It is very difficult to say whether the buzz word ‘Knowledge Management’ is at the peak of the wave or it has crossed the peak. This is one of the most frequently used term by most of the IT professionals, consultants, vendors and companies. However, each one of them understands it a bit differently from the other but it is certain that most of them have a very definite view on it. On one extreme we have people who think that ‘data, information, knowledge’ are all the same and as long as one had the raw data with him one could cull out knowledge. I have recently attended a seminar where this view was propounded by the chief gust and supported & furthered by the lead faculty. On the other extreme, as elaborated in the next paragraph, we have people who think that knowledge is something that exists in a clearly definable frame and can easily be identified by the ‘Gurus’ in the consulting firm, vendor, or the organization seeking the solution and made available to everyone so that they could access it as and when they needed and apply it. I suppose most of us will see that both these extreme views are not correct if we are to look for practical solutions. I am sure that I am not alone in this thinking and that there are a number of others like me who would vouch for the fact that the situations in the real world require a very different approach..
Other day I met one ‘KM Professional’, believe me that there are a number of people who are totally convinced that they belong to this elite group. He mentioned what I had read many years earlier about science - what you cannot quantify and define does not exist. I think that the thinking in the physical science too has changed but the world had not changed much for this professional. He said that if you cannot clearly identify and speak what is knowledge then “you do not have it and you do not know it”. I wanted to tell him bluntly that the world was not that simple and wanted to point to him the blinkers he had put on for he did not recognize ‘tacit’ knowledge at all. However, I adopted a softer approach and tried to explain him the problems with his line of thinking. Despite my best efforts I failed to help him identify the blinkers. I did not want to give up so I suggested to him that once he reached home he must try and cook any recipe after reading the cookbook, a ‘repository of knowledge’.
As I have mentioned above, in a working environment most professionals will tell you that knowledge is not what is confined in the books, manuals, reports and data. It is spread across the organization and is with a number of working people who may or may not be able to sit and write down all they thought was knowledge. However, given a situation they could clearly identify knowledge and how and from where to acquire it and how to apply to the situation to get the desired results. Anyone attempting a solution to KM in real world must understand the this and accept that knowledge is often, identified, acquired, assimilated and applied in a very different manner altogether than the assumptions made in the ‘Guru’ approach.
Unfortunately, the professional I had referred to above is not alone and most of the vendors/consultants who offer Knowledge Management solutions assume that a small group in the organization will know what knowledge is and their job would only be to digitize it and keep it in a manner so that it can be accessed by the users in a secure and convenient way. I call it the ‘Guru Approach’. They do not realize that what they are offering is not a solution for Knowledge Management but just an Information Management System. For those who have forgotten, the Information Management Systems, take inputs from both internal and external Systems and information coming from Business Transaction, called Management Information System (MIS) is only one subset of information coming from internal sources.
The solution offered is often a variant of an efficient library management system only. The attempts of most of the companies operating in this space fall far short of the need. They will have to offer efficient system to capture the working systems in the computers and ensure that the knowledge is captured from the normal working only quite like it happens in the real life. This will then have to be offered in the context of the work so that it is taken cognizance of and applied for advantage. The attempts of most of the companies offering to provide KM solutions can be summed up as attempts to ‘sell old wine in old bottles through the same old salesman using new jargon’.
Other day I met one ‘KM Professional’, believe me that there are a number of people who are totally convinced that they belong to this elite group. He mentioned what I had read many years earlier about science - what you cannot quantify and define does not exist. I think that the thinking in the physical science too has changed but the world had not changed much for this professional. He said that if you cannot clearly identify and speak what is knowledge then “you do not have it and you do not know it”. I wanted to tell him bluntly that the world was not that simple and wanted to point to him the blinkers he had put on for he did not recognize ‘tacit’ knowledge at all. However, I adopted a softer approach and tried to explain him the problems with his line of thinking. Despite my best efforts I failed to help him identify the blinkers. I did not want to give up so I suggested to him that once he reached home he must try and cook any recipe after reading the cookbook, a ‘repository of knowledge’.
As I have mentioned above, in a working environment most professionals will tell you that knowledge is not what is confined in the books, manuals, reports and data. It is spread across the organization and is with a number of working people who may or may not be able to sit and write down all they thought was knowledge. However, given a situation they could clearly identify knowledge and how and from where to acquire it and how to apply to the situation to get the desired results. Anyone attempting a solution to KM in real world must understand the this and accept that knowledge is often, identified, acquired, assimilated and applied in a very different manner altogether than the assumptions made in the ‘Guru’ approach.
Unfortunately, the professional I had referred to above is not alone and most of the vendors/consultants who offer Knowledge Management solutions assume that a small group in the organization will know what knowledge is and their job would only be to digitize it and keep it in a manner so that it can be accessed by the users in a secure and convenient way. I call it the ‘Guru Approach’. They do not realize that what they are offering is not a solution for Knowledge Management but just an Information Management System. For those who have forgotten, the Information Management Systems, take inputs from both internal and external Systems and information coming from Business Transaction, called Management Information System (MIS) is only one subset of information coming from internal sources.
The solution offered is often a variant of an efficient library management system only. The attempts of most of the companies operating in this space fall far short of the need. They will have to offer efficient system to capture the working systems in the computers and ensure that the knowledge is captured from the normal working only quite like it happens in the real life. This will then have to be offered in the context of the work so that it is taken cognizance of and applied for advantage. The attempts of most of the companies offering to provide KM solutions can be summed up as attempts to ‘sell old wine in old bottles through the same old salesman using new jargon’.
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