Blogs

Why KM Sucks (and what not to do about it)

By Marc Solomon posted 08-17-2011 10:57

  

 

My users hate KM:

·         It delivers too many untimely materials and receives little in the form of stale boilerplates.

·         It's hard to reach through an implacable router and entirely easy to relinquish through a sputtering wireless card.

·         In short, it asks too much and answers too little.

I think there's another chief offense going on and it's not that consultants are masochists. It's that in the early going of their careers they really do come to depend on resources that don't steal time from their more seasoned team members.

This wasn't the thesis I was going to print with today but then last night happened.

I took my summer KM interns out to thank them for their help in documenting our project know-how and celebrating the anticipated passage of their dissertations and graduation from the Masters of Information Systems awarded by U.K.-based Warwick University. It was probably the first appearance in many checkerboard table cloth washings by a middle-aged office park shlunk flanked by two young and magnetic Afrikaners to grace an Italian family dining hall in the Bingo Table boulevards of deepest Waltham, Mass. The fact that Fatuma had her head covered for Ramadan and was eating her first meal of the day (and first veal/eggplant cutlet combo of her young life) was truly the icing on the chianti bottles.

We also used the occasion to catch up on the numerous interviews both IS majors had conducted with my consulting staff in an attempt to connect the academic theories of knowledge-sharing with the initiation rites of cliff-diving into awaiting knowledge pools both expectant and empty. Anyone looking to make a splash? The first trick is not to appear out of one's depth. Being thrown into the deep-end of a cavernous abyss is the first indication the unseasoned practitioner has arrived. They can not only think on their feet but convince the client that they've mastered these landings over other unfamiliar terrains.

Any consultant who passes this test of unknown depths is forever released from the imaginings and fetishes of academic laboratories. Their passing grade isn't measured in GPAs but in dollars, euros, and yen. What's a more convincing outcome or confidence-builder that the junior level consultant can leap tall learning orders in a single project? The other less often mentioned result is that over time this Darwinian arousal leaves a hint of contempt if not a lasting and soul aftertaste for any institutional effort to reproduce these trials and errors through KM tools, learning systems, and methodology re-enactments and deconstructs. Behold, the kitchen blender school of one-click step throughs for all process flows under the billable sun.

KM School Flunkee

The question is this. Why would the self-taught want to give away the expense of their hard-won experiences? They will be seen as chumps if altruism remains the only form of compensation. Partners are indifferent. They count their talent pools. But these assets are no costlier to carry whether KM delivers or not. Besides they came up through the ranks of sleep deprivation and camp-outs in windowless conference rooms. Were you expecting a bonus with your iciest latte and warmest of sympathies?

My takeaway from our traditional family dining debrief?

·         The best thing KM can be is invisible -- a natural extension of what these brilliant, intrepid, and challenge-seeking road warriors would reach for without fuss.

·         The worst thing KM can be is required -- fill out that section ... settle for the pre-selects of this column. You left that column blank? You've lost all your choices!

·         The closer to the business, the better. They want something? They set it up. That's why Workspace 2010 is the gateway drug to weaning users from their KM tool of choice (MS Outlook).

I look forward to my interns' dissertations. Unlike the academic versions, their KM stories will be works of pure non-fiction.



#SharePoint #Workspace2010 #managementconsulting #ScanningandCapture #knowledgemanagement #bestpractices
0 comments
28 views