Posted by Martyn R Jones on July 19, 1999 at 23:06:58:

In Reply to: Re: Exactly my point! posted by P. Richard Hansen on July 19, 1999 at 17:49:11:

Hello,

I am not sure that I wholly follow this thread or that I am interpreting the contributions quite as they were intended.

For example, I understood from the contribution that a reason for contributing here is that someone will not understand the contribution, could my understanding possibly be correct? Or should my reading have resulted in an interpretation along the lines of “one contributes opinion here that will be hopefully understood but not necessarily agreed with?

I still do not see how one can state that a manual can be a source of knowledge and that knowledge cannot be put on paper. Maybe there is a reason for this seemingly contradictory stance, or again I have mis-interpreted the contribution, but my own evidence of KM and Re-Use of Knowledge (sometimes using the paradigm of the “manual”) indicates that certain classes of knowledge can be recorded and re-used this way.

Most of the managers that I know do not manage by control, have no desire to manage by control and have abandoned antiquated forms of management many years ago. Hence, there is little desire amongst managers that I know to use KM, IT, IS or any digital technology etc. to get the feeling of being in control.

KM is about so many things apart from IT that I feel that sometimes something must be going wrong in communicating what KM is all about. Okay, there are KM forums that emphasize IT/IM/KM technology over actual KM, but this is due to the fact that it is much easier to do so – after all knowledge management is a less tangible subject. However, don’t confuse the technology with either the problem or the solution. So saying that KM should instead concentrate on “bringing knowledgeable people together” is to be unaware that this is occurring in many ongoing KM projects – in some of which I (like others) have been directly involved since 1992.

…… etc

There are some very good books which contain references and descriptions of how companies are implementing KM, references and descriptions that may well dispel some of the technology biased myths that currently seem to be doing the rounds.

Best regards,

Martyn R Jones
www..org

• been there, done that ... forgot to write it down?

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