In one of my very first blog posts (my second, actually), I asked the question, “What is knowledge management, anyway?” Like many others, I’ve never really found a truly satisfactory answer, though there are very many answers to chose from. In the post KM 0.0…, Dave Pollard presents this definition:
KM is simply the art enabling trusted, context-rich conversations among the appropriate members of communities about things these communities are passionate about.
Dave’s use of the term “simply” underscores, to me anyway, how basic his definition really is. What I really like about it is that it is all about the people and the importance of the connections between those people. In fact, the post is all about “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.”
In that post long ago where I asked the KM question, I said the following:
Knowledge Management is not something that makes each individual’s job performance better, it is something that make the organization perform better. It is entirely possible that in order for an organization to do its best some of the individuals within that organization will do less than their best.
As you may have guessed from some of my recent writings, I don’t really believe that any more.
no straight lines 