAS SA
June 6, 2009

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Serafin,

Good stuff!

I’d like to comment or clarify two of your statements, “KM focuses on cognitive factors, and tends to ignore affective, including motivational factors that also determine performance.” In my experience, effective KM includes a heavy dose of change management (often overlooked), what it means to be moving into the Knowledge Age and should include above.

Also, “Managing knowledge that is already there is not as important as creating new knowledge; personal and organization tools for accelerating innovation are important.” I agree, ultimately. However, in the short term, especially for startup KM initiatives, leveraging what you already know (best practices, etc.) may be more productive.

As to need for New KM, I think effective KM already includes the things you deem essential, with which I generally agree. It matters less what we call it than doing it effectively, but to waste energy arguing over what to call it vs improving how we do it, would be counterproductive in my opinion.

Douglas Weidner
Chair, http://www.kminstitute.org
June 6, 2009

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Hello Douglas, it has been quite a while since our coffee meeting in Manila last May 2007!

Yes to all the points your raised. We also found from experience that change management (whether explicit or not) must also be present in most of our KM practice. We described this in our CCLFI website ( http://www.cclfi.org/change_management).

I will give you a call in my next visit to my son/grandsons in Boston.

Apin

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Ola Fernando!

Your KM framework is very similar to mine. I am writing you a separate email on this.

Serafin
(“Apin” is the Tagalog nickname for my Spanish name)
June 6, 2009

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Dear Serafin

Of course, the other 25 bullet points that you pointed out are very important. But perhaps the key point to better understand the meaning that we must give to the term “Knowledge Management” is the last one: The term “knowledge management” may not last long but I believe the underlying need to create and manage intangible assets in the new global economy would stay much longer (74% of Gross World Product is created of Gross World Product is created by intangible assets). Note that I don´t say “the meaning that we give”, but “the meaning that we must give.” I have won most of the difficulties of the executives with KM, not using the term Knowledge Management, but using Organizational Knowledge Management. Let’s differentiate KM from OKM.

OKM operates through its concepts and practices of support on the ways as organizations create new knowledge, enabling new products, new methods and new organizational forms. OKM, acting on the processes of organizational knowledge, is presenting as pioneer of innovations, both technological as well as of organizational change, especially radical innovations.

Knowledge is defined as “what we know and enables effective action.” So it is an individual capability involving knowing and abilities. It is a human construction, personnel, intangible and biography determined, must always be distinguished from information, however sophisticated it is.

One of the key issues in contemporary research on strategic management is how firms create and sustain competitive advantage. Barney, for example, defines the resources as all assets, capabilities, skills, processes, attributes, information, knowledge and so on, which are controlled by a company and enabling it to design and implement strategies to improve their efficiency and effectiveness.

But the Organizational Knowledge (OK), created based on knowledge of all the organization, should be a whole greater than the sum of its parts does not meet the simple sum of individual knowledge. It should be understood as a resource, one intangible asset, which is characterized as able to create competitive advantage if, and only if, the company’s policies and procedures must be really organized to support the exploitation of this valuable , rare and costly to imitate resource.

So, my proposal is to use the term KM – Knowledge Management as a simplified form of “Organizational Knowledge” Management.

Best Regards

Fernando Goldman
Engineer at FURNAS CENTRAIS ELÉTRICAS SA
June 7, 2009

Copies to :

1. – www.kmgoldman.blogspot.com

2. – http://apintalisayon.wordpress.com/will-knowledge-management-disappear/

3. – http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers=&gid=47726&discussionID=3998012&goback=%2Eanh_47726

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Fernando,

KM has always meant organizational KM.

Personal KM (PKM) is the alternative, which itself is a discipline within KM, at least in my opinion.

Douglas Weidner
http://www.KM Institute.org
June 7, 2009

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Dear Douglas

As we agree that KM has always meant organizational KM, we (I and you) may use the term KM without problems. I am not sure that others people have the same confort.

But if Personal KM (PKM) is a discipline within KM, I am not sure.

What exactly do you mean with Personal KM ? which are the limits? PKM is a organizational process? if yes, what do you do in Personal KM that is different of Information Management and Corporate Education? Is PKM able to deal with tacit knowledge ?

These are some of my doubts.

Best Regards

Fernando Goldman
Engineer at FURNAS CENTRAIS ELÉTRICAS SA
June 7, 2009

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To me PKM is about sensemaking. How do I organise myself, find stuff, connect to stuff, put it in my context and act on it. Aggregated PKM (where each person on his own does PKM) does not amount to as much as social PKM. If we all make sense of the workplace is a network we are perpetually learning and exchanging knowledge

http://libraryclips.blogsome.com/2009/05/18/sensemaking-pkm-and-networks/

John Tropea
Communities of Practice Coordinator
Hatch, Perth area, Australia
June 7, 2009

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I like Fernando’s term “organizational KM” because it describes better what many KM practitioners actually do.

Besides personal KM, there is a big and growing community and discourse on “KM for development” or “knowledge-based development” (see http://www.km4dev.org/ ). This area of KM is more challenging because KM practitioners here are dealing with multiple actors with different interests, at different levels of power and complex or ill-understood cultural-social contexts.

But what is the difference betwee OKM and “organizational learning”? Which focus (on learning or on KM) do you think is better?

Apin Talisayon
June 7, 2009

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Dear Serafin

If you look at my model,
http://kmgoldman.blogspot.com/2009/06/goldmans-model-dynamics-of-relationship.html,
you will see that it is exactly about The Dynamics of the Relationship between Knowledge Management and Organizational Learning. Unlike other authors, for me KM is the most important part of the Learning Organization. Without a good KM, consciously or not, there is no Organizational Learning, understood as the firm’s adaptation to changes in its business environment.

I liked very much your comments on KM for Development and Public Policies. I hope to return to this point later.

Best Regards

Fernando Goldman
Engineer at FURNAS CENTRAIS ELÉTRICAS SA
June 8, 2009

Copies to:

1. – www.kmgoldman.blogspot.com

2. – http://apintalisayon.wordpress.com/will-knowledge-management-disappear/

3. – http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers=&gid=47726&discussionID=3998012&goback=%2Eanh_47726

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The interesting series of comments above and in my blog on “Will KM disappear?” led me to find out how we can be more precise in our communication, and so I posted a blog entitled “Can we manage knowledge? (a practice in listening).”

Please go to: http://apintalisayon.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/can-we-manage-knowledge-a-practice-in-listening/

Apin Talisayon
June 9, 2009

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This has been one of the most informative discussions we’ve had. Knowledge Management is still a confusing concept for many people. The lexicon has not standardized, and many of the people teaching, speaking and writing about KM use the phrase differently. Our organization is trying very hard to deal with these inconsistencies in ways which have meaning and utility for our leaders and workforce. While there is room enough for knowledge studies programs, we’ve found that for KM to work at the organizational level the concepts, definitions and practices must be concrete, practical, and applicable to daily business. Any management theory, if it is to work, must become a discipline with a clear Body of Knowledge, a standard lexicon which recognizes the importance of common usage, and a defined set of generally accepted principles and recommended practices.

Charles Robinson
Chief Knowledge Officer
USJFC
June 9, 2009

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