Category: Knowledge Management

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LawTech Camp, KM Technology discussion

A few weeks ago, I participated in LawTech Camp in Toronto. Connie Crosby and I were launching our beta-test for our Law Firm KM assessment tool, so we had an opportunity to do a demo presentation and talk about KM, I’ve posted the slides on SlideShare, click on the <demo presentation> or <about KM> links to see the slides.

There was a lot of discussion both during and after the presentation about one of the slides, so Connie wrote a blog post about it, which you can see here: https://www.slaw.ca/2012/06/11/km-101-more-on-technology-complexity/#top.

 

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KM helps you be lazy!*

Imagine this scenario: you’re working hard on a project or task, you’ve got a deadline you’ve got to meet, but you’re stuck, you don’t know how to finish.

What do you do?

Well, if you are experienced in the ways of knowledge management you:

  • ask your colleagues,
  • ask the Community of Practice you’re a member of,
  • search in your expertise location system or yellow pages at peoples profiles,
  • post something on your internal Q&A or social media application,
  • you search your corporate document management system, ECM system, or other such repository/repositories to find the answer.

And you find the answer, doing considerably less work than creating the solution yourself and you meet your deadline. With all that time you saved you take a couple of minutes to post the solution, so that someone in your shoes days/weeks/months/years from now can find your solution and be lazy too!

*Thanks to Kathleen Wilson for the idea for this post.

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Knowledge Management Mentoring

Would you rather learn how to implement knowledge management rather than have a consultant come in and do it for you?

I have just finished a project where I mentored/coached the main person on the client side through the creation of a Knowledge Management Strategy. She was knowledgeable and had, in fact started a strategy but got stuck. I have to say I enjoyed the experience, I wasn’t sure at first how it would go, and certainly it took longer than it would have if I had just done the work, but in the end she has a strategy that she can sell to management and she feels comfortable with how and why it was developed that way.

A win for all, I’d say.

I’m thinking I need to do more of these types of engagements, so watch for announcements.

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Update from Stephanie

Hi,

Sorry I haven’t posted anything in so long, I guess I have been busy with a project and business development and I actually fit some vacation in for the first time in 3.5 years. Why don’t I tell you about a couple of things I’m working on?

  1. I am going to be doing a course at the iSchool at the University of Toronto on March 2, 2012. The course is called How to Align People, Process, and Technology for Knowledge Management Success and is based on my Ark Group report from last year.
  2. An automated checklist to assess where to get started with your knowledge management initiative. This is still in development, but we’re expecting to release it in the next few months. We’ll be beta-testing it in a few weeks and already have  some small organizations lined-up for that phase. I’ll share more about this initiative in the future.
  3. I’ve also seen a couple of technology platforms that are quite interesting, not that KM is about the technology, but knowledge is social and these are two social knowledge management platforms. The first is Vedalis and the second is SpeechBobble, and if you consider that knowledge management is about connecting people to the knowledge they need to do their jobs, these two platforms will definitely enable that to happen.

That’s about all I can share for now, just wanted to share those few items and let you know that I am still out here completing puzzles.


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Knowledge Management Training and Technology

This past week I attended the CKM training in Toronto, hosted by the Knowledge Management Institute and Knowledge Management Institute Canada. I attended, not because I felt I needed training (although I don’t have enough ego to think that I know it all, I have been doing KM for 12+ years, and certainly know a lot) but because I was curious to hear about their model and their approach. KMI has trained over 4,000 people worldwide over the last 10 years so they are onto something.

Just to backtrack for a minute, I come to KM from a technology perspective, because that is how I first came to KM. The processes and people part of KM are absolutely necessary and critical, and are the hardest part of KM, but technology enables it all, and poorly designed and implemented KM technology is the death knell for KM in a lot of organizations.

Okay, so back to my training. I did training with APQC when I was first getting going with KM when I was at Hewlett Packard, it was what was available to me at the time. It talked about the phases of KM implementation and how to mature KM in the organization, something I still use/refer to in my work. KMI’s CKM training provides a much more comprehensive model for KM, it introduces a lot of concepts and ideas about KM that I have learned over my 12 years of doing it. But because KM as a discipline is based on the experiences of its practitioners, and isn’t mature enough to have standardized/coalesced its terminology I was frustrated with the descriptions by times.

As much as I enjoyed the course, meeting everyone, and hearing the experiences and challenges that they all face and have faced, I tired of KM technology being the great evil of KM and that is something that needs to be addressed going forward. I have no hesitancy in recommending the course to people just starting out in KM, it’s a great start. However as technology ever embeds itself in our lives (work-wise and otherwise) understanding how KM technology can enable KM activities is critical.

The poor implementation of KM technology is the reason why KM has a bad name in the minds of many, but it is a necessary component of the KM puzzle, ignoring it does not change this. The sooner KM practitioners understand this, the sooner it will get better.

Alas, I think I am a lone voice in the wilderness on this one.

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The Difference Between KM and IM

Check out this exchange about the difference between KM and IM https://www.nickmilton.com/2011/10/question-or-short-rant.html?utm_term=knowledge+management&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=facebook

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The Decline of Conversation and Collaboration?

I came across this post/article today discussing the decline of conversation and collaboration, so thought I would share.

As someone who uses technology a lot (or maybe that should be more than I would like), I would tend to agree with his theme. I think we have lost the art of conversation and the ability to listen and negotiate and understand a different perspective. We see this play-out everyday at work and in the world around us e.g. politics and customer service: everyone wants things their way and doesn’t want to have to discuss their beliefs.

Thoughts?