organizational knowledge

Please read this comment from Stan Garfield first:

Harold, that article appears to have been written using GenAI, with multiple errors. Here is one example (since corrected after I wrote to the author), that related to you:

“Meena Arivanantham is a knowledge management specialist at the United Nations Development Programme and one of the most experienced practitioners of knowledge management in international development contexts. She presented at the SIKM Leaders Community in May 2024 on sense-making in complexity, demonstrating the application of KM principles to the particularly challenging environment of large multilateral organisations working across dozens of national contexts simultaneously.”

Her correct name is Meena Arivananthan (not Arivanantham), she is not at UNDP, and she never presented to the SIKM Leaders Community. A GenAI tool seems to have partially taken this from the title of your February 2024 SIKM presentation on Sensemaking in Complexity.

Meena and Bruce Boyes pointed out errors by replying to the LinkedIn post linking to the article, as did I.

See the comments below.

A lengthy article on organizational knowledge and the people in the field highlights a number of common mistakes, all of which I have witnessed in my almost three decades of professional practice.

Treating organizational knowledge as an IT problem. This is evident in the budget for the technology purchase compared to human implementation. The latter often has no budget.

Focusing on explicit knowledge and ignoring tacit knowledge. This often comes in the form of offering a training course to cover the new knowledge of a system with no thought to helping people discuss how they will use the new system.

Ignoring the need for trust in order to share knowledge. As I have noted for years, knowledge flows at the speed of trust. No imposed system will generate trust.

Launching a KM initiative without visible leadership support. I have often seen organizational knowledge initiatives launched for the good of employees but with no engagement by executives. The lack of leadership by example dooms the project.

Underestimating the knowledge loss that happens during workforce transitions. With knowledge loss not evident in the next fiscal quarter, executives often ignore its impact.

The author also covers four good observations about project implementation.

Start with one question: “What knowledge do we not capture that we could not afford to lose?” I saw this with a pharmaceutical company that realized, too late, that they had captured why they had selected certain compounds for further research but not why they had rejected the others. When their knowledge about selection criteria changed, they could not go back and find other suitable compounds.

Choose a community. One of our most successful projects was involving the rather small community of Extension Agents at the University of Nebraska to develop ways of networked knowing.

Start somewhere small and visible. This is the only approach, in my experience, and is part of strategic doing.

Develop your vocabulary with your leadership team. This is critical, as you may think everyone understands concepts equally, but they usually do not. I often start by comparing collaboration with cooperation.

Some organizational knowledge clients since Jarche Consulting was launched in 2003. Logos trademarks of each organization.