Discover What You Know – Will Knowledge Management Ever Change That Much? Does It Really Need To?

Tags: Knowledge Management, KM, Personal Knowledge Management, PKM, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, Communities, IBM, IBM Lotus, Lotus, Nimmy, Thinking Inside The Blog, Jack Vinson, YouTube, Videos, Alan Lepofsky, Ken Porter, Intellectual Capital, KM Strategy, Explicit Knowledge, Tacit Knowledge, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, KM 2.0, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0

One of the latest Knowledge Management weblogs that I have discovered has recently become one of my daily reads, and in case you may not have it yet, when you get to add it I am sure it would become a daily read for you, too! It is actually a weblog nicely put together by Nimmy and it is called Aa..ha! [Thinking Inside The Blog]. Goodness, did I say how much I like that title, too? It reminds me of all of those different ah…ha! moments that we keep bumping into every now and then and which makes things quite interesting. Don’t they?

Like many of the different weblog posts Nimmy has been sharing already. Lots of great stuff to read over there. Go and check it out because it surely is going to keep you entertained for a while.

Take, for instance, one of the latest entries that Nimmy has been sharing and which Jack Vinson also noticed as an interesting read (Referencing stuff as well that Alan Lepofsky has been sharing over at his YouTube account). In Lotus … Located on YouTube you would actually be able to watch a video clip put together by IBM Lotus, Ken Porter, that shows how IBM has been seeing Knowledge Management for quite some time now. Yes, you may say that there are lot of buzzwords over there and everything and I would agree with that statement, but you cannot deny the fact that even though there may be plenty of buzzwords over there it still delivers a very strong and solid message of what KM should be all about all along.

If you notice it is a video clip that shows very clearly some of the stuff that I have been talking about in the past myself, where I have been mentioning how KM is no longer about sharing and reusing explicit knowledge (i.e. Intellectual Capital) but more about capturing as well tacit knowledge, i.e. the know-how, and being able to find a balance between the two so that we can all take the most out of both worlds.

Yes, I think we would all agree that is where the main challenge is nowadays and perhaps there may not be a final solution for it, but the way I see it there is something that the video tries to put together and which I would agree with: a successful KM strategy for whatever the business is something that hasn’t got to do anything with the tools nor the process, but more with the people themselves. Yes, indeed, that people thing again ! But this time around with a little twist. Not people disconnected and distributed all over the place, but more knowledge workers gathering together and building communities they could become part of and with which they would be willing to share knowledge and information with others at the same time they would manage their own knowledge while collaborating with others.

That is right, that is the challenge. That is where social computing is going to define if Knowledge Management will come back or not, or if we will be looking at something else. If you watch the video, and despite the fact that was shared several months ago, it looks like the original KM was not far off from where we may be heading nowadays. You may be wondering now, while the weekend is just around the corner, what happened in between? Where did it go wrong? Could we be making the same mistakes again? Gosh, I hope not, because otherwise I doubt there would be another chance to bring back KM from where it has been in the last few years. Something that I would not want, for sure. I guess that is some food for thought for us KMers for over there weekend. I know. Have a good one !

(And now, here is the embedded video, in case you may want to watch it right away:)