The term knowledge management is an oxymoron. Acquiring information by orders is futile at best. This article touches not-so-ideal approaches to manage organizational knowledge.
“Knowledge Management” is one of the most misused or abused business terms in the recent decades. In this brief and casual article I will try to clarify the confusion – offering my perspective.
KM is an oxymoron
My first problem is with the term itself. I don’t view knowledge as something to be managed. Defining knowledge has been a philosophical problem since Plato. However no serious attempt claims that it is a manageable commodity nor process, as it heavily involves human minds, rather than forms or databases. I prefer the term “organizational knowledge strategies”. It describes efforts to facilitate and support knowledge flow in an organization, which is the real function that is meant.
Reductionism is dangerous
Defining knowledge as a transferable, predictable thus manageable commodity is not only wrong but also dangerous as it undermines the minds and structures that constitute and maintain the organizational knowledge. In practice knowledge initiatives are reduced to forms, database, and content management, or even worse: an IT function. This reduction often results in disappointments that organizations experience over and over with KM initiatives and filling of junk yards with obsolete enterprise applications.
Knowledge cannot be processed
Reading job descriptions or project documents related to knowledge management reveals a myriad of misconceptions about the subject. One of those misconceptions is confusing knowledge initiatives with BPE/BPM (business process engineering/business process management). Those can be vastly useful approaches where they can be implemented – within predictable domains. A business process is a flow of pre-defined tasks and procedures that aim to achieve a result. Knowledge on the other hand is not predictable. Although there is room for business processes within knowledge strategies that is not the main characteristic.
It is about decision making
The goal of organizational knowledge strategy (or management if you prefer) is improving decision making capabilities at every level in an organization. Period. We need knowledge to make decisions. We acquire knowledge from experiences (by making decisions) either by us or others. And no, the goal is not to collect forms or documents in databases (that is a byproduct). Knowledge is only actualized when put into action by making decisions.
It is about increasing odds
The goal of “improving decision making capabilities at every level in an organization” does not have a final destination. It is always a moving target. Your strategy is about increasing the odds of learning from experiences, creating knowledge, sharing behavior, distributing, accessing, discovering, and using it wherever needed. It is not about processing, enforcing, or policing. Think about selling your product to consumers. Whatever strategy you implement, you don’t make them buy your product, you just try to increase your odds, the probability of them making the decision to buy your product. Same here: increasing the probability of effective knowledge flow within the organization to wherever and whenever it is needed by an individual.
Organizational Knowledge Strategy tries to facilitate this (not control or order). Like for a chemical reaction to happen, you put molecules in a contained area and stir, shake, or heat it, or occasionally put a catalyst in it to improve the probability of the reaction to happen. You cannot ask the molecules to do it.
It is complex and messy
Knowledge actions (creation, sharing, and flow) are non-deterministic, it involves multiple agents – including human beings. Knowledge strategy is a multidisciplinary effort (and yes, it also involves technology). It works in a complex domain where things are messier, rather than ordered. Frequently, for example true knowledge transfer happens only after developing some kind of rapport – that is why we still have meetings, or conferences. Therefore the strategies and tactics involve creating attractors (experimental elements to encourage certain behaviors) rather than procedures and processes. For example, you gather people for a conference and provide various settings for interaction rather than asking them to fill a form about what they know. You create a number of attractors and keep and amplify the ones that work and remove the ones that don’t.
Transforming the organization
Knowledge flow in a natural structure evolves as the structure evolves naturally. The catalytic effect of the technology (computers, internet, telecommunications, and travel) speeds up and amplifies all aspects of communication flow, including and may be favoring the noise. In an artificial structure like a company, actively enable and facilitate the flow should be part of the organizational development strategy. This is not suggesting a top-down control/interventions but rather intentional/strategic introduction of multiple agents that would enable or facilitate knowledge flow. The transformation into a knowledge aware organization is actually a cultural transformation that emerges with the constant interaction of agents (individuals, groups, policies, tools…) amplifying positive behavior, rather than one controlling the others.