KM is FUQed; and as a strategic movement has served it’s time…
…its not that the proper subject of KM (decision support, innovation, learning etc.) is dead, but that knowledge management as a strategic movement has served its time and is now irretrievably seen as a sub-function of IT
I think more or less all solutions marketed as KM are a waste of time. New KM capability comes from social computing and developments in the decision support/research arenas which create knowledge management capability as a secondary or even tertiary effect.
I think after ten years, much as it is tempting to argue that KM could be a good thing if only…. The if only is not going to happen, time to move on. The strategic aspects have moved on
- Dave Snowden
Whenever I speak at conference or organisation events I often get asked for KM solutions; my favourite, ‘what’s the solution to KM?‘, which often leads to, ‘the problem is that we can’t sell it to top management‘.
The problem is that the the question is FUQed and we will never get the answer to it! What am I talking about? A Fundamentally Unidentified Question; think about this, how do we stop global warming? The response is far too complex to be framed within a short intelligible answer; for me, answers to these monolithic questions are governed by the Law of Requisite Variety and, as such, are FUQed:
Take a look at the external world (KM), then look at the cues that require response, then look at the conditions required to respond to the cues, and then we can understand the variation required in the solution – or, “Only variety can destroy variety” (Ashby)
David Snowden stated in KM Asia 2010 that he and Larry Prusak had stopped talking about KM, they now talk about decision-making. At K3-Cubed we talk about dynamic capacity and sustainability.
The need of KM is a persistent knowledge. The practice of KM over the last decade has been fundamentally flawed in conception (David Snowden, KM Asia 2010, www.cognitive-edge.com)
Related
Has KM died, and resurrected as social computing? (2008)
Post-KM : enterprise 2.0, facilitation and complexity (2008)
KM is incompatible with the underlying philosophy of traditional management
