Beyond knowledge management to better management
Are you ready to walk away from your major line of business? If not, you may be turning away a new, more profitable line of business. Or, you may find you're soon out of business altogether. Not convinced? Well then, spend a little while with Xerox. When you hear the word Xerox, you tend to... Continue Reading →
Seth Godin recently wrote about Derek Sivers (founder of CDBaby), who built his company with one thought in mind: "What could I build that would be like a dream come true for independent musicians?" The post ends with the following provocative statements: If your business is a dream come true for customers, you win. Game... Continue Reading →
At a recent gathering of senior law firm knowledge management experts, an attendee asked two provocative questions: If all the knowledge management personnel in your firm were to fall off the face of the earth today, would it result in a decline in firm profits? And, if what we are doing does not have an... Continue Reading →
It's budget season in many law firms. If that weren't bad enough, we're preparing budgets against the backdrop of disturbing economic news. And worst of all, most law firm knowledge management departments are cost centers. What are you going to do?Traditionally, there have been two approaches to dealing with difficult economic times: cut costs and... Continue Reading →
You get what you measure. This isn't news -- first you decide what you want to achieve and then you design your metrics to let you know when you've arrived. That's good practice and it's the message of my earlier post, The Metrics Mess. Simple stuff, right? Wrong. You'd be amazed how often folks misunderstand... Continue Reading →
While I don't have a snowball's chance in any place warm of ever achieving geekdom, I couldn't resist testing my abilities against Gizmodo's The 50 Skills Every Geek Should Have. I flunked -- but I'm not too worried. In fact, I suspect that I'm in pretty good company.That said, I do sometimes wonder what a... Continue Reading →
Have you ever heard an administrator say that their department could fulfill its mission without additions to headcount? Yet in this economy, more and more administrators are going to be told that they must meet their institutional obligations with a smaller staff. Before we let panic overtake us, let's spend a moment thinking about the... Continue Reading →
A lot of electronic ink has been spilled on the possibility of adapting microblogging technology for use behind the firewall. As with other social media tools, the ability of many to imagine enterprise uses for microblogging (or microsharing or microlearning) has been constrained by their encounters with the microblogging tools some of us have learned... Continue Reading →
Whether you agree with its conclusions or not, you owe it to yourself to read Ronald J. Baker's article in the November 2008 issue of the Journal of Accountancy. That article, The Firm of the Future, makes an interesting case for moving beyond leveraging people hours to leveraging intellectual capital. According to Baker, the formula... Continue Reading →
National Public Radio is experimenting with new ways of using social media tools to involve their audience in the creation of live radio shows. One of the most recent examples is their effort to form ad hoc communities, as demonstrated by the new wikis related to the Brian Lehrer Show's 30 Issues in 30 Days... Continue Reading →
Above and Beyond KM 