Knowledge Management is the cultivation of an environment within which people want to share, learn and collaborate leading to individual, team and organisational improvement.
I like it—even better than my own definitions—because of its unflinching emphasis on culture, as well as its recognition that performance is important at multiple levels. The only change I might make is a very small concession to the tools and techniques that help make this possible, perhaps, "...is the cultivation and facilitation..."
Sira (mermaid) is a sublime collaboration from Senegalese kora player Ablaye Cissoko and German trumpeter Volker Goetze. Besides their mutual appreciation for jazz and jeliya, the musicians cite influences as varied as Youssou N'Dour, Keith Jarrett, Miles Davis and Naná Vasconcelos. The ten fusion duets are evocative, not so much of either jali or jazz landscapes but of that green and peaceful place you're sometimes lucky enough to visit in your dreams. For me, the album triggered both reverie and reverence.
Over time, griots have filled a similar social niche in West Africa as the Celtic bard or Scandinavian skald; troubadours singing stories woven with knowledge and insights into ancient history and current events and even delivering news and advising leaders. According to a great Wikipedia article, they were indispensable aides to Malian warrior-kings. Village griots kept their community's tales alive by singing of deaths, battles, hunts, etc.
If you want to learn how to be a spy, watch Burn Notice. If you want to learn how to be a knowledge manager, watch Burn Notice.
Here's the thing: Burn Notice is the best simulation I've ever seen of effective knowledge management techniques. It's not just the easy collaboration of the expert team (compared to the inept dysfunction of Jack Bauer's CTU office on "24"). It's how much you learn about being a fictional spy.
Apropos of Monday’s outburst, this came across my feed this morning:
Improving individual, team and organizational performance is a primary focus of management and human resource development (HRD). However, only in the past decade has the literature begun to report specific research on the effects of many of the psychological and behavioral constructs that influence performance and productivity of individual employees.
The purpose of this review is to explore the literature related to interpersonal forgiveness in organizations and its possible implications for management and HRD theory and practice. It defines forgiveness and provides a theoretical framework for its consideration within the workplace environment. It also reviews and discusses the benefits and risks of forgiveness, the role of leadership in a forgiving culture, and the literature regarding related business interventions...
Some colleagues were discussing how fear, distrust and politics are the biggest barriers to organizational change. I wish I could be more hopeful about eradicating them or eliminating their causes, but I have started to see it differently.
Instead, now I treat these things as "gravitational constants" in any organization that need to be managed, mitigated and ultimately minimized. Because they are naturally occurring in social interactions, people should be able to reflect on whether or not they are productive without feeling additional guilt or anger. That’s critical.
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