You can’t make people smarter against their will. Joseph Kessels
I can’t see how organizations are going to progress with knowledge management unless the individuals in those organizations learn how to unpack what they know. Jim McGee
Let’s think about ideal KM case, an organization where knowledge is created, shared, captured and used to add value to the business. In this case we would expect knowledge processes to be an integral part of business processes and communication flows. For people it will appear as natural behavior embedded into daily routines.
We are not there yet. Why? I assume that mechanical embedding of KM steps (e.g. read previous reports as part of the project procedure) doesn’t work; I believe that the whole magic is in the people. I also believe that learning, sharing and creating is something very natural for human beings, but I see that this is not happening in many companies. Some of us forgot or never experienced the fun of being a knowledge worker, fun of growing next to doing our work. Others are struggling to find a company that builds on our growth.
I’m thinking in terms of:
- What do people need to work as knowledge workers?
- What environment will support it?
- How an organization can move from now to tomorrow to make sure that employees are knowledge workers?
Naive?
Tags: KM & learning, knowledge networker, PhDArchived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2002/09/19.html#a241; comments are here.
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