Comments on: When Corporations Forget

By: Arnold Kransdorff

Arnold Kransdorff — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 20:25:33 +0000

You invite ‘better ideas’ on corporate forgetting. Corporate amnesia is a subject i’ve been working on ever since I first identified the phenomenon in 1984, when the flexible labor market kicked in big time. See below for my three books on the subject, which identifies the enormous cost of the problem, specifically the inability to experientially learn, and the solution – the bettrer management of organizational memory (OM).

+ “Knowledge Management: Begging for a Bigger Role” (Business Expert Press 2009) http://www.businessexpertpress.com/node/70)
+ “Corporate DNA” (Gower, 2006) http://www.gowerpub.com/TitleDetails.asp?sQueryISBN=0566086816&sPassString=Y&sKeyword1=Kransdorff&sKeyword2=&sBooleanSearch=AND&sSearchFrom=Author&sSubjectCode=999&sNewTitle=999&lStartPos=1)
+ Corporate Amnesia (Butterworth Heinemann 1998) http://www.corporate-amnesia.com)

By: admin

admin — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 04:13:33 +0000

Carmen, we hear a lot about communities of practice in KM circles… but less in our workplaces. I’ve spent the last 3+ years at a very large software company that’s expanding globally pretty rapidly (which, of course, requires effective knowledge management in the worst kind of way as new ‘redundant’ groups open in Bangalore, Singapore, etc.)… but I have yet to hear the phrase “communities of practice” uttered – unless it was just once.

So where are these communities of practice happening? At universities? In the government? What about in large public companies?–are such enterprises investing in techniques that better capture tacit knowledge?–do you happen to know of any that are, by chance? I’m curious. This subject really strikes a chord for me.

Thanks again for your comment….

~joanna

By: Nancy

Nancy — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:28:51 +0000

Here’s an interesting, brief overview of the value of KM, also in relation to people leaving: http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newISS_87.htm.

By: Carmen

Carmen — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:18:20 +0000

Thanks for the insightful post. KM is established enough that it’s fairly easy to point to best practices with regard to corralling explicit knowledge. Often, I find as well, that explicit knowledge is also captured in embedded processes and functions within the organization, and when someone leaves the org these remain in place. I agree completely that using technology to capture tacit knowledge is not so easy. That’s where other techniques come into play — like communities of practice. I think these hold out the greatest potential for KM.

By: Jen C

Jen C — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 01:22:45 +0000

I think that it is all the little things, like debriefs at end of projects (and several times throughout), management being active and involved in what is going on the organization, and having people work together (instead of in silos) will help organizations stop knowledge-leak.

Of course, none of these solutions (nor the ones listed above) will work in isolation. The organization needs to be committed to KM for any solution, technology-based or not, to work.