Friday, October 23, 2009

The Long-Tail of KM



I had to cook up a topic in a few days' time for the welcome address in this month's Bangalore K-Community meeting. Had a miserable brainwave, the outcome of which you can see above. For now, I am just putting up the PPT. If you want me to, I'll probably find the time to add some notes to it as well. What?

8 comments:

Murali said...

Hi Nimmy actually had a question on these long standing contradictions. It involves the KM tail part where we talk about collaboration with other functions.
E.g.
If you talk process/quality it is about efficiency/productivity while KM is for creativity.
Similar contradictions exist for other functions like staffing as well.
So philosophically they are at opposing view points and these are usually added with emotional personalities at leadership levels adding to lack of collaboration or lack of will to collaborate.

Have you faced this, and do have any suggestions that could work out?

Regards

Nimmy said...

Hello Murali, Thanks for leaving a comment and thanks for these important questions.

- I believe that it is not always that the different functions mentioned above have contradictory or opposing objectives. Let's take quality/process vs KM. Isn't it true that KM can also help improve productivity/efficiency? So, for example, if we introduce a knowledge reference point in a process in order to learn from the past (historical database), the process/quality function would be equally interested in implementing it.
- But if it comes to other areas where the functions' approaches differ, I am inclined to believe that if, however, the intentions (end objectives) are the same, it is possible to debate, negotiate and discuss and arrive at an end point.
- But like you rightly point out, sometimes the issue lies elsewhere - it may be political. This could prevent genuine collaboration and is in fact what prevents collaboration in most cases.
- I am not sure if I have any silver bullets or phenomenal solutions but I think the approach must be to understand what the other functions objectives are and then present our own approach/solution in an aligned and understandable manner. Also, we can always pilot ideas and scale them up once both functions are convinced about the outcome. Thirdly, if the top management is involved and knows the importance of combining the KM and the other function's approaches, things may move forward.
Do these thoughts resonate with you?

Nimmy said...

Finally, you must also be ready to share the credit or even give away the credit to the other function if required. As long as your objectives of embedding knowledge are met...

Jaideep Sobti said...

stumped!!

Nimmy said...

@Jai: :-) well, as long as you are not a KMer....it should be okay to ignore this whole thing, what?

Jaideep Sobti said...

Fair enough. Me and Jerry are going to sit on the fence for this one and everything else that's remotely kosher.

Nimmy said...

@Jai: LoL....eeehahhahaaaaaa! Ttbth! :-) Thanks for that nice Monday Morning laugh! Mmm. I wonder if Jerry would be as modest. He might want you to reconsider your approach and tear down the fence and join the spoils. ;-)

Jaideep Sobti said...

Nimmy, :) bow-wow to that! Jerry, we’ve got a deal, ‘ol boy! Ruff! :-)