I’ve a hunch I’ve got a good idea

It was Larry Prusak (when at IBM Consulting) who said “I call my field ‘knowledge management’ but you can’t manage knowledge. Nobody can. What you do – what a company does – is manage the environment that optimizes knowledge.”

Knowledge Managers will be all too familiar with the fact that their organisations are complex systems and will be aware of the challenges associated with ‘managing the environment’.  Key to enabling knowledge to flow (and be optimized) in an organisation (or with a wider supply chain) is to connect people to people; for example, in knowledge cafes, peer assists, after action reviews, and retrospects.  Having the time and space to exchange ideas, hunches, good practice and lessons learnt etc, can improve team, project and organisational performance.

Connecting people to people can, of course, be done face to face or virtually.  Both have their pros and cons, and associated resource (and costs) and technology implications – and whilst for some, the virtual world presents too many distractions; for others it is the distractions (knowledge access/exchange) that lead to new ideas. 

But where do good ideas come from?  This question is further explored in a video by Steven Johnson - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NugRZGDbPFU.  Where do your good ideas come from?

Workshop: Implementing Knowledge Cafes for Business Purpose

There are a number of formats and approaches to running Knowledge Cafes and it is important to answer your ‘for what business purpose’ question before deciding what format and approach to use.  Knowledge Cafes form an important part of a Knowledge Manager’s tool-kit – but need to be used selectively and with purpose.  I cover many of the approaches to running and facilitating Knowledge Cafes in the training I provide for TFPL http://ianwooler.wordpress.com/training-courses/.     

Many readers of the blog will be familiar with David Gurteen of Gurteen Knowledge.  David is a pioneer in the use of Knowledge Cafes and other conversational tools in business and has been running Knowledge Cafes and teaching people how to run them all over the world for the last 8 years.  David is running a Knowledge Cafe workshop on 13th September 2011, and the workshop is designed to help attendees:

• Understand the role and importance of conversation in business
• Design and run Gurteen Knowledge Cafés and other forms of Cafe
• Solve specific business problems and challenges using Knowledge Cafes
• Use other conversational tools and techniques to address business issues

Location: Royal Society of Arts, London
Date: Tuesday 13 September 2011, 09:30 – 16:30
Full Price: £495 + VAT; Public Sector Price: £395 + VAT
If you are, for example, a student or a Charity and genuinely cannot afford the price then call David Gurteen on 07774 178 650 and he will see what he can do for you.

More information about the workshop can be found at: http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/imp-kcafe9