Posted by Jim Love on October 06, 2001 at 12:00:00:

In Reply to: Re: Why are children so imaginative? posted by Chris on September 26, 2001 at 10:44:49:

First of all -- my god your website is incredible to look at.

But I digress...Children have a sense of wonder and ability to explore which is truly wonderful. It is not totally lost in childhood. I've worked in many IT situations where my programmers had an incredible creative sense. They couldn't finish a program on time, but they were creative.

And on a larger scale. We have the business owner who wants it all and the project manager who has to deliver it on time and on budget.

We should see the problem in terms of these dilemmas and attempt to balance it in these terms. So what role does KM play in this? The framework that I find works comes from a book (shameless plug for my company) called the Relationship Based Enterprise. It says we should look at customer problems (and that's ultimately what we are concerned with) using 3 aspects of a framework -- Discovery, Dialogue and Discipline. It occurs to me that this "multi-faceted" role for KM is so important.

I need methods to have a meaninful exchange of my ideas, the constraints of construction, the context and environment -- without yet "solving" the problem.

If we can have this type of discussion, including management, IT and our customers and suppliers - then maybe we can make some real discoveries about what is important. Let us, in Dilbert terms be the last of the BOHICANS (bend over here it comes again) and design something that truly adds value for all involved!

But once we have dialogued and discovered, let us remember and respect the discipline required to build these things we call "information systems". Let us remember that this magic we see is predefined logic resting on a foundation of zeroes and ones. Let us not then "dump" the problem on IT but particate in the effort and make the inevitable compromises that are needed.

So KM must be multi-faceted in the IT (or any other sense). It must facilitate unstructured discussions among all parties. It must catalogue tacit information and facts. It must help nourish and preserve culture. And it must assist in the technical disciplines necessary to deal with the complexity of technical and business systems. Tall order! Maybe that's why it's so hard.

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