KM Concepts

What we should know to be considered a proficient KM adviser and knowledge worker

• codification vs. personalization - the trade-off between capture and storage of explicit information and making connections to people that know.

• exploration vs. exploitation - should you focus on gathering external information and buying (recruiting) expertise or capture internal best practices and grow local competencies?

• practice vs. process - the balance between informal learning and strictly defined repeatable activties.

• best practices - pattern language, distinctions, collaborative writing, ontologies, inquiry, reflection, concept mapping

• after action reviews (AARs) - learning by gathering participants after completion of a significant project, exploring, reflecting, recording advances and mistakes.

• peer reviews - inviting colleagues who have experience of similar projects to share their tips, tricks and lessons learned before starting out.

• knowledge mapping & audits - discovering opportunities, knowledge gaps and charting flows. A survey to understand where current knowledge is created and who needs it.

• lessons learned (learning histories) - a systematic review of failures and successes conducted by a neutral party.

• 'Ba' - a physical or virtual collaborative space, where participants feel safe and exchange insights.

• induction (aka data mining) - searching for patterns, rules and interesting insights from collected (business) data.

• source documents - collaborative scripts that set forth the intention and vision of the firm or group.

• web standards & protocols - HTML, XML, XTM, RSS