KM is Dead, Long Live KM!

Maybe hate is a bit strong, and it's as a matter of fact not the term, however the way it is used. For all that, as I was struggling to finalize my contribution to this month's Social Business theme, I was saved by a fellow author's article: Knowledge Management in 2012: Probably Dead by Roan Young.

Probably the key words in the sentence that ring the KM death knell are "as we know it." For I must ask, who are we? People who count themselves as KM practitioners or specialists? Human Resource or Human Capital specialists? Business people with an interest in organizational memory? The collective "we" in this context may have very many and very different ideas on how Knowledge Management, as they know it, is dying or evolving.

Roan goes on to suggest, "the biggest problem with KM is that it is too broadly defined." I hear you brother; in my presentation to the AIIM Info360 conference last year, I referenced work by Professor Michael Sutton of the Gore Business School at Westminster College, who collected a library of over 100 definitions of Knowledge Management back in 2008.. Anybody want to bet that list has expanded since at that time?

However, I would ask if that lack of a single, simple and broadly agreed upon definition is actually such a problem? Does it truly matter if your organization has its own, different definition of KM, as long as everyone in your organization agrees on it, understands it, and more to the point, understands how that definition will be used to derive value for your organization in enabling its business strategy?

Roan goes onto to say: "…needless to say, we have failed to meet those inflated, unrealistic expectations. People get disappointed with KM and decide to move on." That may then be true, but at that time I have worked in organizations where changes in business priority, and in doing so changes in funding priority have killed initiatives of every kind, whether they be business led or research oriented, so during I don't as a matter of fact disagree with Roan, I think he is being melodramatic.

Come on, in all seriousness? KM is dying because we can't define it, nevertheless it will be saved, reborn, resurrected as social business? Can I legitimately insert "ROFL" here, because there is nothing "woolly" at all about that term, is there!

To be honest, it is not that I totally disagree with Roan, however I have a very wide personal definition of knowledge management. To me it is 95% non-technological, so to say that 5 largely technological trends — social computing, mobile, cloud, big data, Gen Y — will either kill KM as we know it or morph KM into something moreover loosely defined is just, then, it's just bizarre.

Maybe hate is a bit strong, and it's as a matter of fact not the term, however the way it is used. Still, as I was struggling to finalize my contribution to this month's Social Business theme, I was saved by a fellow author's article: Knowledge Management in 2012: Probably Dead by Roan Young.

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