While I was reading Martin Roell’s Terminology: “Knowledge Worker”, a TV commercial I saw a while back came to mind: elementary school students were telling the class what their dads did for a living, and after a couple of well defined jobs (policemen, construction, etc.) were announced one boy proudly stood up and stated, “My […]
Monthly Archives: September 2004
On KM and “The Wisdom of Crowds”
As I’m reading The Wisdom of Crowds, I can’t help wondering what the implications of the book’s findings are on Knowledge Management, etc. (I tried to look it up in the index but the book doesn’t seem to have one.) A recurring theme in Knowledge Management and related fields is that of sharing knowledge across […]
The stubborness, and flexibility, of memory and learning
In my last post I discussed the question of knowledge loss in the form of the impending retirement of baby boomers. I wrote, “Organizational memory, like human memory, can be a stubborn thing to change and often results in a this is how we’ve always done it syndrome,” and suggested that maybe we don’t want […]
Problem or Once in a Lifetime Opportunity
For many years now I’ve read about and been involved in discussions about the impending retirement of baby boomers, the effect this will have on institutional memory, and what can be done about it. Most of my interest in this at the time concerned the impact on the federal government workforce, which will be very […]
Individual needs vs. Organizational goals
Found this one languishing in my drafts pile from July 16. Ooops. In response to a comment I made to Maybe All KM is Personal KM, Tom Collins at Knowledge Aforethought wrote the following: That means we have to build team collaboration tools and enterprise information systems (not to mention tools for connecting outside the […]
Too much communications?
Is there such a thing as too much communications? Just like so many things in an organizational setting, you have to look at it from (at least) two different perspectives: the organization as a whole and the individuals that make up the organization. From both perspectives, I think the answer to my question is a […]
Process, results, and a round of golf
Not too long ago I had a boss who, not unlike many leaders in organizations, had an established set of operating guidelines for the organization he was responsible for. Among the list of about 10-12 general principles was: Process is important, but it is results that matter. Which got me thinking about what “results” means. […]
Organization in the Way
Another example of the push and pull between individuals and the larger organization – which can also be seen as a question of decentralization vs. centralization – is discussed in Organization in the Way: How decentralization hobbles the user experience by Peter Merholz and linked to by Karl on his Information Management Weblog. Putting, for […]
Making Time to Learn
From Learning and Training Innovations magazine is the article Making Time to Learn. The author presents several approaches to overcome the problem “lack of time is the major impediment to learning,” including: Make learning an official, voiced company or unit goal (iow, Give your employees permission to learn) Link training explicitly to individual goals Tie […]
Best Practices in Action – Video Game Strategy Guides
The other day my 13-year old (Zeke) decided he was going to sit down and “beat” the game SuperMario 64 on the Nintendo 64. We’ve had the game since it first came out with the N64 (I think in ’96) and he played the game quite a bit over the years, but he had never […]