Which management thinkers do you listen to?

A recent blog post published in Business Insider highlighted the “10 thinkers that executives actually listen to”.  The ‘10’ come from a global ranking of world’s top 50 management thinkers published every two years on
http://www.thinkers50.com/about
. 

You can find more about the top ‘10’ via the following link
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-top-10-thinkers-that-executives-actually-listen-to-2012-2#
and click down from ‘10’ to ‘1’ via
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-top-10-thinkers-that-executives-actually-listen-to-2012-2#10-malcolm-gladwell-1
 

Which management thinkers do you listen to?

Blogging – on the decline?

There is an interesting blog by Val Skelton for InformationToday about the decline of blogging.  Val’s post (see link below) refers to a new in-depth study undertaken by the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth on the usage of social media in fast-growing corporations. 

As Val says, “The report is data rich and interesting reading.  It shows that the use of social media in organisations is evolving, with some mature tools being dropped in favour of newer ones.  A recognition of their value in supporting networking, and new ways of communicating, means that many organisations are planning to increase their investment in social tools”. 

http://www.infotodayeurope.com/2012/02/02/a-blog-post-about-the-decline-of-blogging/

Image of Blogging Readiness – with thanks to cambodia4kidsorg’s photostream on Flickr  
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cambodia4kidsorg/

The essential competence – demonstrating value

You can download the paper ‘the essential competence – demonstrating value’ that Sandra Ward and I presented at Online 2011 via link below.  The paper includes our thoughts and ideas on:

1. What is value?
2. Sources of value in and from Information Management (IM) and Knowledge Management (KM) activities
3. The challenge of demonstrating value in and from IM and KM activities
4. Addressing the key challenge – value is gained at the point of use; not the point of provision
5. A framework for demonstrating the value of IM and KM activities
6. The competencies needed by information and knowledge professionals to demonstrate value

This paper was first presented at Online Information Conference 2011. 

The essential competence – Ward and Wooler 2011

Is knowledge management dead or alive and kicking?

Great question, good discussion, and some very interesting blog posts provide views and thoughts – all brought together by Jack Vinson in the death of KM, redux.

 

Trust in the workplace

Last week I ran a Knowledge Management Foundation Training Programme
http://www.tfpl.com/resources/training.cfm
 on behalf of TFPL.  A common theme across a number of the conversations and exercises completed with delegates on the day was that of trust.  Trust in colleagues; trust in the information and knowledge being shared and re-used; trust in sharing learning and mistakes. 

The theme of trust in the workplace was also raised recently in an interesting blog post published by Lyndsay Rees-Jones on the recently launched
http://cyberworkplace.wordpress.com/
.  The blog post
http://cyberworkplace.wordpress.com/2012/02/10/10th-feb-trust-in-the-workplace/
includes an interesting story about Sir John Harvey-Jones and is worth a read.

Need a vision for knowledge management?

Natural Resources Canada (www.nrcan.gc.ca) knowledge management vision.  The video ‘says’ it all………

Lessons learnt from knowledge enterprises – watch out for the unintended consequences

The following short video, presented by Dr Ashok Jashapara (Senior Lecturer in Knowledge Management at Royal Holloway, University of London), highlights examples of knowledge management activity and learning in Ernst and Young, World Bank, Infosys, Toyota and Shell. 

Perhaps the most interesting example is that of Infosys and the “unintended consequence” resulting from the introduction of knowledge currency units. 

What have been the unintended consequences of knowledge management activity in your organisation?

The link between a sutra, wikipedia and knowledge management

Written 2000 years ago the Kama Sutra is perhaps best known for its chapter on sexual pleasure.  However, this is only one (the second) of seven chapters. 

In this week’s In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg (see link to Podcast below), he and his guests discuss this important piece of Indian literature and start their conversation by explaining the meaning of ‘Kama’ and then ‘Sutra’.  

One of his guests explains that Sutra means a thread or string of aphorisms (“pearls of knowledge”) to be passed on to others and likens a Sutra to an early form of  Wikipedia - a knowledge base that many can tap into, and an attempt to capture the knowledge of a culture at the time.  Sound familiar? 

Information and knowledge managers reading this blog know all too well about the organisational challenges associated with capturing, sharing and transferring knowledge.  Perhaps a few lessons can be learnt from understanding the ways in which sutras are composed and shared?  

http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/iot#playepisode1