KM Outside the Comfort Zone
I attended a great workshop on Wednesday looking at KM from novel perspectives, part of the ARK Group Knowledge Management for the Legal Profession 2009 Conference.
Workshop theme and goals:
For KM to continue to grow in law firms, we need to move beyond “traditional” projects and technology initiatives.
This full-day workshop will dive into those areas that lie at the innovative edge of KM. Our goal for the day is simple. We want each attendee to leave this workshop with tools they can apply to the expansion and improvement of KM’s reach within their respective firms.
I believe the workshop met its goals.
Joshua Fireman, Philip Bryce, and Matt Todd led the group through interesting discussions defining traditional KM roles, outlining perceptions about knowledge management, and listing special skills that people involved in KM bring to add value to a project.
As someone who is new to a defined KM role, it was very enlightening to hear the perspective of thought leaders – those at the front of the room AND other participants.
The afternoon sessions of the workshop broke us into working groups to identify and describe a specific KM project that would encompass something beyond the traditional and build a business case for it. It was energizing to brainstorm with a group of people bringing definition to an ephemeral idea, that at the end of an hour has distinct possibilities for implementation.
I look forward to more sessions today.
An interesting discussion has been opened on GovLoop about whether KM is a noun or a verb. I would suggest that successful KM is an action word. Creating a “KM Office” or “KM program” may shift the verb to a noun, and shift the responsibility away from the creators of knowledge to become “someone else’s problem”. We need to verbalize KM. http://www.govloop.com/profiles/blogs/ask-govloop-on-knowledge-is
Very interesting Shauna. What tools are you looking at during the sessions?
Mike
The Wednesday workshop was less of a discussion about specific tools – software or apps – and more of a project business case re-visit. The sessions worked at driving a value and business case based KM strategy.