Gerry McGovern reviews a McKinsey study on knowledge management,
concluding that motivation matters more than the technology. Full text
at http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2001/nt_2001_11_19_km.htm.

imho, like most things IT, the deeper our understanding of human
behavior, the better we can design/engineer augmenters. Has anyone
written a comprehensive analysis of diarist and blogger cognition? The
next step would be to compare/contrast with klogging cognition.

Philip Wolff
evanwolf group
http://dijest.editthispage.com
pwolff@...
510-444-8234

<snip>
******************************************************************
KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IS ABOUT DESIRE

The reduction in time to market for products and services
has been a key driver for successful organizations. The
success of knowledge management can be measured in relation
to how it contributes to the right idea being developed
into the right product at the right time at the right
cost.

Knowledge is a critical asset for modern organizations. Yet knowledge
management is a discipline that is little understood. Managers believe
in the theory but few have come to grips with how to actually manage
knowledge in a productive manner.

McKinsey recently published a survey entitled 'Creating a knowledge
culture.' It focused on knowledge management practices in some 40
companies on a global basis. The study was carried out between 1995 and
1998 and had two key findings:

1. Companies that fully embraced knowledge management
reduced the time it took for order generation and
fulfillment by 15 percent during the survey period,
as against a 1.6 percent reduction for those who had
less developed knowledge management strategies.

2. Product development time was reduced by 4.6 percent,
as against a reduction of 0.7 percent.

McKinsey summarized its findings as follows: "Successful companies build
a corporate environment that fosters a desire for knowledge among their
employees and that ensures its continual application, distribution, and
creation."

If you want to be successful at knowledge management
you must do three things:
1. Foster a desire within people to gather knowledge
2. Foster a desire within people to create knowledge
3. Foster a desire within people to share knowledge

Organizations who fail at knowledge management tend to:
1. See knowledge as something that primarily flows
from the top down
2. Implement technology solutions and wait
3. Fail to address human attitudes which see hoarding
knowledge as a route to power

There are two essential ways knowledge can be transferred:
1. By person-to-person interactions
2. By people reading, viewing or listening to content

Historically, the primary way knowledge was transferred
was by people getting together. The Internet, however,
is a direct response to the need to offer alternative
ways by which knowledge can be efficiently transferred.
(Its interactive elements also facilitate new ways by
which people can 'get together.')

When we use email and the Web we are attempting to
transfer information with the objective of creating
knowledge in the mind of the person who receives our communication. The
increased use of email and the Web reflect a significant shift in how we
communicate knowledge. We are becoming more formal. Today, information
gets written down a lot more than it did ten years ago. It's called
publishing. (Also known as content management.)

Despite this profound shift in how knowledge is created
within commercial organizations, the role of publishing
is little understood. Look inside the intranets of most organizations
today and you will find a chaotic approach to publishing. Time, money,
effort and knowledge are being wasted in such information dumps.

The right knowledge can make us all more productive. A professional
publishing strategy is a proven way of transferring knowledge. Desire,
and not technology, should be the foundation of such a strategy: the
desire to create, find and share knowledge.

Gerry McGovern
<mailto:gerry@...>


Related link
McKinsey survey: Creating a knowledge culture
http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/article_abstract.asp?tk=352635:991:21&a
r=991&L2=21&L3=37

</snip>