Knowledge Management – The Walking Dead… or Just Plain Dead?

October 17th, 2009

In 2005, Bain & Co. asked 960 executives to rank the effectiveness of 25 management tools.
KM ranked near the bottom (Thurm, 2006).

Is KM a fad? Has KM had its day? …Exactly where is KM today?

In the oft-referenced July 2008 video that introduces this blog post, Patrick Lambe invites KM thought leaders Larry Prusak and David Snowden to answer the 3 short questions (posed above) with their characteristically thoughtful insights – peppered with soundbites like Snowden’s, “Once the government adopts something, you know it has died” (5:35) but mostly centred around the cyclical nature of interest in or enthusiasm for KM in organizations (large enterprises included).

But let’s back up a step or two. Since when did KM die? For those of us who are fairly new to KM – or who haven’t spent the past 15+ years theorizing about it – it’s a bit of a shock to hear that this interesting ‘new’ subject KM may already be dead. Isn’t KM just organizational learning and collaboration, after all? How could that die? (…Or what could kill it?)

The Moments Leading Up To The “Death” of KM

The suggestion that KM is dead does not seem to be some sort of periodic angst but rather a growing idea in literature as well as in organizations. Recent articles on the subject include:

1. KM leads to corporate espionage! Lee & Rosenbaum (2003) argued that spies and competitors can easily penetrate KM’s most common components – and that, in turn, every KM system is also an anti-KM system.
2. Davenport, Prusak & Strong (2008) showed how KM efforts went wrong at organizations like Nokia and Intel — and suggested that a new approach to KM is required to transform it into a more “pragmatic discipline”.
3. Chua (2007) reported on three cases in Asia and Europe where initial successes with KM ultimately resulted in “dysfunctional” outcomes.
4. An anonymously written article in Knowledge Management Review recently suggested that sharing knowledge within an enterprise can result in multi-billion dollar losses in productivity (Anonymous, 2008).
5. Wilson (2002) argued that KM was the “fashionable name” applied to help IT mend its reputation for delivering tools not solutions, to let management sleep at night in the knowledge that their spreadsheets are all safely managed… and to give out-of-work consultants a new umbrella to work under.

Who Killed KM? Norm[ative Behavior]

Sure, I know about as much about psychology as I do KM (not a lot, but always learning!) — but in psychology, or specifically in studies of human decision-making, the concept of “normative behavior” describes how suggesting that an act is appropriate or ‘the norm’ can help people passively ‘decide’ to do something.

For example, a roadside sign that reads “Caution: Theft from Cars Is a Problem in This Area” can actually increase incidents of theft from cars. Why? Because people read that as an affirmation of a behavior that is accepted or normal in the area. If that same sign read instead “This Neighborhood Values Safety & Kindness Towards Others”, theft from cars would be much less likely to increase because people believe that the norm is to be good to others.

Now back to killing KM….

A Google search of “Is KM dead?” brings up a full page of results with that exact keyword phrase… and dozens more pages. “KM is dead” does the same. (If you’ve ever worked in SEO, you’ll know that that’s significant.) Nunes, Annansingh, Eaglestone & Wakefield (2006) also wrote that there has been an increase in the number of popular business media articles stating that KM is dead.

People are talking – and talking and talking – about the death of KM. In doing so, we’re actually killing KM by making it the new norm.

So, Then, Is KM Really Dead?

As Snowden and Prusak discussed in the video, there are practices all over management that are dead yet still walking — and that has a lot to do with how those practices are sold to management rather than their true value (15:00). They are careful to underline the point that there have been — and are? — generations of KM… which we can then extend to mean that this “falling out of favour” that KM is experiencing is part of the KM lifeline rather than the end of it. Prusak also notes that KM-related ideas that are dead include:

• That knowledge is a technology (later echoed by Snowden’s comment that complexity and systems thinking cannot meet and live together amicably)
• That repositories of documents are knowledge
• That KM can breath under the weight of bureaucracy
  
• That people and their knowledge can be separated
• That you can measure knowledge

Prusak, Lambe and Snowden do not explicitly say that KM is indeed dead. (Although, Snowden says it’s dead and we should “live with it” in this article and that it’s just reached the long tail in this article) But Snowden does state that the senior-level role of the Knowledge Manager will NOT exist in 5 years, and Prusak takes Snowden’s point further to argue that the closest we will find to knowledge managers in organizations will be “practice coordinators” (39:45). What does that mean for KM as a practice? When Snowden and Prusak foresee the demise of KM leaders in organizations, it’s akin to driving the last nails in the coffin. But others are still optimistic

IMHO, it just feels like everyone’s being a touch impatient with KM. We let a bottle of $80 wine age to reach optimum flavour, body, etc. longer than we let a huge investment like KM age to reach its peak.

~joanna

Anonymous. (2008). Is collaboration a multi-billion-dollar distraction? Knowledge Management Review 11(1), 6. Retrieved 26 September 2009 from ABI/INFORM Global.

Chua, A.  (2007, April 28). Business Insight (A Special Report); The curse of success: Knowledge-management projects often look good in the beginning; But then problems arise. Wall Street Journal (Eastern Edition),  p. R.8.  Retrieved September 27, 2009, from ABI/INFORM Global. (Document ID: 1261787511).

Davenport, T., Prusak, L., & Strong, B. (2008, March 10). Business Insight (A Special Report): Organization; Putting ideas to work: Knowledge management can make a difference — but it needs to be more pragmatic. Wall Street Journal (Eastern Edition), p. R.11.  Retrieved September 27, 2009, from ABI/INFORM Global. (Document ID: 1442818651).

“Is KM Dead?” Retrieved October 15, 2009 from http://blip.tv/file/1048981/

Lee, J. & Rosenbaum, A. (2003). Knowledge management: Portal for corporate espionage? Retrieved 26 September 2009 from www.kmworld.com

Nunes, M., Annansingh, F., Eaglestone, B., & Wakefield, R. (2006, January). Knowledge management issues in knowledge-intensive SMEs. Journal of Documentation, 62(1), 101-119. Retrieved September 25, 2009, doi:10.1108/00220410010642075.

Thurm, S. (2006, January 23). Companies struggle to pass on knowledge that workers acquire. Wall Street Journal (Eastern Edition),  p. B.1.  Retrieved September 27, 2009, from ABI/INFORM Global. (Document ID: 974292421).

Vinson, K. (2008, July 24). Dead KM talking – sound bites. Knowledge Jolt with Jack. Retrieved October 14, 2009 from http://blog.jackvinson.com/archives/2008/07/24/dead_km_talking_sound_bites.html

Wilson, T. (2002, October). The nonsense of ‘knowledge management’. Information Research, 8(1). Retrieved September 26, 2009, from Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts with Full Text database.

Zuckerman, A., & Buell, H. (1998). Is the world ready for knowledge management? Quality Progress, 31(6), 81-84.  Retrieved September 23, 2009, from ABI/INFORM Global. (Document ID: 30008695).