Nick Milton

Part of the way you manage issues such as risk, safety and knowledge, is by creating times and processes for talking about them.Steven Denning, at the Ottowa Knowledge Management summit a few years ago, said that […]

When seeking analogues for KM, learn from the organisations which are best at KM, not just from the organisations you likeImage from wikimedia commonsI delivered a training course a couple of months ago for a […]

A reprised post from the archives, which seems even more apposite in this time of governmental disarray.Image from amazonAs part of my holiday reading, I read a book entitled “The Blunders of our Governments”, by […]

Dialogue is the engine behind Knowledge Management – it is the primary means by which Knowledge is shared and absorbed.We often assume that connecting people together will lead to better knowledge exchange, but […]

Do you want to know how much difference knowledge makes to performance? Here are some experimental data. Based on the controlled experiment that we call “Bird Island”, we can tell you thatCollecting, discussing […]

We keep hearing that KM means more workload, but is it in fact the lazy way to work?Lazy Drinker by Saul Soto on FlickrThe quote about Knowledge Management being “the lazy way to work” came from a control room […]

Here’s another old post from the archives, looking at how KM was practiced 600 years ago in Western Europe. Henry the Navigator at the helmUploaded by leoglenn_g on June 1, 2011 The golden age of Navigation w […]

The problem with Dualism in KM is that it leads to pendulum swings in terms of focus. Here is how to avoid this.Image form wikimedia commonsThere can be quite a lot of Dualism in KM – seeing KM in terms of two […]

One of the interesting results from our 2014 and 2017 surveys of KM was to compare KM maturity against different industries.Our Knowledge management surveys in 2014 and 2017, responded to by over 700 knowledge […]

KM is an investment of time to save even more time.Image from wikimedia commonsHere is an extract from a conversation last week.Me: Can you give me any examples where the Community of Practice could add […]

A while ago I posted 4 KM team roles from the US Army, based on their 2012 publication “Knowledge Management Operations”. Here is an update.Lt. Col. Mary Cheyne; the knowledge management officer for the joint […]

This post contains two more entries in a long series of examples of quantified value delivery from KM.The two examples below come from the article “Knowledge management in a steel company : a case study of the […]

This blog has often argued for Knowledge Management Plans as part of a KM Framework. Here is NASA’s take on the topic.You can find NASA’s introduction to KM plans here.Screengrab from NASA Appel KM toolbox […]

In any project, the most expensive item is the mistakes. Use KM, modularisation and standardisation to keep mistakes to the minimum.Arches, a photo by Paul Ebbo on Flickr.The title of this blog post comes from a […]

Knowledge Management is the discipline that drives continuous improvement. Here is a diagram that makes this clear We are all familiar with the link between Knowledge and continuous improvement in our personal […]

There is a step in the maturation of communities of practice when their focus shifts from knowledge sharing to collaborationWorking together, a photo by Hepcat75 on Flickr.Collaboration is an unnatural act in […]

This is a reprise and update of an old post, which visits an even older KM argument. CocaColaLabel, a photo by purpleslog on Flickr.There was a heated discussion a while ago on one of the LinkedIn forums, […]

Capture your lessons as stories, that way they will be remembered more easily.Native American Storytelling. Photo By: Johnny SaldivarOne of the way humans learn is through stories. Stories can Inform, Educate, […]

There is a real human bias that drives us to agree with each other, which can drive group think and false consensus The power of social proof climbs rapidly with the number of people involved.From the Solomon […]

This blog post is a reprise and a rewrite of one I have posted before, and which always drives comment and discussion, but is worth revisiting for a newer audience. It covers the difference between Knowledge and […]