Last month I described a “Pull cycle” for knowledge – let’s now look at the the measures we can introduce to that cycle. You can find a description of the cycle here. This is a cycle based on knowledge demand (unlike the supply-side cycles you normally see) and includes the
To be able to transfer subtleties of knowledge, we need subtleties of language. That’s where jargon comes from. The Inuit languages have, it is claimed, 50 words for snow (falling or lying snow, and ice). This may or may not be true, but their various words can carry a huge
There are only four generic barriers to KM. These are they, and all can be addressed. The Boston Square shown here maps the unwillingness and the inability that can affect the knowledge supplier, and the knowledge user. Any combination of these is a block to the transfer of knowledge from one to
The story of the “Battle of the Bocage” is a great example of evolving knowledge, driven from the bottom up. Normandy BocageImage from wikimedia commons I am reprising this post from the archive, not just because its a great story, but because in demonstrates the maturing of knowledge through several
Knowledge has a half-life, and that half-life is getting shorter every year. When John Browne was CEO at BP, he talked about “the shrinking half-life of ideas”. This always struck me as a very interesting concept; one which was fundamental to Browne’s approach to corporate KM. I have since found that he
The way you manage knowledge that is very new and highly dynamic, is not the way you manage mature and static knowledge topics. Any single knowledge topiccpasses through a series of stages as it matures, as shown and described below, and you can argue that the task of Knowledge Management
We are used to seeing pictures of knowledge cycles, but there is one cycle you never see, and it’s very important. You can find very many versions of the knowledge cycle, and they all seem to work the same way. They start with “Create” or “Capture”, and progress through “Store”,
Can we use the term “knowledge sharing” as better replacement for the term “Knowledge Management? There are three good reasons not to. image from Wikimedia Commons The terminology debate continues to rumble on in the KM world, and many people prefer to use the term “knowledge sharing” rather than the
There is a common diagram in use in the KM profession, which has at least 3 major flaws, so apply it with caution. I am going to be contentious again in this (reprised) post, and draw attention to the failings of a very common KM model. I do this because
A lesson, or a piece of knowledge, goes through eleven generic steps in its life cycle. That’s partly why lesson learning is not easy – the lifecycle of a lesson contains several steps if the learning loop is to be closed, and the lesson is to lead to embedded change