KM Standards Should Be Aimed at…What?
There have been some very interesting and erudite discussions recently in the ActKM group which I have, unfortunately, been too busy to participate in. This comment by Neil Olonoff caught my fancy, though, so I decided to blog it. He has written a position paper noting that many recent US government mis-steps have been “knowledge failures,” and he is now searching for a way to establish KM standards to drive success and consistency in the Federal government. He said:
“Tim’s (Kannegieter) analogy to the fire code is a very good starting point. Fire codes are aimed at avoiding having buildings burn down. KM standards should be aimed at … what? Here are a few suggested functional standard areas …
- knowledge sharing across boundaries under certain circumstances to be defined locally
- adherence to good knowledge storage and retrieval practices, to be defined locally
- meeting an acceptable level of learning and skills in knowledge work competencies (according to a common benchmark, like TPFL or similar)
- formulation, vetting, and publishing of best practices
- expertise and personnel location capability
- knowledge retention and sustainment capabilities to ensure transfer of knowledge to successors.”
There are troublesome words in these suggestions that frequently have different meanings to different people (in bold above), not to mention that the term “knowledge” is used when he actually means “information”. I know his suggestions are only ideas at this point, and a lot of wordsmithing would be needed. But just like every other attempted definition of KM I have ever read, these ideas are full of assumptions of a certain point of view…which may or may not be true and/or complete for all organizations or industries.
To me this begs the question of whether there should be KM standards, or actually, whether there ever can be “KM standards.” There is still widespread disagreement about what KM actually is, even though most people now acknowledge it to be a distinctive management discipline. You can only have standards when you can measure. You can only measure when you have a scale against which to measure. At this stage of the evolution of KM as a discipline, establishing standards could actually limit the the creative impetus to explore the breadth of possibilities KM can offer.
Like I have said many times in the past, KM is still like the elephant in the old fable of the blind men and the elephant. Depending upon what an organization’s need is, and upon the skill and understanding of the person leading the KM charge, that elephant can look more like document management or technology or expertise location or a portal or communities of practice. Perhaps standards for each major component of KM are possible, but I don’t think we are at a point where “KM standards” in a universal sense make any sense at all. Let’s not put it into a box before we know how big that box should be.
