|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
HUMAN LEARNING -
NATURAL DRIFT TO LOOSE COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
- DEBRIEF - Stewart disappoints me again in that he fails to provide any statistics on the trends in KM making his arguments opinion-based rather than facts-based. We assume because of his connections in mega-organisations he is basing his argument from fact but that cannot be relied on as a true depiction on the health of the KM discipline. Many consultants may presume they are above science and that their personal experience is all that matters. That is simply not good enough to encourage senior managers to initiate a mult-million dollar KM program. Is it ? Accepting that this is a respected opinion piece however his arguments must contain some merit. Isolated case studies like J.P. Morgan Chase's emphasis on people development processes are encouraging signs of respected institutions moving from rhetoric to real practices. To what extent they do this Stewart however cannot say. Again...lack of science, not necessarily the fault of Stewart. All four stand-out accomplishments he declares should be tested. The European Study 2001 can provide some basis for this testing. KM
moved beyond fad phase - YES. Communities
of Practice - Yes - present in a few. No - not very prominent.
To say that 41 % of the European companies have some CoP makeup is not at all proven. Even one of the original CoP practising companies, British Petroleum, have today still only a small percentage of their company practising proper CoP it has been admitted to me. In Australia, from various consultant and practitioner services, only a few departments in a handful of organisations have shown some collegiate-style structured learning occuring currently. So, pervasiveness, not just presence, is another test to a business practice acceptance. CoP is a high quality learning experience that needs trained facilitators to sustain the life of the CoP. It takes sold-out senior leaders who demonstrate it with their own immediate reports (see Amadeus case study in KM Tutorials> Case Studies for more). It needs astute KM champions to drive this new business practice in a company. Knowledge Sharing Cultures - NO... rarely systematically present. From the European 2001 study, the current rationale for introducing KM into a culture was mainly advanced data storage reasons... not skills and capabilities building reasons. None of the top 5 reasons for using KM show this latter emphasis. Documenting what people know has never guaranteed skill building effects with other employees. The studies that have analysed knowledge sharing amongst their employees show how little working knowledge is shared with even incentive programs in place. Empowered cultures are very different from traditional command-control cultures and researchers have concluded that there are few empowered organisations around because of this need for a major transition of thinking and practice. Systematic knowledge sharing thus still has not taken on. Some companies think that having an intranet guarantees knowledge transfer. At best it is low-level information about isolated facts and requests.. with loads of secondary if not unwanted mail. Even electronic discussion forums are only partially used by employees. This new mindset can only be realised by having leaders who champion and model it. Stewart does rightly say that some knowledge sharing characteristics are being developed, albeit by accident, even in traditional staid institutions like banks. Bank of America discovered that the real value of promoting online banking was tracking transaction patterns of their customer base whilst producing genuine feeling that the customer is in control presumably of managing their finances. They have unintentionally discovered the value of having strong 'customer capital.' Whether that has improved the bank's standing with customers Stewart does not say but Bank of America seems to be happy with it. Benchmarking and Quality some would argue is about copying and standardising. It is not about innovation to develop unique internal processes and products. So I don't agree with Stewart that these are other indicators of managers transitioning to knowledge economy thinking. With the Balanced Scorecard, it is a measurement tool but it does not detail the 'how-tos' of the 'dashboard elements.' This may encourage more emphasis on knowledge sharing processes but it may not be enough to see marked transitions to a knowledge sharing culture. Overall, Stewart's State of the KM Union address was interesting but weak on hard evidence. Dear readers - always test the claims of any journalist...including my own stated propositions and claims on this website. Large sample size studies are a safe bet. Case studies with before, during, but most importantly, after event/intervention results are also invaluable. The Research section of this website is a world-first in that it aims as much as possible to bring you scientific analysis of KM endeavours so that we can deal with facts rather than sincere opinions and progress the discipline forward. That was, by the way, one of the chief recommendations of the European 2001 study - effective education programs to promote KM's true benefits and processes. _______________________________________________________ |
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
TOP
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
