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Category: Knowledge Management

What makes a good Knowledge Manager?

What makes a good Knowledge Manager?

I’ve been experimenting with ChatGPT (an artificial intelligence chatbot developed by OpenAI). The following is the result of my question in the title of this post, namely “What makes a good knowledge manager?”. I thought it was a pretty good response, though I would have liked to have seen some mention of innovation. What do you think? Could this be a useful tool for KMers? A good Knowledge Management (KM) practitioner possesses a unique set of skills and qualities that…

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Personal Knowledge Management Maturity Model

Personal Knowledge Management Maturity Model

Knowledge management is often based on the notion that knowledge is socially constructed. Consequently, organisational knowledge management (OKM) programmes tend to focus on techniques and approaches such as peer assists, after-action reviews, project retrospectives, knowledge retention, communities of practice, storytelling, and innovation jams – all of which involve multiple people…But there’s a snag… Since these KM techniques first came into being, something happened: Employees got busier than ever. Organisations now do a lot more with much less – and modern…

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Tips for Building Successful Communities of Practice

Tips for Building Successful Communities of Practice

This is a refresh of an earlier blog published here in 2016 My experience of knowledge sharing in organisations stems mainly from my involvement in setting up Communities of Practice (CoPs) for UK local government. This was part of a broader Knowledge Management strategy that I was commissioned to deliver for the Improvement and Development Agency and Local Government Agency. It has since migrated to the private sector and continues to thrive as the Knowledge Hub. When I left the…

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Learning Before, During and After

Learning Before, During and After

I’ve made it a personal choice to avoid the perennial discussions and debates about defining “knowledge management”, which more often than not seem to focus on the typology and semantics rather than getting to grips with the actual practice. I like simplicity, and whatever your preference for intellectually precise definitions, it inevitably boils down to the actions that encourage and support learning, and specifically, learning before, during and after.  In his book “Knowledge Management for Teams and Projects”, Nick Milton…

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Centralised vs. Decentralised Decision Making

Centralised vs. Decentralised Decision Making

The UK Government’s failure to achieve its target of 25,000 tests per day for Covid-19 provides an excellent case study on the differences and impact of centralised vs. decentralised working and decision making. Whilst accepting there might be a problem with the sourcing of reagent chemicals for the DNA testing, according to a former director of the World Health Organisation we are not making the most of the opportunities currently available to us. Public Health England (PHE) want to control…

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What is ‘knowledge curation’ and why is it so important?

What is ‘knowledge curation’ and why is it so important?

I don’t think I need to convince anyone who regularly uses the Internet or World Wide Web that finding useful and relevant information amongst the volumes of dross we get from advertisers, marketers, brand mangers and ‘those-that-want-to-be-heard-but-have-nothing-of-value-to-say’, which unfortunately accounts for the largest proportion of content that swills around our in-boxes and search results, is becoming increasingly difficult. Information is being pumped at us almost 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This was bad enough when we were…

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Knowledge Sharing Barriers

Knowledge Sharing Barriers

Knowledge sharing is the corner-stone of many organisations’ knowledge-management (KM) strategy. Despite the growing significance of knowledge sharing’s practices for organisations’ competitiveness and market performance, several barriers make it difficult for KM to achieve the goals and deliver a positive return on investment. This list of knowledge sharing barriers provides a helpful starting point and guideline for senior managers auditing their existing practices with a view to identifying any bottle-necks and improving on the overall effectiveness of knowledge-sharing activities. The…

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The Definitive Knowledge Management Reference Guide

The Definitive Knowledge Management Reference Guide

A while back, Emil Hajric (@emilhajric) from Helpjuice sent me a reference guide he had written on KM Systems and Practices, and which he was making freely available as an E-Book from the Helpjuice website. It was a busy period in my life and I was only able to do a quick scan of the content, but enough to realise this was a significant contribution to the body of literature on the esoteric topic of “KM”. I’ve since had more…

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Intelligent Automation – the new augmented workforce

Intelligent Automation – the new augmented workforce

If you take out the mundane; if you take out the boring; and if you take out the stuff that you can automate, you’re left with the things computers can’t do: being creative, being empathetic, being entrepreneurial, being sociable, handling exceptions and making decisions. All of these make life more interesting and challenging.

12 Principles of Knowledge Management

12 Principles of Knowledge Management

I first posted this in 2015 and came across it again during some research I was doing for Warwick Business School. The provenance is consultant and keynote speaker  Verna Allee who outlines 12 principles of Knowledge Management. Two thoughts occurred to me: The principles appear to be so simple and obvious Why didn’t I think of them! I asked myself whether these statements meet the strict definition of ‘principles’, which is: “a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the…

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