Knowledge vs. Learning vs. Information vs. transfer

I just recently received an email about disaster preparedness, it contained a scan of a document that the person who sent it to me had received. What does this have to do with KM? Nothing and everything. The point the person who sent me the scanned document was making was that he had received this document in the middle of summer, while people were away on vacation, it was poorly produced, there didn’t seem to be an electronic version available, and he believed that if any of these floods, fires, earthquakes etc. ever happened (or maybe that should be when they happen), he wouldn’t be able to remember the information in the document (which was about 10 pages long), and if he remembered that he had received this document, he wouldn’t be able to find it again. Again, so what you say? What does this have to do with KM or learning or information or anything at all? Well, if we are doing knowledge management, or learning management or information management we need to be concerned about how knowledge/information gets transferred and shared. How do the users want to receive it? What is their environment like? What circumstances will they be … Continue reading

Posted in Business-IT Alignment, Design Thinking, Information Management, knowledge by design, Knowledge Management, Organizational Learning | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Notes from KM Legal Europe January 2015

I attended KM Legal Europe last week in Amsterdam; I enjoyed the conference very much. I got to talk with many of the speakers and attendees and learn more about what the law firms and corporate legal departments in Europe are doing in the KM space. I was impressed by their thoughtfulness and recognition of the fact that KM can bring them efficiencies and effectiveness as well as innovations and competitive advantage. They were a passionate group of practitioners. While KM in law tends to focus on documented knowledge because of the nature of the sector and the need to track matters and precedents, there were discussions of lessons learned and sharing tacit knowledge too. One of the things that (pleasantly) surprised me, was the discussion of automated document creation, when I have spoken with other organizations (not just law firms) about this technology they haven’t even known what it was, so to sit in a room where many were enthusiastic users was refreshing. Other things that I found refreshing were the discussion of continuous improvement, six sigma, and process re-engineering. Again, all things that utilize an organization’s knowledge and especially, at least in my mind, the use of lessons … Continue reading

Posted in Change Management, Collaboration, Information Management, Innovation, Knowledge Management, Law Firm KM, Technology | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

KM in Law Firms: compare and contrast

(this is a slightly longer version of an article that I published in the Knoco March 2013 newsletter, one of 5 flavours of KM that were discussed) In many law firms knowledge management starts in the IT department, and in a few cases, the library and like in many other organizations is focused on document management and technology. Also in common with other organizations law firms are dealing with pressure to reduce costs, be more efficient and effective for their clients, address issues of an aging workforce, and the technology demands of freshly minted lawyers who expect near instant access to knowledge. There are also differences in KM inside a law firm. While in many organizations KM focuses on not just access to information/knowledge but on learning from mistakes, e.g. after action reviews and lessons learned processes and databases, this seems almost totally absent in law firms. As I prepared to write this article, I wondered if I had just been missing something because of my limited exposure to KM in law firms. Maybe there really was a learning focus that I was missing out on; but in the research scan I did to supplement my experience, I didn’t find … Continue reading

Posted in Collaboration, Information Management, Innovation, Knowledge Management, Organization models, Technology | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

LawTech Camp, KM Technology discussion

A few weeks ago, I participated in LawTech Camp in Toronto. Connie Crosby and I were launching our beta-test for our Law Firm KM assessment tool, so we had an opportunity to do a demo presentation and talk about KM, I’ve posted the slides on SlideShare, click on the <demo presentation> or <about KM> links to see the slides. There was a lot of discussion both during and after the presentation about one of the slides, so Connie wrote a blog post about it, which you can see here: http://www.slaw.ca/2012/06/11/km-101-more-on-technology-complexity/#top.  

Posted in Business-IT Alignment, Collaboration, Community of Practice, Decision making, Information Management, Information Overload, Knowledge Management, Mentoring, Social Knowledge Management, Social Media | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

KM helps you be lazy!*

Imagine this scenario: you’re working hard on a project or task, you’ve got a deadline you’ve got to meet, but you’re stuck, you don’t know how to finish. What do you do? Well, if you are experienced in the ways of knowledge management you: ask your colleagues, ask the Community of Practice you’re a member of, search in your expertise location system or yellow pages at peoples profiles, post something on your internal Q&A or social media application, you search your corporate document management system, ECM system, or other such repository/repositories to find the answer. And you find the answer, doing considerably less work than creating the solution yourself and you meet your deadline. With all that time you saved you take a couple of minutes to post the solution, so that someone in your shoes days/weeks/months/years from now can find your solution and be lazy too! *Thanks to Kathleen Wilson for the idea for this post.

Posted in Collaboration, Community of Practice, Information Management, Knowledge Management, Social Knowledge Management, Social Media | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The Difference Between KM and IM

Check out this exchange about the difference between KM and IM http://www.nickmilton.com/2011/10/question-or-short-rant.html?utm_term=knowledge+management&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=facebook

Posted in Information Management, Knoco, Knowledge Management | Tagged , , | Leave a comment
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