"How do knowledge workers learn? How do they decide what to learn next? What motivates them to share?" Peter Morville's Social Network Analysis. [Steven's Weblog]

More interesting material on the social dimensions of knowledge management. We're reaching a critical mass on this that could push us into some real payoff from an overhyped buzzword.

9:44:25 PM •  • comment  

K-Logs in Wolff's Clothing. Phil Wolff has pulled together a growing archive of his posts about K-Logs. I'm gonna steal ideas from his Manager's Klogging Toolkit for my book. [Doug Kaye: Blog the Organization]

8:29:48 PM •  • comment  

What's Wrong With This Picture? Would you pay nearly $1,000 per employee for a knowledge-management portal for your organization? If you did, would you be proud of it? According to a story in InternetWeek, that's what MWH Global did. And since employees "proved reluctant to use it," the company eliminated the existing email system (Notes) and replaced it with web-based email that forces employees to interact with the KM system. Does that sound right to you? [Doug Kaye: Blog the Organization]

Fundmentally, KM is an organizational issue, not a technological one. That doesn't stop vendors from pushing whatever they've got lying around as a silver bullet solution.  Knowledge and learning are social phenomena. Individuals learn and come to know stuff through their membership in groups that share common interests.  What you might be able to manage are the conditions that make learning and knowledge creation more likely. But you can't control the outcomes themselves.

This, of course, runs contrary to the naive management notion that you've got to make things happen in organizations, so we see the kinds of stupidity mentioned above.

One of the reasons that John Robb's notions of k-logs is so intriguing is that they are fundamentally a grassroots idea that syncs up naturally with the group level of learning and knowledge formation. The biggest challenge will come in convincing management to keep hands off and let k-logs take root. What's more likely, I fear, is a constant pulling up at the roots to see why nothing has bloomed yet.

8:26:52 PM •  • comment