I'm taking the family to someplace warmer than Chicago for the next week. I don't expect I'll be spending much time online. See you in April.

7:53:23 PM •  • comment  

Knowledge Mgt - Some possible reasons why it fails ...

...[T]he bottom line is that while it looks like we are making great strides and that a great revolution has taken place in the workplace (because things like E-mail have started to proliferate etc) we are actually in the very early stages of the knowledge-processing revolution.  We have the Brahmans of Tech (i.e. the IT guys) and we have the Brahmans of the Profession (in my profession, that would be the lawyers).  But we don't have the Brahmans who bridge the gap between those other two groups.  It will take time for that class to emerge.   I suspect the problem, as I have just described it, is not unique to the legal profession.

[Ernie the Attorney]

An excellent mini-case of the implementation challenges for KM in a professional services environment. Ernie is spot on in his conjecture that the problems he identifies are more widely found.

Well worth the time to read the whole thing.

Training will not be terribly important to success or failure. Getting the lead professionals to be early adopters will be. You do need to make the costs of entry much lower and the payoffs from participating much higher. That's likely to be one of the reasons that simple ideas like weblogs are going to thrive as next generation KM tools; they actually provide direct benefits to those who use them.

3:18:39 PM •  • comment