"Everything you really need to know about KM" LO21219

arthur battram (apb@cityplex.demon.co.uk)
Wed, 07 Apr 1999 10:12:02 +0100

Replying to LO21140 --

Richard,

Thank you for sharing Bruce Silver's take on KM with us.

I have a question for you (and anyone other learning-org members who'd
like to respond), because I think there are key issues to be found
somwhere between Bruce Silver's taxonomy and the issue I'm highlighting:

> How would such systems deal with a situation like this one? A client,
>who knows me well, asks me to be involved in the development of their
>performance management system. they don't know what they want, so they
>asked me, because they always ask me when they can only point at
>something, when they don't know enough about it to formulate a question.
>I said 'but I don't know anything about PM' and they said 'we know, but
>that's not why we asked you.' at the end of the interaction I discovered
>I did know a lot about PM [as did they].

OK, Here's the issue: my current employer doesn't know what I know, and
doesn't know what I don't know, and unlike this client doesn't know how to
get use from me by helping me to help them find out what I know.

Now that's what I call a KM issue!

Why? Well, if you believe, as I do, that in many ways we're moving from
an era of mass production to mass customisation, not just in industry but
in everything [eg, travel, holidays, entertainment, housing, learning,
etc] then there will be less and less routinised 'knowledge' [that is =
information] and more and more a need for the application of 'knowledge'
that fuzzy stuff that my client knew I had...

Best Wishes
Arthur Battram

> From: "Richard S. Webster" <webster.1@osu.edu

> We have shared concerns in the recent past about LO and knowledge
> management (KM), and what some view as the commercialization of KM by
> software packages of possible detriment to development and use of LO
> values and practices.
>
> I do not share this concern. Instead I look for information (knowledge?)
> that seems useful for learning to use both LO and KM -- easier, better,
> faster, with improved facility and increased good effects.
>
> In this light I commend to you an article by Bruce Silver: "Everything you
> really need to know about KM" in "KMWorld," December, 1998, page 20.

-- 

"arthur battram" <apb@cityplex.demon.co.uk>

Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>