The problem with knowledge management is knowing what to manage: people
are strongly motivated to defend what they consider their own. They will
not share their knowledge when they suspect or feel they'll be managed,
monitored, controlled or otherwise don't gain by the use of their
knowledge AND at the same time use defensive routines to trick management
into believing they will, they do cooperate and share knowledge.
One of the tricks is to cooperate in so called knowledge management
projects, gaining a political advantage over others, by being highly
visible to top management; another one is to shift the problems, the blame
to another group, department or person. The latter is often the IT
department who is unable to supply the requested knowledge base in time,
to create the intranet or runs over budget in defining the requirements
for this knowledge management decsion support center.
By the way, the word management is derived from the latin word for hands
(manus). Also, management used to call their workers "hands".
> The problem with knowledge management is that you never know in advance
> which information and knowledge wil perish, because the world is moving so
> fast. And what counts for knowledge also counts for information. certain
> information must remain, for instance the information on the successes of
> the organization, just for culture sake.
A few days ago I facilitated a meeting about Knowlegde Management. The
main undercurrent of the discussion (no dialogue there) was to control
behaviour (yes!) and the lack of commitment by others of sharing their
knowledge.
Kind regards,
Jan Lelie
-- Drs J.C. Lelie CPIM (Jan) mailto:janlelie@wxs.nl LOGISENS - Sparring Partner in Logistical Development - Mind@Work - est. 1998 - Ontwikkelingen voor beter teamwerk - http://www.mindatwork.nl + (31)70 3243475 Fax: idem - GSM: + (31)654685114Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>