Each week, Stan Garfield puts the following question to a different KM thought leader: "If you were invited to give a keynote speech on knowledge management, what words of wisdom or lessons learned would you impart?" This week's answer in The Weekly Knowledge Management Blog is from Fred Nickols, Toolmaker to Knowledge Workers.It seems to... Continue Reading →
Celebrating May Day
In many parts of the world, May 1 is the day on which they commemorate efforts to limit the working day to eight hours. They celebrate by taking the day off. For my colleagues in US law firms, an eight-hour work day may seem Utopian, and May 1st this year most definitely is a work... Continue Reading →
The Challenges of Fragmented Knowledge
In Dave Snowden's view, "everything is fragmented." And, he thinks this is a good thing. But it has some challenging implications for knowledge management generally and law firm knowledge management specifically.Dave sets out his concept of fragmented knowledge in the May 2008 KM World Magazine in which he points to "the shift during the life... Continue Reading →
Collaborating for Fun or Work or Both?
In his post, The Muddle in the Collaboration Middle, Tom Davenport sets out what he views as the two viable uses for collaboration and collaborative technologies in the workplace: * Fun -- collaboration for purely social purposes * Work -- collaboration for narrowly-defined business purposesHe goes on to say that businesses fail when they try... Continue Reading →
Twitter and the Dinosaur
On the days when I feel like a total technology dinosaur, I've found myself completely mystified by Twitter. I've heard people raving about it, but have always been left with the same three questions:1. Who has the time to send updates?2. Who has the time to read them?3. Who (other than a mother) actually cares... Continue Reading →
Best Practice vs Next Practice
Mark Gould's comment on my previous post (Not Quite) Best Practices pointed me to Derek Wenmoth's blog post on Best Practice vs Next Practice. Derek makes the interesting observation that while best practice is a snapshot of what we know has worked well in the past, next practice is an attempt to take that prior... Continue Reading →
(Not Quite) Best Practices
When are "Best Practices" Not Best Practices? That's the question addressed in a recent Harvard Business blog post by Scott Anthony. In this post he makes the valid point that there are very few best practices that work 100% of the time. In his view, the efficacy of best practices is situational: For just about... Continue Reading →
Building a Collaborative Workplace
Shawn Callahan, Mark Schenk and Nancy White have just published an Anecdote Whitepaper entitled Building a Collaborative Workplace. They summarize their whitepaper as follows:This paper has three parts. We start by briefly exploring what we mean by collaboration and why organisations and individuals should build their collaboration capability. Then, based on that understanding, we lay... Continue Reading →
When Change Seems Impossible
Marshall Goldsmith, the noted consultant and leadership coach, gets right to the point in his Harvard Business blog post When People Don't Want to Change: Your job is to help people achieve positive, lasting change in behavior. How do you deal with people who have no desire to change? I don’t! Have you ever tried... Continue Reading →
Knowledge Sharing Toolkit
The ICT-KM program of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research has created a Knowledge Sharing Toolkit that provides guidance and resources for organizations interested in developing knowledge sharing among their employees and constituents. Nancy White at Full Circle Associates asks that readers take a look at the Toolkit and send in their feedback. They... Continue Reading →
Above and Beyond KM 