"Knowledge Management" for Oxy Morons

Great post on knowledge management strategies in his Knowledge Jolt with Jackblog:

ROI discussions are simply part of the fabric of making decisions. If one can talk intelligently about the expected returns (in whatever form) and the benefits to the company and the people, then it is more likely to be approved.

I tend to think of "knowledge managment" as an oxymoron - a term used by people who believe that knowledge exists as discrete "objects" that can be digested inside empty heads to change thinking and behavior.

I have helped (re)design and implement a number of KM systems for some big telecom companies in the Denver area. Some of these tools have been tremendously sophisticated and yet, enthusiasm (and often usage) seems to drop off as more features get added.

The most successful (in terms of improving measurable performance) KM solutions we have implemented to date are unstructured wikis vetted by peer groups of 50 people or less.

We are experimenting with a knowledge vetting / "prediction economy" tool (see Sunstein's ground-breaking Infotopia) that uses peer review and "futures trading" on the likely success of anonymous posts. As an end user, you have no idea if the entry comes from a VP, M&P SME or someone still in training. Similar to digg.com, if a post gains popularity, it makes it to the top of the info heap and the poster's "whuffie" score rises. At the same time, the earlier a reviewer successfully predicts that the post will gain popularity, the more points get awarded to the reviewer. In this system, both posting valuable info and predicting the likely value of posts are rewarded.

We'll see how it goes. So far, the early results are impressive (starting with "low-tech" paper-based trials with groups of supervisors and managers). Onward ho!