Here's a question to get you started: "What does Knowledge Management have in common with communism and libertarianism?"
Answer: All three are idealistic notions whose great ship of principle founders on the rocks of human nature.
The term "Knowledge Management" does not appear in management or academic journals before 1986. Then, for about ten years there are very few articles and most of those are in special editions of one journal or the other that is devoted to Knowledge Management.
Then, around the middle of the 90s, the number of articles on Knowledge Management begins to increase and does so steadily through the early part of the new century. At the same time, major consulting firms begin to tout their Knowledge Management practices and business schools start offering courses (and in some case majors) in Knowledge Management.
The majority of these articles, the copy on the consulting firm web sites, and the descriptions of college courses share some characteristics. First, they almost all deal with a technologically based approach to Knowledge Management. In many firms and schools, in fact, Knowledge Management is placed squarely under the IT banner.
Second all of these descriptions and expressions seem to use "information" and "knowledge" interchangeably. As one British researcher notes, it's possible to take many articles, course descriptions and web site pages, do a global search and replace of the words "knowledge" with "information" and not change the meaning of the piece.
Third, the articles from this period almost universally treat Knowledge Management as a magic stone which, when rubbed, will solve all of the problems of the enterprise. There is a catch. To get the benefits, you must "boil the ocean" and introduce Knowledge Management throughout your organization.
For the period from 1995 through 2000, Knowledge Management had all the earmarks of a classic management fad. Consultancies scrambled to climb on the bandwagon. And KM promised transformational results, that, as you might expect never materialized.
Why then? Why did Knowledge Management begin its run when it did? There were several reasons.
First, it was the time of the Great Dot-Com Bubble. The world, business and life as we know it were to be transformed by the power of networked communications and technology.
Consultancies and the partners who are the authors of business books, needed something new. Business Process Re-Engineering was fading from popularity. Downsizing and right-sizing were the most popular management tools to ever destroy a business. And the star of Organizational Learning was clearly on the descent.
The Dot-Com Revolution enthusiasts and the consultancies seized upon some real successes. At Booz Allen, the Knowledge Online project showed that you could bring new consultants up to speed quickly with technological support. At Texas Instruments a best practices systems moved online saved the firm millions. At Xerox a networked sharing system tried to mimic the morning coffee where technicians shared tips and ideas.
The truth seemed to be that there were magnificent gains to be made in productivity, but that magic technology wasn't going to boil anyone's ocean. As the Dot-Com Bubble deflated, Knowledge Management moved, quietly, from management fad to management tool.
In the last few years the term Knowledge Management has disappeared from consulting sites as a major practice area. But the number of articles about it has remained steady. Lots of things have begun to be included under the Knowledge Management umbrella and many old friends among management tools have begun to look quite KM-like.
What's gone is the sense of magic, that KM would solve all the problems with a wave of the wand. Instead, KM has donned work clothes and started to make a difference in many organizations.
The consulting firm of Bain and Company has been reporting for years on the use of various management tools. In its 2003 report the firm notes that Knowledge Management was above average in adoption, but also far above average in abandonment. It ranked near the bottom of 33 management tools in satisfaction.
My guess is that the projects run by the companies interviewed by Bain were of the old, faddish, boil-the-ocean variety. In the meantime old friends like the Balanced Scorecard have matched KM in adoption, but generated far higher satisfaction ratings as the basic BSC idea has become automated and delivered over networks.
In the meantime there are lots of companies out there working on projects that use data, information and knowledge more effectively to make their organizations more productive. If you want to be one of those, you need to follow three rules.
Rule 1: You don't have to call a spade a spade, but you have to know that spades are for digging. In other words you have to make sense of the language that surrounds Knowledge Management and projects that go by that name.
Rule 2: Will it keep an old lady warm? When all the specs and tech and management jargon are done you have to ask practical questions about the potential and costs of any project.
Rule 3: There are no easy answers. There are only intelligent choices.
To make those rules work, you have to learn some basic concepts and definitions.
