Posted by Vaughn P. Fox on September 23, 1999 at 23:16:38:

In Reply to: Re: Curious about Knowledge Management posted by Daan de Koning on September 23, 1999 at 15:42:04:

Daan,
You stated that "I think it is 'ordinary' management, but in a 'knowledge intensive environment', e.g. an organization with mainly knowledge workers (who make a living with 'thinking' rather then with 'doing')." That leads me to believe that KM is used to support senior leadership, but that is where I become confused. A leader "thinks" to influence actions/issues in a positive manner. Knowledge is used by leadership to attain understanding they need to make effective, timely decisions. Those decisions influence actions and activities that require decisionmakers to gain a new level of understanding that results from decisions previously made. This action enables them to be better prepared to make new decisions in an effective manner.
Knowledge by itself is not going to help people make better decisions. Judgement, objective reasoning applied to knowledge gained will promote enhanced understanding…even in the face of uncertainty. Senior leadership, middle management/leadership and workers are ALL decisionmakers. The decisions made by workers often influence results that satisfy goals established by senior leadership used to attain the corporate vision. The decisions made by workers and middle management/leadership are directly influenced by their UNDERSTANDING of the intent, goals and vision.
If I think it is extremely important to recognize the process used to Vaughn,
It took me some time to read your posting

You asked for my definition of KM, but you also state:
"If the process identified above is accurate, why are people focusing on knowledge instead of
understanding? Whether they use KM or IM, is irrelevant…as long as they recognize where they need to
place their priority of work/efforts to obtain desired results. "
Daan, I do believe information requirements (Irs) are THE key to success. IRs remain relatively enduring, whereas the other factors change over time. Look at history. The same IRs used many years ago are still used today. What has changed over time are the organizational structure, command relationships and capability sets used to support those IRs. I am not suggesting that you ignore the other factors, but if people could identify IRs they need to succeed, useful solutions could be routinely developed.
If you can identify IRs used to support a knowledge organization and IRs used to support a product and service organization, the processes used to support the IRs will vary, but the baseline list of IRs between all three organizations will be relatively the same. Try it. Thanks for your thoughts.

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Follow Ups:

• Re: The philosophy of KM Diwakar Thakore 12:27:36 11/18/99 (0)
• Re: Curious about Knowledge Management Daan de Koning 08:42:06 9/24/99 (2)
  • Re: Curious about Knowledge Management Vaughn P. Fox 08:21:10 9/25/99 (1)
    • another UTK Daan de Koning 10:34:24 9/26/99 (0)

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