| KM 1.0: all about content and collection | KM 0.0 (PKM): all about context and connection | | content management, search and delivery platform | large
centralized just-in-case content repositories of 'submitted' 'reusable'
documents with standardized taxonomy and search tools | personal content management tools - everyone manages their own content, just-in-time, harvestable | | content publishing, browsing and information flow | large complicated centrally-managed intranets for 'publishing' and 'browsing' content; main information flows are top-down instruction (policies, directories), bottom-up submission | RSS-publishable and subscribable personal web pages, blogs and small-group-created wikis; main information flows are what matters to each person, peer-to-peer | | communities | communities of practice - centrally established and managed, content-focused | communities of passion - self-managed and ad hoc, conversation-focused | | content format paradigm | "best practices' (stripped down) | stories (detailed, context-rich); visualizations | public presence and
'marketing' | public websites (boundaries established by firewall) | everything inside is open and shared outside unless it's illegal to do so (community of the whole world) | | research | licensed databases purchased from outside info-professionals (disintermediation) | high-value, high-meaning RSS-subscribable content produced by internal info-professionals (reintermediation):
- awareness alerts (what's new?),
- research (what does it mean?),
- guidance (what should we do about it?)
| | connectivity enablers | e-mail | - IM
- virtual meeting tools (desktop video, other simple ubiquitous real-time tools)
- organization and facilitation of real & virtual community-self-initiated self-managed events, including Open Space hosting & facilitation
- people-finding and community-creating tools
| | what's served up on the public website | what the company wants you to know: press releases, sales material | what the customer wants to know: multimedia interactive self-assessment tools |
In a recent post
where I waxed rhapsodic about how the best approach to everything could
be reduced to three magic words (love, conversation, community), I
presented this one-sentence summary of how this might apply to
knowledge management (KM):
KM is simply the
art enabling trusted, context-rich conversations among the
appropriate members of communities about things these communities are
passionate about.
In another recent post
I laid out how the work of information professionals is now being done
in (what I consider) leading organizations, around five key types of
deliverables: awareness products, research products, guidance
products, self-assessment and connectivity tools, and facilitated
events.
At the request of several readers, I've pulled this all
together in the table above into a framework for what some have called
KM 2.0, but which I prefer to call KM 0.0, because it's getting back to
the roots of why and how people share what they know. It could also be
called PKM -- Personal Knowledge Management -- because it's about
self-managed content and peer-to-peer connectivity.
I think the
yellow column above -- the well-worn and failed traditional approach to
KM that many of us tried to institute in the 1990s, based on content
and collection -- is pretty self-explanatory, and depressing as a
legacy. The green column above is slowly evolving in many
organizations, but not because knowledge 'leaders' and managers have
realized its potential. Rather, the emerging KM 0.0 is being instituted
by people on the front lines and at the edges of organizations --
working around the established systems and security standards of the
organization.
Most of this KM 0.0 stuff is inexpensive and
ubiquitous, so enterprising information and IT professionals can
introduce it without having to get permission and resources from
management. Here's a walk-through of what it comprises:
- Personal content management tools
-- everyone manages their own content, just-in-time, harvestable.
Forget the giant central content repositories. KM 0.0 focuses on the
stuff on everyone's personal (mostly portable) devices. Instead, teach
your front-line people how to effectively manage and organize this
personal content (using Google desktop etc.), so it complements their
memory and replaces their filing cabinets. Then, show them how, by
saving this personal content in a 'public' partition on their hard
drives, it can be harvested by others, just in time. So when someone in
your organization (or even outside it) is looking for know-how,
know-what, or know-who, their search will scan all the 'public' content
in all the hard drives of the company, and not only return the relevant
content, but the contact information of the people who authored it, and
who can provide context for it.
- RSS-publishable and subscribable personal web pages,
blogs and small-group-created wikis -- Give everyone in the
organization a very simple, intuitive set of tools for authoring their
own individual (blog-type tools) and small group (wiki-type tools)
content. So everyone becomes a publisher and, with RSS technology,
everyone (authorized) can subscribe to everyone else's content. Each
person gets their own personal daily 'newspaper' of articles authored
by the people whose content they want to read. So instead of forcing information flows to conform to the hierarchy of
the organization chart, you enable anyone to send and receive information
they care about.
- Communities of passion -- self-managed and ad hoc, conversation-focused. So
no matter who you are, you can set up a community yourself on any
subject, and invite anyone else with passion for that subject, and in
moments be up and connected with that community, running it yourselves,
with the features you want, not the company 'standard'.
- Stories and visualizations as the principal formats of content
-- Instead of context-stripped 'best practices', authors are encouraged
to tell stories and provide anecdotes that provide the detail and
context for understanding what the information really means. And
information professionals add further value by using visualizations to
condense volumes of data and text into forms that the human mind more
easily comprehends.
- Open access: everything
inside the organization is open and shared outside unless it's illegal
to do so. By participating in a community of the whole world, you open
your organization to outside innovation, to open source resources, to
peer production with customers.
- Reintermediation:
High-value, high-meaning RSS-subscribable content is produced by
internal info-professionals who know how and why the people of the
company use information, instead of buying and licensing it from
outside 'experts'. Much of that IP-produced content is in three
formats, to answer three ubiquitous questions about knowledge:
- awareness alerts (what's new that's important to our organization?)
- research (what does it mean?)
- guidance (what should we do about it?)
- A simple set of connectivity enablers: Going far beyond one-size-fits-none e-mail, the connectivity suite includes
- IM -- for real-time canvassing and impromtu connection
- virtual
meeting tools -- desktop video and other simple ubiquitous real-time
tools to provide 'virtual presence' without the cost and time needed to
travel to meet face-to-face
- organization and facilitation of
real & virtual, community-self-initiated, self-managed events that
help communities self-organize, including Open Space hosting &
facilitation
- people-finding and community-creating tools
- Public site geared to what the customer wants to know:
Featuring multimedia interactive self-assessment tools and other
resources customers want and can really use, instead of the flat
sales-and-marketing material transcribed from company brochures
These
eight components of KM 0.0 / PKM are the antithesis of what most large
organizations provide as Knowledge Management resources. Most of them
are quite simple and inexpensive to implement. They simply enable
trusted, context-rich conversations among communities that care.
Imagine that.
|
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