Tuesday 30 December 2014

My most popular KM blog posts of 2014

Support for this blog has been steady and slightly rising in 2014, despite a couple of periods when I was away with a client, with no Internet access.

The most popular posts from 2014  are listed below. If you missed any of them, then why not have a look now!

1. Why dialogue is so important for Knowledge Management

Why do children go to school to learn, rather than staying home and reading books and websites? Why, if you have access to the best cookery books in the world, do you still need to take personal tuition if you want to be a cordon blue chef? The answer, in every case, is that knowledge transfer is a social process, and if you want to transfer detailed knowledge you have to engage in conversation (specifically, in dialogue) with other human beings. This blog post explores the issues of dialogue as part of Knowledge Management.

2. The 4 legs on the Knowledge Management table

It's very easy to develop an unbalanced perspective on Knowledge Management, especially when we work closely with the topic, but it is something that we should strive to avoid. There are 4 enablers that support Knowledge Management, like 4 legs that support a table. These need to be in balance for Km to succeed, as described in this blog post.

3. When communities of practice are not the answer

Online communities of practice are not always the silver bullet for , and there are examples where they may not add much value at all. Here are 4 such examples..

4.Learning from Mistakes can be a very expensive way to learn!

A funny video

5. The 7 most important business drivers for Knowledge management

As part of our Global Knowledge Management Survey earlier this year, we asked our respondents about the business imperatives which drove them to invest in Knowledge Management. We recognised 7 main business drivers, and these are listed in this blog post, together with the weighting assigned to this driver by the survey respondents.

6. The Knowledge Management career path

One of our clients asked for good examples of organisations with a career path for their KM professionals. No good examples exist, so this blog post suggests a structure which could serve as a first pass model.

7. Why knowledge transfer through discussion is 14 times more effective than writing

Knowledge can be transferred in two ways - by Connecting people so that they can discuss, and Collecting knowledge in written (explicit) form so others can find and read it (see blog posts on Connect and Collect). Connecting people is far less efficient than Collecting while being far more effective - but how much more effective? Read more to find out

8. Global trends in KM maturity

How mature is Knowledge Management as an applied discipline, and how does this vary around the world? The level of maturity of Knowledge Management was one of many variables measured in our global survey of Knowledge Management. It was measured in two ways - an estimate of the number of years that KM had been a focus, and a verbal description of maturity of KM within the organisation. This blog post shows the results.

9. What does Knowledge Management look like? Attitude, Habit, Framework.

If you visited an organisation that had truly embraced and embedded Knowledge Management, what would you see? What would be different and distinctive about that organisation? You would probably notice 3 things - an attitude, a habit, and a system.

10. The Knowledge Management "proof of concept"

In the early stages of Knowledge Management - even when you are still drafting the Strategy - you may need to deliver a "Proof of Concept" exercise in order to demonstrate KM in action and deliver some quick wins to the business. This blog post explains what these might look like.


In addition -


4 comments:

Unknown said...

Is there an online KM training course (certification) that you would recommend. I have pre-ordered Designing a Successful KM Strategy and would appreciate any direction in finding online courses in the mean time.

Thank you,


Luke

Nick Milton said...

Hi Luke, I don't know any online certification programs I am afraid. Also be aware that KM is a very poorly defined field, and that courses from different providers may have very different syllabuses (syllabi?)

Unknown said...

Hi Nick,

Thank you for your quick response. The one course I came across is with the KM Institute, on another note and I should have asked this in the first place as well, are there training/certification classes that you would recommend that can be taken in person? And if so how would I go about finding these classes?

Thank you



Nick Milton said...

Send me a message on nick. milton @knoco. com, Luke, and we can pick up the conversation there

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