Commentary: Is KM Dead?

"Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated." - Mark Twain

Though I'm not usually one for "blurb" blogging, I was planning on doing just that with this video gem (click the title of this post to access) of my current KM-crush, Patrick Lambe, discussing whether or not KM is dead (or dying) with KM gurus Larry Prusak and Dave Snowden.

While the video features a provocative discussion for the entire KM community, I was initially intrigued/humored by the comments on the management aspect of KM and Dave Snowden's mention of his dressing down by Peter Drucker with regards to Frederick Taylor because I just blogged about putting the 'M' back into KM and happened to vilify Taylor and Taylorism all in the same post. Coincidentally, Peter Drucker considers Taylor to be the Father of KM. Based solely on the principles of scientific management, as I understand them, I'm not sure how comfortable I am with that idea. I am willing to concede that these principles (with some tweaking, in certain types of organizations) miiiight make for good management (so noble of me, I know), but good knowledge management...ehhh. Anyway, I've downloaded copies of The Principles of Scientific Management and also Shop Management to read in their entirety to see if I can be persuaded otherwise.

Just as a side note, my overall issue with scientific management is that I feel that it reduces people to cogs in a machine rather than lifting them up to their potential. Take McDonald's, for example: several years ago they started using cash registers with pictures of food items instead of the names of menu items or numbers(?; I'm still hoping they have numbers). That's classic Taylorism - you don't have to read or be able to do rudimentary math anymore, just look for the picture! Think about that and tell me how this style of management is supposed to make us more competitive and cutting-edge as a nation in the global knowledge economy.

Blame it on my adult education background, but I think that scientific management reinforces and perpetuates a poor work ethic, a negative (cultural) mentality about work, in general, and stifles creativity. Some may say that's not the goal or purpose of management, I say that neither is objectification. Understanding people and managing accordingly is smart business. (Yes, that's a simplification, but I'm not trying to get into a big discussion on this point right now).

Ironically, the structure of scientific management is exactly what a lot of organizations are seeking in a KM strategy largely because it's familiar and comfortable to them; it's easier to bend KM around what they know, than to explore new (untried, risky, possibly flawed) ways of thinking and doing business. Going back to Roger Martin's eye opening article on making design work, Tough Love - what I still believe is the new guide for understanding how to make make KM work - the reason "why most executives prefer the known to the unknown...it's a lot easier and safer to run a billion-dollar business than it is to invent one." Amen brother. Cogs don't innovate, people do.

I told ya, don't get me started on Taylorism.

Anyway, now that I'm worried Peter Drucker wouldn't come to my dinner party (if I could invite anyone who ever lived....everybody has a list like that, right?), I was, as I wrote earlier, initially intrigued and humored by the discussion, but then I started getting pissy.

First, there was Lambe's comment about the "lack of a coherent practice community". A couple of months ago I blogged about the need for KM certification, KM-specific continuing ed programs, and the establishment of an oversight board to develop generally accepted KM standards/practices. When I set out to get feedback on this idea from various practitioners, I received a dressing down of my own. I was utterly shocked by the vehemence of the responses (against the idea) and yet, I've been hard-pressed to find strong communities of practice that have been successful at organizing their own knowledge resources (that's called irony...you know, because some of us get paid to create CoP's for a living). Rather, I tend to find pockets of like-minded folks who work in the same industry (or for the same employer) who more or less bitch-and-moan/sympathize/commiserate with one another over their trials and tribulations (not unlike the ladies of Sex & The City, though probably less fashionably).

The "lack of a coherent practice community" comment led to a comment about the average lifespan of a knowledge manager being 1-2 years. If you've read my blog posts about my frustration with staying inspired within the field then you should know that I'm not surprised by this at all. If someone like me, who's entire academic career and subsquent professional career has revolved around knowledge management; and I mean, entering directly into the field of knowledge management, not tangentially, has experienced burn-out within just a few years of graduation, it's not hard to imagine what other practitioners are feeling.

Which of course, begs the questions: (1) If there were a such a community, might there be less turnover within the field, a weaker perception of the field-as-fad, and more interest in KM as an acceptable business practice? And, (2) Would anyone be asking if KM is dead? If the answer to the first question is somewhere in the neighborhood of 'maybe' ('maybe not' for the second) then why the hell am I getting flack for suggesting some structure to the field?!?!?!

The more I watched, the more I upset I became, not necessarily because of anything specific that was said, but because, as a practitioner, I'm in the field everyday; I deal with organizations that need the understanding that I bring to the table, but are hard-pressed to reframe their perceptions of how businesses should operate, even as the markets they operate in swifly change around them. And, when there is still so much potential for KM to realize, so much opportunity for growth within the field, two of the fields most recognizable names (and my KM-crush) are speaking of its death. And, not even because KM has outlived or outgrown it's usefulness, but because misconceptions and misapplications of KM have failed to bear fruit.

How indeed is the community supposed to survive, when its leaders are sounding its funeral knell?

Clearly, I don't believe that KM is dead? Battered, beaten, tortured, viciously maligned and left on the side of the road to die maybe, but not dead.

And there are no walking dead, either.

What we have are organizations who have identified and acknowledged needs who continue to seek out solutions to their problems (and people to develop them), even after other such persons have been driven off (fairly or not) - Frankenstein-style - with pitchforks and torches. Even when KM (either as they've defined it or as it has been sold to them) is pronounced a sham, the need that originated their interest in KM still remains.

In my opinion, the issue that most organizations have with authentic KM (as a fundamental business process, not an off-the-shelf, replicable solution), is their general unwillingness to construct and invest in KM as a business practice that forces them outside of their comfort zones. The field of KM has become fragmented, as discussed in the video, as a direct result of organizations attemping to hijack (and circumvent) KM and break it down into smaller, structured, more palatable, and more controllable (scientifically managed) components that allow them to continue doing what they do (in a slightly different way) without having to completely invest in KM, which they don't understand. As a result, any change is minimal or purely cosmetic. In general, I don't see fragmentation alone as a bad thing - these can all be aspects of KM and a KM solution, adopted as the organization becomes comfortable with proposed changes. It's only when folks try establish these fragments, these singular aspects of KM as wholly knowledge management that I see a problem.

Furthermore, I think that this is a problem that practitioners allow to fester when we refuse to step up and organize ourselves in order to manage perceptions of what knowledge management is (and isn't) and what Knowledge Managers do. Now, I'm not saying that we need to have strictly defined roles and labels for KM professionals and KM activity, we know that the work we do involves wearing many hats, but we need to be able to explain, at a minimum, what knowledge management is, what a Knowledge Manager is, and what separates vastly different knowledge management professionals from one another (e.g., knowledge architect vs knowledge librarian vs knowledge analyst).

There is a tremendous lack of information about, oversight and direction for the field of KM. And, many of the KM strategies that are being developed and implemented are done so in the absence of this information and direction. In the absence of firm definitions and a defining concept of KM, organizations operate under misconceptions that are not well-founded/grounded and ultimately fall apart.

As to KM, in general, while the term knowledge management may be recent (relatively speaking), the central idea of knowledge management (managing the sum of your resources for better, more efficient use) has been around for a long time. In this regard, I am willing to acknowledge the influence and historical relevance of scientific management. However, 'managing' knowledge isn't like herding goats or building a better lemming, despite the fact that some businesses continue to operate as though we were in the middle of the industrial economy (and others, the agricultural economy). And, it's attempts at syncretizing KM with the principles of scientific management that have left us discussing whether to burn or bury.

I say, for now at least, pass the torch to the next generation and let's see what we can do with KM before writing the field's obituary.

Building A Better Knowledge Manager: Love Is A Battlefield

"We are young, heartache to heartache we stand, no promises, no demands
Love is a battlefield
We are strong, no one can tell us were wrong, searchin' our hearts for so long, both of us knowing
Love is a battlefield"

I've spent the months since my last post trying to solve the riddle of how to regain my passion for KM and deciding whether or not I even want to continue in the field and all I can say is that it sucks to give up something you enjoy especially when you're good at it (and invested four-and-a-half years of college and five years of sweat). Sometimes the only thing you can do about a situation is to learn from it so then, I guess the only real option I'm left with is to pick my bruised ego and wounded pride up off the floor and resume my KM journey.

Since it turns out that Forrest was right and life is eerily like a box of chocolates, I'm not quite sure if I'll make it to the KM Valhalla I envisioned when I was a college sophomore starting down this path, but WTF, too much certainty is bad for the soul, right?

At any rate, as I'm now committed to developing myself into a better Knowledge Manager, I've determined that the first step is ditching the spirit of fear and frustration I've acquired and reclaiming the spirit of adventure that attracted me to KM in the first place. An excellent source of inspiration in this endeavor is an amazing article on making design work written by the Univerity of Toronto's B- School Dean, Roger Martin, for my business bible, Fast Company. In my opinion, this article should be de rigueur reading for every KM professional.

In providing his keys to making design work, Martin provides a description of design that illuminates the field of knowledge management.

"Corporate types, by and large, seek to fuel growth by building from bulletproof, reproducible systems; designers generally attempt to do so by imagining something new, different, better. That difference can be seen as a trust in reliability on the one hand and in validity on the other.

"A reliable process--which tends to attract folks in finance, engineering, and operations--produces a predictable result time and again. This is business as algorithm: quantifiable, measurable, and provable. It hews to that old management adage, "What doesn't get measured doesn't get done.

"A valid process, on the other hand, flows from designers' deep understanding of both user and context, and leads them to ideas they believe in but can't prove. They work in a world of variables: the unpredictable, the visual, the experimental. Great designers worry less about replicating a successful process than about producing a spectacular solution…Valid thinking demands an inspired leap of faith. Before John Mackey launched one of the country's first supermarket-style natural-food stores, for example, nobody could prove that Whole Foods Market would succeed at all, let alone become the most profitable food retailer (in terms of profit per square foot) in the United States. But Mackey did it anyway.

"As the computer scientist Alan Kay put it so memorably, 'The best way to predict the future is to invent it.'"

KM is a field in which a lot of new ground is being explored in understanding, identifying, managing, capturing, and leveraging information, knowledge, and the organizational relationships that generate and share information and knowledge. Like design, the best strategic KM solutions utilize a valid process – one that is developed in response to an individual organization's needs. And, like design, this approach comes under steady fire from traditional business leaders who seek a reliable process that is predictable, quantifiable and replicable.

In the article, Martin goes on to discuss how utilizing both approaches leads to business gold, and obviously, that's the goal, but for most organizations that synthesis must wait until a sustainable KM effort is in place.

The key for KM strategists? Education, education, education. It doesn't help many of us that there is so much information and misinformation about knowledge management floating around cyberspace, readily available to folks in need of a solution. Even when you attempt to set realistic expectations about developing and implementing KM solutions, it's hard to get past misleading service providers who claim their OTS (off-the-shelf) application is a one-stop solution in a box for all/most KM needs or that hard-headed executive who reads one article on the potential benefits of KM, but who fails to consider the depth and detail of the work involved in bringing those benefits to fruition. And for the KM's themselves (speaking from recent experience), the pressure to conform to a way of doing business that, while being familiar to the "traditional" exec, limits the success and challenges the integrity of a successful KM strategy, is stifling.

Love is a battlefield and so is KM. Let's do what we can take to stay the course.

Keeping The Faith: Bouncing Back From Losing Your Passion For KM

It’s been months since my last blog and even trying to write this involved taking days off from work and tossing and turning in bed several nights.

After years of trying to blaze a KM trail I’ve lost my passion. Truth be told, my passion was less “lost” and more pounded out of me. Surfing the rough and tumble corporate waters, I suppose it was only a matter of time before one too many waves took its toll on me and now I’m struggling to find my “mojo” and get back out into the water; that is, if I want to get back out there at all.

The experience has me wondering how you keep going in this field when you’ve lost your passion. Over the years, I’ve read several articles about the value of maintaining your sanity as a KM professional and keeping your head up in a business world that doesn’t always understand or appreciate you. Now, going through my own professional crisis, I can’t help but wonder how many of those authors remained in the field after their literary purge.

For me, the biggest challenge has been staying inspired. I mean, I still love KM; it’s certainly not that I don’t care about KM anymore, but I don’t feel the same level of inspiration that motivated me to study the field and transformed me into a proselyte. In the absence of this inspiration, I am confronted with exactly how important passionate adherents are to the future of this field; more so than is currently discussed in the existing literature.

Yes, you need awareness of KM, understanding of organizational dynamics, executive support, access to tools and resources, blah, blah, blah, but none of that means much if you don’t have someone passionately championing KM initiatives in an organization. And more than a budget or carte blanche, that person needs to be supported and encouraged in the work that they do. What's more, KM professionals also need to be able to maintain their own level of passion and inspiration.

Anyway, in the hopes that this literary purge doesn’t herald the end of my own KM ambitions, I reflected on some possible tips for getting back into the swing of things and re-discover that old KM magic.


#1: Remember that KM is change. KM involves uncomfortable changes in the way people communicate and relate to others in an environment where their financial security (and a huge part of their identity and self-esteem) is at stake – and you’re the point person! Regardless of how necessary or beneficial the changes you propose, they will most likely be met with resistance and, perhaps, counter measures. Understanding this won’t make you feel any better when you’re under attack, but hopefully it will give you some insight when launching your own counter attack.

#2: Maintain strong, reliable social and professional networks. Having folks around you that not only understand you as a person, but what KM is and what you do professionally is truly a beautiful thing. People who know you as a person will help to keep you grounded and (hopefully) prevent you from going postal in the workplace, while people who understand what is that you do (or strive to) and who can relate to the challenges, victories, and defeats you encounter as a KM professional help to take the edge off and are able to help you come up with potential solutions to professional dilemmas.

#3: Maintain your spirit of adventure. True KM folks are not only strategists and creative problem solvers, we are entrepreneurs and risk takers. We’re the folks who don’t stop at whining about a problem, we set out to resolve the problem. We’re not afraid of a challenge or even the little failures along the road to success. Still, we’re not undefeatable or indefatigable – consistent blows to our spirit can diminish our confidence as it would anyone elses. The key is to find some way (a totem, a mantra, prayer…ecstasy – just kidding…a little) to stick to the road less traveled for the duration of our KM adventure, even when the urge is strong to temporarily stray from the path to clock a naysayer.

#4: Do you. As a college Junior, what drew me to a career in KM was the opportunity to pursue my combined interests in strategy, organizational development, marketing, psychology, and party planning – hey, I’m a social butterfly. The icing on the cake was working in a developing field with the potential to be someone who shapes a new way of doing business. Years later, I find myself having had to narrow or completely sacrifice my scope and vision of KM to satisfy organizational leaders who are either afraid of change, lacking in vision, or who, ironically, also suffer from having had their passion for what they do blotted out. In business, it’s not uncommon to rationalize that certain “sacrifices” must be made in order to make the deal, satisfy the client, walk away with the “win”, etc, etc. My only thought here is a biblical one: “What does it profit a man to gain the world yet lose his soul?” So, I say, “do you.” Follow your bliss. Don’t be stupid, blind, or naïve about it, but don’t be so quick to change your path to accommodate those who lack the vision, courage, or conviction to chart new waters. Hell, that’s supposed to be the American Way.

Well, this blog was definitely cathartic. I’m curious as to what will come next. If I can find a way to get back on the path, re-discover my “mojo”, re-ignite the flames of my passion and forge ahead on “Route KM”.

Let’s hope so.