Is Knowledge Management real? LO19199

Benjamin Compton (bbc_rc@hotmail.com)
Fri, 11 Sep 1998 05:59:33 PDT

Replying to LO19168 --

In my previous place of employment (which I just left to start my own
consulting practice) the president realized that there was money to be
made in selling KM products & services.

He called a meeting with all the consultants and started to explain how to
do "KM consulting" and assured us "there is big bucks in this." The
approach he took was flawed for a number of reasons:

1- No one in the company had a clear definition of "knowledge"
2- No one was sure how "knowledge" was "created" and therefore had no
idea how it should be stored or accessed once stored
3- His entire motivation was to make money, not to participate in a
philosophical dialogue about the nature of knowledge.

These were big and important issues, and ones that I silently chuckled
about. Before I left one of the consultants went to lunch with me and
asked me what I thought about KM. We talked for about an hour and a half
and he was amazed that I had such a "broad view" and that I took such a
"philosophical approach" to the whole issue.

Knowledge management is _real_ because people do it. But that doesn't
mean that _what_ people do captures _all_ the knowledge in an
organization.

There is knowledge embedded in the way people talk about their business,
their organization, and future possibilities; there is knowledge
embedded in the technological systems that are used to communicate,
store, and share knowledge; there is knowledge embedded in the patterns
of interaction between people. Most of this does not show up in a
database or in a document management system (i.e. FileNet, Folio
Infobases, etc.).

What I am focusing on in my consulting practice is "structural
intelligence," or the creation of IT systems that "become part of the
knowledge of an organization."

I define structural intelligence as those "structural systems" that open
possibilities that didn't exist before, and that can be used to help the
organization realize those possibilities.

You can think of structural intelligence in terms of evolution: Human
beings have greater intelligence than other mamals not only because of
our cognitive powers but because of our structural intelligence. Our
ability to communicate through language, and to use our body to build
complex structures, is related to the structure of our bodies.
Skyscapers are not merely an achievement of the human mind, but also of
the human body -- or the structure of the body. The same applies to
information technology -- it is not a purely intellectual
accomplishment; someone had to build computers, network cables, etc.
Those are achievements made possible by the "structural intelligence" we
possess as human beings.

As human beings our "structural intelligence" is taken for granted
(unless we become handicap or are born handicapped) and so we don't
often equate it with our overall intelligence. Our nervous system and
our bone structure combine to open up possibilities that simply don't
exist for other species.

Organizations also have "structural intelligence" and IT is part of
that; when the right systems are in place, an organization opens up
possibilities for itself that don't exist for other organizations. My
emphasis is to help this happen.

And so when we talk about "knowledge management" I think there is a much
more broad definition available than simply capturing and storing data
available in documents, databases, and so forth. There are many facets
and elements of KM that have nothing at all to do with formal storage
and retrieval systems. Learning how to access & manage this "other"
knowledge is a great adventure with many rewards.

-- 
Benjamin Compton
bbc_rc@hotmail.com

Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>