Talking about the new style on Knowledge Management, I thought that people would be interested in reading this particular news article: Wikis, Blogs and Other Points of Failure by Joshua Greenbaum on how both wikis and weblogs may not be the best of knowledge sharing and collaborative tools in the enterprise for some of the problems he identifies as lack of subject matters checking further and validating on the sources of information. I must say that after reading the article I just couldn’t help smiling about where the controversy or that failure comes from. According to Joshua:

“[…] self-publishing — which is really what wikis and blogs are all about — is extremely hazardous to corporate health. Some of these hazards are well recognized: Employee blogs are infamous for publicizing corporate secrets and intellectual property.“

That is quite an interesting statement because I have yet to see the first enterprise weblog / wiki that falls under that category. We have certainly witnessed some of that with some personal weblogs on the Internet but how many cases out of the millions and millions of weblogs out there? Exactly ! How many business weblogs / wikis are out there without some kind of policy and guidelines put together for people so that they have got some additional help for those cases / situations where they may not be sure? I am not sure about you folks, but I do not know many companies out there that do not have those guidelines that would help people establish some kind of expectation as to what is shareable and what is not. And help facilitate the sharing of that knowledge.

I do know as well though a whole bunch of companies who do have those policies and guidelines and that are now benefiting big time from that relatively new wave of social computing by enabling their employees share what they know (And collaborate) with others in different new collaborative tool suites where they are the ones in control (Self-control) as opposed to others and therefore knowledge gets shared and reused much faster than ever before. Of course, we are going to have situations where information may not be accurate enough and so forth, but that is also happening with subject matter experts anyway, perhaps to a less degree, but it is still happening. However, thinking how different quick updates could correct that information in an almost real-time basis surely must count as an advantage and not as a disadvantage. And if not let’s have a look at how Wikipedia works. There may be inaccurate information over there but very often it is the case where those information sources would be updated within minutes and with the right information.

So why is it that everyone seems to be scared about this new wave of sharing knowledge and collaborating? Why are people so fearful that command and control attitude that has regulated the corporate culture for so many years is suddenly not there any longer and knowledge workers take a much more personal involvement and commitment to provide the information and knowledge they feel would be relevant for the business? Why would that information be inaccurate? Don’t they have some kind of responsibility and reputation to maintain in their own business environment? I mean, we all know how long, and how much effort, it takes to build up your social capital skills and your trust levels, however, it just takes a split second to destroy it for good. Thus I do not believe that knowledge workers would be making their working lives so complicated by spreading inaccurate information. Specially as part of their daily tasks for the jobs they do. Or am I missing something else in here?

On the other hand, have a look into any business that may have implemented weblogs or wikis and you will see how most of them would tell you how much more information gets shared on a daily basis because people feel that they have got a chance to let their voices be heard. They themselves would be converted into the company’s pool of subject matter experts and contribute into that collective wisdom that would help improve tremendously the quality of deliverables that every company would be aiming for.

“In the end, blogs and wikis, like e-mail, have a lot of potential for both good and bad. But we tend not to question the source, and therefore the veracity, of information“

Yes, indeed, they do have a lot of potential. There is no denying that. But let’s just not confuse that potential with the misuse of some of those collaborative tools. Because we all know that they will get misused, they all do, but in this particular case we would have the communities themselves, that would be making use of those same tools, the ones regulating the accuracy of the information based on the relationships already established through time and effort within the community and, whether we like it or not, that is perhaps a much more effective and efficient way of utilising those tools: leave it up to the people (i.e. The communities) to decide what they would want to question or not. I bet that in most cases they would be making the right choice. Like it has been happening all along thus far for all those companies that have already started using any of those technologies.

Technorati Tags: Knowledge Management, Wiki, Weblogs, Social Computing, Corporate Blogging, Enterprise Collaboration

Like every Wednesday, here I go with the weekly exercise from the LinkedIn Bloggers’ blog boost. As you may have been able to read all along since I got started with this, every week a randomly chosen weblog gets to be promoted by the entire group of LinkedIn Bloggers in order to bring some further visibility and also as a way to help further on the community building aspects of the group by learning a bit more from other community members through their own weblogs. And this week’s winner has just actually allowed me to do that. Help me get to know other community members that I never thought I would be able to. And even better when this week’s pick hasn’t got anything to do with Knowledge Management, Communities of Practice, Collaboration or Social Networking per se: i.e. the main themes from elsua. But certainly has got a lot to do with another subject that I haven’t touched based with in some time now: Work / Life Balance.

This week’s blog boost goes to Susan Reynolds‘ The Artsy Asylum. As you will be able to read Susan is an artist, a writer and a consultant and while spending some time reading off her weblog I found it quite inspiring and interesting some of the topics that she covers regarding the arts in general. You may think that her weblog may be a bit too crowded but it is certainly very easy on the eyes and quite a pleasant read. At least, that is the impression you will get after you navigate through it for some time. All those pale shades, the lovely colours put together and the like do certainly have a soothing effect. And then you bump into little gems like the video clip she has shared as part of her weblog template and created over at One True Media.

And from there onwards you realise what you will be busy with during the course of this Easter vacation. Indeed, One True Media sounds like a worth while option to give it a try and create some montages or photo books based on the different pictures that I have been sharing all along in the Photography category. So thanks to Susan and her weblog I will be able to play around with this new to me offering and see how well it would produce those montages or photo books. And in the process I will continue with my everlasting learning process of shooting some great shots from the place I live.

Thus it turns out that instead of a blog boost, which I am hoping it will happen as well anyway, I found some really nice tips from Susan that I never expected would happen this way. This certainly clearly indicates to me the real power of weblogging as a learning tool. There is always something out there that you would be able to learn and get busy with and Susan just gave me that perfect opportunity to give a try to One True Media. And, of course, don’t worry. Once I am done with it, during the course of the weekend, I will share with you folks my experiences on this wonderful and exciting, yet widely unknown to me, multimedia world. Thanks, Susan !

Technorati Tags: Artsy Asylum, One True Media, Photography, Metablogging

During the course of yesterday, and while trying to catch up with my daily RSS newsfeeds, I bumped into a weblog post from Ross Mayfield (CEO and co-founder of SocialText) that caught my attention right away and which would clearly indicate to me how we may not have learned from our past recent mistakes in the Knowledge Management world. The weblog post itself is titled Manage Knowledgement (MK) and it comes to talk about the fact that with the rise of social software, like weblogs and wikis, knowledge workers would be now more keen on sharing what they know with others ignoring completely all of the other traditional methods for knowledge sharing that may have been running for a number of years.

And while I do agree with that statement to some extent, that is actually one of the main reasons why there is such a hype going around at the moment with the so-called Web 2.0 and all of the social software available there in the context of Knowledge Management and collaboration, I also strongly believe that we should not forget how the traditional KM has been working all along. I mean, if throughout all these years there has been an extra focus on explicit knowledge exchange and we didn’t think it was the best of options available, I doubt things would improve that much if we shift that focus towards tacit knowledge alone. That would be falling under the same trap as before but with a different name.

What we need to ensure is that if we would want KM to survive in the 21st century there surely needs to be a balance, a balance between the tacit knowledge and the explicit knowledge exchange, so that we would be able to get the best out of both of them. Certainly weblogs, wikis, podcasts, social bookmarking and so forth are very good at capturing that initial tacit knowledge from knowledge workers, however, we need to also think further and ensure that same tacit knowledge is then moved into the area of explicit knowledge exchange so that it can be reused at some point in time. To me, tacit knowledge is just the first step towards achieving that best of breed Intellectual Capital (i.e. Explicit knowledge) that would be reused in whatever the circumstances to help improve whatever business.

It would be through those wikis and weblogs that, for instance, every single business should be tapping into in order to capture those bits and pieces that are ready to go and be shared with a larger audience in a much more sophisticated repository. Again, we seem to be falling into the same trap as before but in a different disguise. Once again, the focus seems to be falling under the umbrella of social tools available out there, when in reality the focus should be on the people. The ones who have got the opportunity to harvest both the tacit and explicit knowledge and collaborate with others at the same time. That is where the focus should be, folks, not on just using all these cool tools thinking that they will solve the problem. They will not. The hype will go away and we would still have got the people to handle whatever the KM strategy they may have in place.

That is why, a good balance between both tacit and explicit knowledge is no longer a nice-to-have but a must-have to survive if we would want companies to transition successfully from a labour-based model to an asset / knowledge based one. So let’s just focus on the next big challenge: how do we facilitate knowledge workers to integrate both their tacit and explicit knowledge into the best KM and collaboration tool suite out there? That is where the challenge is, folks, and although social software can certainly help out it will not be the final solution. Not now, not any time soon. Look for the balance ! That is where the key to the whole thing is!

Technorati Tags: Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledgement, Tacit Knowledge, Explicit Knowledge, Social Software, Social Computing, Intellectual Capital

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