Weekly Knowledge Management blog by Stan Garfield

New Directions, KM Thought Leaders, Open Source Social Software, Beyond Google, What Would Churchill Do

Stan Garfield — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 02:32:00 GMT

Weekly Knowledge Management Blog by Stan Garfield

KM Question, Thought Leader, Blog, Link, and Book of the Week

[Blogroll - KM Home Page - Send a Question - Implementing a successful KM programme]

KM Question of the Week

Q: What will you be doing next?

A: After spending the past 25 years at Digital Equipment Corporation, Compaq Computer Corporation, and the Hewlett-Packard Company, I have taken a new position as the Retail & Consumer Knowledge Domain Manager for PricewaterhouseCoopers in the U.S.

Q: What will become of your blog?

A: All previous content will be preserved on hp.com, but there will be no new posts there after this one. I will resume blogging in the near future; to find out where, check the “My Blog” link at the top of my KM site. Most of my original Line56 blog content is also accessible through the Wayback Machine.

KM Thought Leader of the Week

This series has concluded. See KM Thought Leaders for a list with links to more information.

KM Blog of the Week

From Nancy White in CPsquare

Open Source Social Software by Josie Fraser

Open Source Social Networking Platforms
Open Source Social News
Open Source Social Bookmarking
Open Source Virtual Worlds
Open Source Lifestreaming
Projects to watch/Upcoming

KM Link of the Week

From Mireille Jansma in actKM

Google searches, at the very most, 20% of the web. Here are some links in case you really want to bypass Google and start exploring the real web, not just the entry point.

KM Book of the Week

What Would Churchill Do?: Business Advice from the Man Who Saved the World by Stuart Finlay

Google Book

Table of Contents

The Unintended Consequences of Treating People Decently
Don’t Hesitate to be Pleasantly Ruthless
Stop & Smell the Roses
Your Past can be a Bridle or a Spur
The Habit of Detail
Negotiate Hard for Your Convictions
Your Own Words Can Make a Tasty Dish
Avoid Being a Slave to Technology
Stay Passionate for Things you Don’t Agree With
Demonstrate That People Matter
Keep Concentration in Compartments
Praise and Entertain
Survival of the Freshest
Success is Happily Finding Your Level
Don’t be Afraid to Coldly Comprehend
Dealing with the Stalins of This World
Entities Can’t Show Loyalty

Turning Churchill into business guru from the Swindon Advertiser

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[The contents of this KM blog are my personal comments and do not reflect the official views of Hewlett-Packard Company.]

Leadership Maxims, Avoiding a CoP Mid-Life Crisis, Library Clips, Knowledge and Learning Toolkit, Ten Commandments for Business Failure

Stan Garfield — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 13:21:00 GMT

Weekly Knowledge Management Blog by Stan Garfield

KM Question, Thought Leader, Blog, Link, and Book of the Week
[Blogroll - KM Home Page - Send a Question - Implementing a successful KM programme]

KM Question of the Week

Q: What advice do you have for leaders?

A: Here are three maxims on authentic leadership.

Maxim #1: PICKLES

Passion – have passion for your work, convey it to your people, and demonstrate it in your actions
Integrity – establish, maintain, and promote core values; be fair, honest, and responsible
Communication – regularly let stakeholders know what is going on by communicating convincingly, completely, and compellingly to inspire, align, and motivate
Knowledge – know as much as you can about your work, share your knowledge with others, and encourage them to do the same
Love – love what you do, love your organization, and show love to the people with whom you interact
Empowerment – listen to, trust, and support your people
Service – serve your people, your organization, and your community

Maxim #2: Three Rights

Do what is right – logically, financially, morally, ethically, and environmentally – with decency, integrity, and fairness
Do it the right way – honestly, accurately, correctly, and completely – with good effort, resulting in high quality, and meeting all commitments
Do it right away – don’t procrastinate, make excuses, or avoid what is unpleasant – the sooner you start, the better

Maxim #3: 3P Cube

1. Passionate	2. Persistent	3. Persuasive
1. Propose	2. Plan	3. Produce
1. Prototype	2. Pilot	3. Perfect

And from this previous blog post, here is a suggested credo to follow.

Endorse, communicate, and exemplify the following credo:

I will practice and reward caring, sharing, and daring – caring for others, sharing what I know, and daring to try new ideas.
I will insist on trust, truth, and transparency in all dealings – earning and respecting the trust of others, communicating truthfully and openly, and demonstrating and expecting accountability.
I will look for opportunities to help, thank, and praise others.
I will eliminate criticism, blame, and ridicule in all interactions with others.

KM Thought Leader of the Week

Richard McDermott is currently recovering from open-heart surgery, and I wish him all the best during his recovery. He is starting Phase 2 of a CoP study with the primary, but not exclusive, focus of health and financial services. This week I feature one of Richard’s articles - How to Avoid a Mid-Life Crisis in Your CoPs: Uncovering six keys to sustaining communities.

Summary from the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation Networks Digest

Communities of practice (CoPs) hold great promise for organizational improvement and thrive when first established; however, they can be difficult to maintain beyond mid-life due to loss of momentum, lack of attention, and a tendency to localize.

Healthy communities mature into "influence structures" or active teams of peers who demand or are asked to take on influential roles in their organizations. These teams set short- and long-term goals, establish formal roles and structures, and assume vital organizational tasks.

While some CoPs falter, others mature into dynamic entities that seem to share six characteristics:

Clear purpose - The community sets and evaluates clear short-term and long-term goals. It might establish annual goal-setting and assessment processes or simply make sure the purpose of its work is clearly articulated.
Active leadership - Community leadership is passionate and actively promotes the work of the community; one group leader spends 25% or more of her time on community leadership.
Critical mass of engaged members - CoPs thrive on the work of a committed, stable, active core group of members who view membership as a key part of their job and/or their career; core members in some communities are expected to spend 10 percent of their time on community activities.
Sense of accomplishment - CoP members have a strong sense of accomplishment knowing they are addressing vital problems that advance community goals.
High management expectations - Management's high expectations challenge the community to become involved in substantive business operations.
Real time - Involvement in the community is a real, not a subsidiary, aspect of members' work.

Mature communities are distinguished in three related ways:

They are communities of peers, not hierarchical, authority-based structures.
They focus on developing a body of knowledge that serves larger organizational goals.
Individual members' influence is legitimated only through the expertise, creativity, and knowledge he or she contributes to the community.

KM Blog of the Week

Library clips by John Tropea

KM Link of the Week

From Ray MacNeil in actKM

Toolkit for Knowledge and Learning

A previous blog post featured the PDF version of Tools for Knowledge and Learning: A Guide for Development and Humanitarian Organizations. Here is a link to the HTML version.

Strategy development - This competency relates to how an organization might start to look at its knowledge and learning in a strategic manner. The tools presented provide different frameworks which can be used to plan, monitor and evaluate knowledge and learning initiatives.

The Five Competencies Framework - The first tool in this guide explains how to apply the Five Competencies approach, and therefore serves as a starting point for readers, to help establish clear rationale and entry points for using this toolkit.
Knowledge Audit - Knowledge Audit provides a structure for gathering data, synthesizing findings and making recommendations about the best way forward for knowledge and learning initiatives against a background of the broader structural, operational and policy factors affecting an organization.
Social Network Analysis - Social Network Analysis has been called the most systematic way of analyzing relationships and knowledge flows between individuals and groups. Properly undertaken, SNA can yield invaluable data about how to tailor and focus knowledge and learning activities to organizational needs.
Most Significant Change - Most Significant Change is a narrative-based mechanism for planning programs of change. As so much of knowledge and learning is about change, and this change takes place in a variety of different domains, the MSC tool could prove invaluable.
Outcome Mapping - Outcome Mapping is a participatory planning, monitoring and evaluation methodology which focuses on the contribution of a program to changes in the actions and behaviors of the 'boundary partners'. Applied to knowledge and learning strategies, OM has a number of potential benefits.
Scenario Testing and Visioning - Both of these tools focus on the future of an organization, and enable imaginative and creative ideas to play a central role in developing and rolling out knowledge strategies.

Management techniques - If leadership is the process of working out the right things to do, then management is the process of doing things right. Here are a range of simple approaches, from assessing managerial responses to mistakes, to assessing the forces for and against stated organizational changes, which might prove useful to managers working towards the learning organization.

The SECI Approach - This approach, made popular by Japanese management specialists Nonaka and Takeuchi, is based on systematically managing the conversion of tacit to explicit knowledge, through four easy-to apply-processes based on simple principles of group dynamics.
Blame vs Gain Behaviors - Managing a learning organization requires a managerial approach to mistakes which is healthy and balanced, and which encourages staff to take certain risks and to be honest about the consequences of their actions. This simple process enables groups to reflect on their own approach to mistakes and errors, and how they might go about addressing these, through use of a series of generic 'Blame' or 'Gain' behaviors.
Force Field Analysis - Force Field Analysis enables teams to work out what their goals are, and systematically to identify the forces for and against achieving them. This is the classic change management tool developed by Kurt Lewin, pioneer of action research, and can be an empowering and energizing tool for teams.
Activity-based Knowledge Mapping - All activities require different inputs and generate outputs; increasingly, these inputs and outputs are information based. This tool, which has been drawn from the field of business process re-engineering, enables the mapping of inputs and outputs for key activities, with a view to improving their efficiency. This provides managers with an in-depth understanding of the different processes they are overseeing.
Structured Innovation - This tool works by listing the characteristics of a specific problem, and brainstorming the possible variations. Done correctly, this tool enables groups systematically to generate new ideas and assess their potential. This is useful for managers who feel the need for more creativity and
Reframing Matrix - Everyone sees problems in different ways, and one of the key problems with knowledge strategies is that knowledge is in the eye of the beholder. This tool enables different perspectives to be generated, and used in management planning processes.

Collaboration mechanisms - When working together with others, the whole of our efforts often proves to be less than the sum of the parts. Why? Frequently, there is not enough attention paid to facilitating effective collaborative practices. The tools in this section can be applied to reflect on the workings of teams, and to help strengthen relationships and develop shared thinking.

Teams: Virtual and Face-to-Face - This tool enables teams to work through five stages towards a 'shared responsibility'. Either face-to-face or virtually, teams can cross the five stages assessing where they lie in terms of different areas, including atmosphere and relations; goal acceptance; information sharing; decision making; reaction to leadership; and attention to the way the group is working.
Communities of Practice - Communities of Practice enable similarly minded interacting people to work towards generating and collaborating on knowledge and learning initiatives in a variety of ways, through a number of overlapping functions.
Action Learning Sets - Action Learning Sets are a structured method enabling small groups to address complicated issues by meeting regularly and working collectively. This tool is geared especially learning and personal development at professional and managerial levels.
Six Thinking Hats - This tool offers a way out of the habitual thinking style by enabling participants to use different approaches and perspectives to analyzing decision making. This is particularly useful in that it allows a broad and objective view of decisions, and one which covers more options and possibilities.
Mind Maps - Mind Maps are a graphic technique to enable participants to implement clearer thinking in their approach to many different tasks. It is useful both for individuals and for groups, and provides as non-linear method of organizing information.
Social Technologies - Social Technologies cover a broad swathe of tools, all using technology to build collaboration and sharing of tacit knowledge. There are many different forums for this, chiefly internet-based tools but also including telecommunications, radio and face-to-face socializing.

Knowledge sharing and learning - So much of effective knowledge and learning is about two-way communication which takes place in a simple and effective manner, and applying simple techniques to try and build on past experiences to improve activities in the future. These essential tools are covered in this section.

Stories - Storytelling is an approach which can both allow for expression of tacit knowledge and increase potential for meaningful knowledge sharing, particularly by permitting learning to take place through the presence of a narrative structure.
Peer Assists - This tool encourages participatory learning, by asking those with experience in certain activities to assist those wishing to benefit from their knowledge, through a systematic process, towards strengthened mutual learning.
Challenge Sessions - Challenge Sessions are a structure framework geared towards solving problems by allowing participants to supplement their habitual thinking with new methods, centered around working towards dealing with problems that are made up of conflicting requirements or challenges.
After Action Reviews and Retrospects - The After Action Review facilitates continuous assessment of organizational performance, looking at successes and failures, ensuring that learning takes place to support continuous improvement in organizational learning and change.
Intranet Strategies - Intranets can have a great impact on knowledge management, particularly in the fields of information collection, collaboration and communication, and task completion. Following the necessary approach, this tool can substantially increase the likelihood of an effective, useful system within an organization.
Email Guidelines - Email is one of the most commonly used communication tools in the modern business environment; there is an increased need nowadays to manage this tool to reduce the risk of overload. This tool helps to control this tool and therefore increase its effectiveness as a communication tool.

Knowledge capture and storage - Knowledge and information can leak in all sorts of ways and at all sorts of times. To make sure that essential knowledge is retained by an organization requires, a range of techniques can be applied, from traditional information management tools such as shared drives, as well as more modern techniques such as blogs and knowledge based exit interviews.

Taxonomies for Documents and Folders - This tool has been in existence for many decades in the form of classification schemes and indexing systems, and still can have a great deal to offer in terms of structuring information for easier management and retrieval.
Exit Interviews - Exit Interviews represent a specific learning process, not just a way to leave a company, and one which highlights the importance of capturing and storing know-how. This can minimize the loss of useful knowledge through staff turnover and ease the learning curve of new staff, benefiting both the organization and the leaving staff.
How To Guides - This tool enables the capture, documentation and dissemination of know-how of staff within an organization, to help them make better and wider use of existing knowledge. The ultimate goal is to capture an effective sequence or process with enough accuracy so that it can be repeated with the same good results.
Staff Profile Pages - Using this tool, an electronic directory storing information about staff in a given organization, can facilitate connections among people through systematizing organizational knowledge and learning initiatives.
Blogs - A Weblog in its various forms enable groups of people to discuss electronically areas of interest in different ways, and to review different opinions and information surrounding such subjects.
Shared Network Drives - Shared Network Drives work in most organizations to store and categorize information. If used correctly, and under systematized good practices, they can enable better retrieval of knowledge and improved information sharing across an organization.

KM Book of the Week

The Ten Commandments for Business Failure by Donald R. Keough

Don Keough - a former top executive at Coca-Cola and now chairman of the elite investment banking firm Allen & Company - has witnessed plenty of failures in his sixty-year career (including New Coke). He has also been friends with some of the most successful people in business history, including Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Jack Welch, Rupert Murdoch, and Peter Drucker.

Now this elder statesman reveals how great enterprises get into trouble. Even the smartest executives can fall into the trap of believing in their own infallibility. When that happens, more bad decisions are sure to follow.

This light-hearted “how-not-to” book includes anecdotes from Keough’s long career as well as other infamous failures. As he writes, “After a lifetime in business I’ve never been able to develop a step-by-step formula that will guarantee success. What I could do, however, was talk about how to lose. I guarantee that anyone who follows my formula will be a highly successful loser.”

Don Keough’s Ten Commandments for Business Failure

Quit Taking Risks
Be Inflexible
Isolate Yourself
Assume Infallibility
Play the Game Close to the Foul Line
Don’t Take Time to Think
Put All Your Faith in Experts and Outside Consultants
Love Your Bureaucracy
Send Mixed Messages
Be Afraid of the Future

And the Bonus Commandment:

Lose Your Passion for Work - for Life

Interviews

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Don Keough’s How-to-fail book exudes decades of success
New York Times: How to Fail in Business, a Guide to Success
Wall Street Journal: Coca-Cola Director on How to Fail in Business by Trying Really Hard

Links

-END-

[The contents of this KM blog are my personal comments and do not reflect the official views of Hewlett-Packard Company.]

Finding a KM Job, Putting Ideas to Work, GE SupportCentral, SLA Click University KM Certificates, KM Concepts-Methodologies-Tools-Applications

Stan Garfield — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 16:27:00 GMT

Weekly Knowledge Management Blog by Stan Garfield

KM Question, Thought Leader, Blog, Link, and Book of the Week
[Blogroll - KM Home Page - Send a Question - Implementing a successful KM programme]

KM Question of the Week

Q: What advice do you have for those seeking a KM job? Are there any tricks of the trade that are worth passing on?

A: Set up daily email job alerts for “knowledge management” at these sites:

Attend conferences, blog, publish in periodicals, and lead or participate in KM communities. Volunteer to speak on a community call or at a conference. Develop a good reputation as a thought leader, useful correspondent, and generous helper.

Personal connections are the key to finding a position. Do things for other people without worrying about yourself. Send email to people to share useful information, ask for advice, and connect people with similar interests with one another.

Take advantage of your social and professional networks. Cultivate friendships, offer help, and answer questions. If you wait until you need to find a job to start networking, it is too late, and your motive will be obvious. Continuously build your network in both good and bad times.

Connect in meaningful ways with members of your network. For example, invite them to speak to a meeting which you organize, quote them in your blog, or ask them questions. Reach out regularly to members of your network, including respected thought leaders who you may think are too important to care about you. Each point of contact is a reminder that you are out there, and may trigger a subsequent connection.

Don’t be afraid to let everyone you know that you are seeking a job and to ask for their help. You never know which connection will be the one that pays off. Members of communities have empathy for one another, and will go to great lengths to try to help other members in times of need.

Let the communities you belong to know that you are seeking a job, providing links to your resume, blog, and personal profile. Update your Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social software profiles to show your status as seeking a job. Share job postings with other members - by helping them, you will set an example which will encourage them to reciprocate.

KM Thought Leader of the Week

I was asked by APQC, "If you were invited to give a keynote speech on knowledge management, what words of wisdom or lessons learned would you impart?"

I posed this same question to many KM thought leaders. This week features Tom Davenport and Larry Prusak.

Putting Ideas to Work by Thomas H. Davenport, Laurence Prusak, and Bruce Strong

Knowledge management can make a difference - but it needs to be more pragmatic

Over the past 15 years or so, many large organizations have embraced the idea that they could become more productive and competitive by better managing knowledge - the ideas, insights and expertise that originate in the human mind.

In practice, however, some of them are still struggling to make it work. Their knowledge-management efforts, while useful in some ways, haven't necessarily led to better products and services, more effective employees or superior work processes.

What went wrong? Some firms stumbled by focusing their knowledge-management efforts solely on technology at the expense of everything else, while others failed to tie knowledge programs to overall business goals or the organization's other activities. A new approach is needed if knowledge management is to transition into a more pragmatic discipline, one that can be used to improve specific job functions and work processes.

Back to School

The Issue: Knowledge management, in practice, has fallen short of its goal of transforming the way companies work.
The Problem: Many firms have focused solely on disseminating knowledge via technology, ignoring the other aspects of knowledge management.
The Bottom Line: Organizations need a broader management strategy, one that addresses how they are creating, sharing and using knowledge.

The article provides a closer look at each of the three knowledge-related activities and suggestions for managing them effectively.

Knowledge Creation
Knowledge Dissemination
Knowledge Application

Additional Links

Tom’s Blog
Larry’s Blog
Babson College Blog (old)
Why is the KM Experience Different in Europe? by Larry Prusak
The Future of Knowledge - Commentary on Larry's APQC keynote by APQC's Jim Lee
Which Way Forward for KM? - Interview with Larry by KnowledgeBoard’s Louise Druce

KM Blog of the Week

From Chris Johannessen

GE’s Enterprise Collaboration Backbone by Oliver Marks

General Electric, the venerable multinational that was founded in 1878 in New Jersey, have at their core a hugely sophisticated enterprise collaboration system that is arguably the largest in the world.

A major corporate culture change sponsored by Gary M. Reiner, GE Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer, defined more collaboration and transparency as goals for the 21st century in the late ’90s. Development of SupportCentral subsequently started internally at the turn of the century in January 2000, and today the system is at the center of GE’s worldwide operations. A development team of about one hundred is located in New Haven, Mumbai and Mexico.

The numbers are huge: 400,000 global users in 6,000+ locations around world, all working within a 100% web interface available in 20 languages (your user interface language is defined by your sign in permissions). The system gets over 25 million web hits a day, greater than employee usage of Google and Yahoo combined. Users have created over 50,000 communities with over 100,000 experts signed up to answer questions and manage information; experts are GE workers with full-time jobs who use the system because it helps them do their job better.

Thousands of business processes have already been digitized in an internal world where knowledge and work processes are critical. Everything is behind the firewall except for ‘pinholes’ to external destinations which allow external vendors, suppliers and customers to collaborate on specific projects. There are 30,000 external users who come in through the firewall pinholes to participate in specific communities.

The cost savings are so many millions a year that GE, despite being a famously metrics driven company, doesn’t require an ROI justification model for SupportCentral budgeting. As CIO Gary Reiner said in a recent Fortune interview, SupportCentral “is becoming…the heartbeat of the company.”

A Humbling Experience by Chuck Hollis

GE's SupportCentral

Yes, they do the blogging, wiki, discussion thing -- that's just for starters.

We debate on ideal SM models occasionally -- people-centric, community-centric, discussion-centric, document-centric, process-centric, etc.

They had support for every one of these models -- seamlessly integrated. People can engage in any mode that makes sense to them. As one example, personal workspace content can be part of a community, discussion, process, etc.

Presence? Just part of the environment, thanks. They described themselves in a "post-email world". Nice.

Mashups? Deployed for quite a while, thanks -- all corporate repositories could easily be accessed. They'd lost count of the umpteen thousand mashups people had created.

What really blew me away was their integration of process tools. Business processes can be defined by anyone, refined by anyone, instantiated by anyone, measured by anyone. As a result, they could count 50,000 different business processes that were captured on the platform in some form or another.

When you get a glimpse of the future at work, it makes you take a moment to reflect on a few things.

First, the functionality they'd deployed was many years ahead of anything I've seen or heard about in the marketplace. More importantly, it was developed and deployed in response to documented business needs from proficient users who'd made this platform the core of their business life.

Second, they invested early and continuously. Sure, they had to fight for budget and recognition just like any other business investment, but their sustained commitment had obviously paid off in a tangible, sustainable business advantage.

Third, the rest of us are now at a substantial competitive disadvantage if we decide to compete with GE. Thankfully, they're a customer and not a competitor. Because they were so early, they probably had to invest more than those of us slowpokes who are relative noobs to all of this.

Fourth, it gave me tangible proof that social media / social productivity / social computing can work at mega-scale -- and I had a greater case that these techniques would re-make how business gets done in the future.

Fifth, if you're running one of those cool "web 2.0 in the enterprise" events, I'd make a special point of inviting Mark (or one of his team) to present. Everyone else talks big about the future -- but it appears the future has existed for quite a while at GE.

And if you're contemplating being a vendor or consultant in this space, I'd make a big effort to see what they've done, how they did it -- and, most importantly -- why they did it.

What Got Tossed Out The Door?

A whole bunch of "conventional wisdom" that I really didn't agree with anyway.

First, it clearly isn't a generational thing. If you're of this view, I now have documented proof that you're dead wrong. Score one for my generation's ability to adopt new ways of working.

Second, traditional corporate cultures can't change. If there was any corporate culture more button-downed than GE's, I'd like to see it. And it now appears to be completely transformed around social computing.

Third, the assumption that this has to be a top-down mandate. Sure, Mark and his team are pretty senior, but they had to do this the hard way -- by convincing hundreds of thousands of people that this was a better way to work.

Fourth, that business justification is impossible. GE's culture is all about hard savings, and documented value. They routinely discredit soft justification. And they have been convinced in a big way -- and for quite a while.

Fifth, that social media is incompatible with business concerns. Their environment is pretty much business-oriented. There's not a lot of "social" going on the platform -- and it works very well, thank you.

KM Link of the Week

From Mary Morgan in SIKM Leaders

SLA Click University Knowledge Management Certificates

The Knowledge Management (KM) Certificate Programs, an exclusive benefit of membership to SLA members, consists of three different levels of curriculum, enabling information professionals and other knowledge workers to choose courses based on their specific function within their organizations. In the program, SLA members can earn a certificate in knowledge management, a certificate in knowledge services, or a dual certificate combining the two.

Recognizing the critical importance of knowledge management for SLA members, SLA and SMR International have joined together in a strategic alliance to design and develop the certificate program, drawing on the two organizations’ combined research, consulting experience, and training expertise. The programs are appropriate for seasoned KM professionals as well as other interested knowledge workers not currently performing a KM function, and are open to those working towards a full KM certificate and members seeking occasional courses to enhance their professional development and expertise.

The Programs

The Certificate in Knowledge Management is designed for information professionals and other knowledge workers who are interested in transitioning into a more formal KM role in their parent organizations or who are seeking to learn more about KM in anticipation of a future need for KM expertise in their careers. In defining knowledge management, the program recognizes that there are many different definitions of this popular topic. Generally speaking, KM is thought of a management practice that is used to help enterprise leaders manage explicit, tacit, and cultural information in ways that enable the organization to reuse the information and create new knowledge.

The Certificate in Knowledge Services is designed for information professionals and other knowledge workers who are interested in bringing the benefits of well-managed information, knowledge, and strategic learning delivery into the service of the larger organization. Knowledge services is defined as the convergence of information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning. Knowledge services is putting knowledge management to work, the practical side of KM. As such, knowledge services enables the organization to function as a knowledge culture, with knowledge development and knowledge sharing (KD/KS) enabling excellence in service delivery with respect to research, contextual decision-making, and innovation in the larger enterprise.

The Dual Certificate in Knowledge Management and Knowledge Services is designed to provide information professionals and other knowledge workers with the expertise and skills they need for building an enterprise-wide knowledge culture for the organizations in which they are employed. The program combines theoretical and practical approaches to the subject, delivering an end result for the larger enterprise that serves as a framework for measurable and tangible benefits in the utilization of information, knowledge, and strategic learning in achieving the corporate or organizational mission.

While the primary goal in developing these programs is to allow SLA members to earn one or more certificates, each of the courses has inherent value and any course may be taken a la carte.

KM Book of the Week

From Paul McDowall in ikmf_figs

Knowledge Management: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications (6-volume set) edited by Murray Jennex

Knowledge management (KM) is an emerging, interdisciplinary business model dealing with all aspects of knowledge within the context of the firm, including knowledge creation, codification, and sharing, and using these activities to promote learning and innovation. It encompasses both technological tools and organizational routines of which there are a number of components. These include generating new knowledge; acquiring valuable knowledge from outside sources; using this knowledge in decision making; embedding knowledge in processes, products, and/or services; coding information into documents, databases, and software; facilitating knowledge growth; transferring knowledge to other parts of the organization; and measuring the value of knowledge assets and/or the impact of knowledge management.

Knowledge Management: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications is the defining reference source for all theories, concepts, and methodologies within the KM discipline. This comprehensive, six-volume collection of research from an international body of KM experts includes chapters on Implementing Knowledge Management (KM) in Organizations; KM Systems Acceptance; KM Communication; Knowledge Representation; Knowledge Sharing; KM Success Models; Knowledge Ontology; and Operational KM. Encompassing over 300 chapters from more than 500 contributors drawn from the world’s leading KM experts, this collection will provide libraries with the defining reference to the field and set the standard for all fundamental and emerging models within the discipline.

PDF File (3420 pages)

Section 1: Fundamental Concepts and Theories in Knowledge Management
Section 2: Knowledge Management Development and Design Methodologies
Section 3: Knowledge Management: Tools and Technologies
Section 4: Utilization and Application of Knowledge Management
Section 5: Organizational and Social Implications of Knowledge Management
Section 6: Managerial Impact of Knowledge Management
Section 7: Critical Issues in Knowledge Management
Section 8: Emerging Trends in Knowledge Management

-END-

[The contents of this KM blog are my personal comments and do not reflect the official views of Hewlett-Packard Company.]