Posted by Rob on December 18, 2001 at 12:33:15:

In Reply to: You're perfectly right... posted by Riva Gianluca on December 18, 2001 at 09:23:09:

Riva

I popped in and wanted to respond. Beyond technology isn't nothing. Beyond technology is more technology. History has proven that. Why? Technology is a product of knowledge, of thinking. It IS knowledge in action.

The question remains how much of this technology is relevant to individual organizations. I would agree with e-mail, but groupware, or its variants, have been too costly related to its general benefits. It is generally too complicated a task for organizations to integrate and align business processes and procedures, which comes as part and parcel of enterprise packages, yet they keep on trying, and I admire them for that.

I don't think that people in general do not know what knowledge is and so forth. I do however think that the human ability to reason in the abstract, at multiple depths, is limited to a small percentage of the population.

I think many organizations have become far too complex for their own good, and now they are settling for "simple" steps in managing this complexity, without being able to visualize, and hold onto, the whole complexity. It is just too damn difficult.

My theory on integration management, developed over the last 5 years and still in development, maintains that we need to cut through the confusing mists of complexity. We need to see the critical issues and relate those to organizational, and personal futures. It can be done, and many have maintained over time that it is too complex a task. The aim of my thinking is to encapsulate knowledge, which took me many years to learn and assemble, into a package which can be presented to people in a workable product. It needs to be accurate, easy to use, doable, and totally undemanding of organizational time, in relative terms.

I believe to survive and prosper organizations need to do more with less resources and less time. I am aware that this is one of the driving issues of globalization. I think that perhaps this need is what gave birth to the popularity of KM.

I would maintain that KM is an organizational, and personal, coping mechanism for chaotic times, times which were predicted for the new millenium more than 10 years ago by people such as Tom Peters, Alvin Toffler, and others. Most of these warnings were generally not taken too seriously, and the times have overtaken many organizations.

The knowledge we seem to lack is the ability to extrude knowledge into the future, to make it work at scale. Employment agencies generally do brisk trade. Ever wondered why? I think it is because they manage an economical perspective of knowledge. Supply and demand. The problem is that the revenue stream between people and organizations are so vastly different, that the people in the organization generally do not have any other model to follow to show them how to earn a living. I agree there are variants of employment models, but generally they retain basic supply and demand laws.

Organizations should probably figure out why customers want what they have to offer, or why not, and how much they could charge for it. They should also learn what else customers are prepared to pay for, and then check if they have the resources for these items in "stock". After these facts, it should be possible to align any KM initiative to the direction the organization has selected. It would be easy to measure the success of a KM approach by checking the equity of an organization.

In conclusion. Computer hardware and software are like garden tools. These tools are used for cultivating, shaping and encouraging growth. The gardener has to know the shape and desired outcome in order to apply these tools successfully. It is quite simple to understand is it not? Then why the confusion? Why do KM practitioners insist on selling garden tools to organizations? I think because most of them do not understand the nature of KM, and thus they cannot realize the power of KM. Furthermore, as with a domino effect, if unenlightened and money-oriented practitioners lead organizations in KM, then it is clear that the organizations would suffer from a serious case of KM misunderstanding. This is really what I think.

I have spoken to enough KM consultants and practitioners over the years to conclude that there are a minority who actually have a passion, and understanding for KM. And these people lead organizations and publish articles, which when related to known publications 5-10 years ago, are utter trash.

KM has always maintained that individualization should take place for KM solutions, and that people should look inside themselves for the answers, as Hanniball from "Silence of the lambs", clearly indicated.

If people are scared of looking at themselves in the mirror, how can they individualize. If people are afraid to confront their own lack of competence in certain areas, how can one re-invent and re-engineer, or merely grow better by the next year? I don't think this can be done, as we are all too often caught in our scripts of past behavior.

I have taken the last 7 years of my life to start re-inventing myself, and now my mind is a little too different for traditionalists. I would never go back to my past thinking, as I am coping very well with life and its challenges. KM is a personal thing, and I wish people in organizations would just get the message. I wish all of us would get the message, then KM could be a positive power in the world to make it a better place for all of us and our offspring. Understanding KM leads to understanding and tolerance for people and life, even if one notices those people living in a production mindset. In this sense, KM is a social revolution, and believe me, I am convinced it has the power to change the world.

Slightly dramatic, but if only people believed in the nature of KM. Now! How the heck can technology ever hold a candle to such a powerful mindset? It cannot, and technology will then be ruled by people who understand its purpose and function, which is to serve people. From what I've seen, most organizational technologies enslave employees and rule their lives. How many people are forever on standby because the damned system falls over or cannot process requests or runs out of capacity? That is the price of technology, yet KM can even solve those problems, to the benefit of people, and thus organizations.

I really have to go now, but thanks for the opportunity to reaffirm my convictions about KM. I aim to hasten this social revolution by challenging the orthodoxy of the social-employment order. I plan to do this at scale. I plan to use technology as a delivery tool for the product, which would be an artefact of my and others' thinking over the years. I plan to implement the nature of KM, in a very simple manner. It would cost me very little in capital, yet the thinking behind the system could barely be duplicated, mainly due to being embedded and disguised from people. The motives of a system (computers or otherwise) can no-where be found in a system, but it always exist. It cannot be reverse engineered, it cannot be duplicated. Each creation is unique, even the copies. Cloning does offer tremendous systems-engineering potential, and impossible organization cloning opportunities. How? I'll let the fanatical thinkers mull that one over for a few years. :-)

Been fun,

Best regards,

Rob

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Follow Ups:

• That's exciting! Riva Gianluca 11:03:27 12/20/01 (2)
  • Re: That's exciting! Rob 15:31:56 12/20/01 (1)
    • Good luck Riva Gianluca 13:11:11 12/22/01 (0)

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