Two days ago I put up a post commenting on an article on the grayness of KM. This post has a good list of questions to consider when implementing KM.

The questions are:

  1. What do people know?
  2. What people do not know?
  3. How to best leverage people’s knowledge?
  4. How to convince people to share knowledge?
  5. How to map what people know to a business process?
  6. How to fill knowledge gaps?
  7. How to capture unique knowledge?
  8. How to prevent knowledge loss unless such loss is planned abandonment?
  9. To whom or what to turn when people need to fill a knowledge gap?
  10. How to get people the knowledge they need, when they need it?
  11. How to repair knowledge processes if they fail?
  12. How to capture and advocate lessons learned and best practices?
  13. How to value unique and proprietary corporate knowledge?

I think they are all good questions. There are two that I think might deserve more emphasis than others.

Question 2 is one that I see often being ignored. KM is meant to share and organize knowledge. Too often I see small businesses focusing on harvesting what is known. I also see this in small organizations such as Fratenities and non-profit groups. I think it might benefit the implementers if they asked questions 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, and 12 twice. First in the context of the big picture and second in relation to only question 2.

Question number 4 is the next one I think needs more emphasis. In my opinion, it should be number one and, perhaps, should not even be termed a question. It is the objective. Stating that it should not be a question is a bit wrong… It should be asked. I just think that it should be a "special" question.

All in all, I agree with the questions. I just have some different slants on how they should be viewed. It is likely that my experience, somewhat limited, and exposure to KM are showing here. I am usually asked to help in projects where the organization members are younger and/or have very limited understanding of today’s technologies.

I have not read the book… yet but I agree with the post author’s comment on more emphasis being placed on capturing knowledge than other aspects of KM. I think that any implementation of KM must have a key focus of changing the culture of the organization to foster knowledge sharing. That, however, is an entirely different challenge.

If the list of questions is reflective of the book, then the post author is even more correct in staying that it is worth a read.