Mopsos

from Dave Snowden in "whence goeth KM?"

Is KM dead? My view for about two years now is that it is on its last leg as a strategic movement (otherwise known as a fad) in management. We also have that infallible predictor that a fad cycle is coming to an end: government adopts it as industrial best practice.

I agree. KM is dead, and for the reasons mentioned by David:

• Knowledge Managers have insisted in representing knowledge as an object that could exist independently of human beings


• They became obsessed by technologies and quality processes that manipulated "knowledge" with rule-based workflows


• KM eventually became a set of techniques taught to students - and which left them with no job after certification

Too many mistakes, that are largely a consequence of the coalition of entreprise software vendors and top managers, both agreeing to trade snake oil and fake change whilst maintaining all existing power structures intact.

From Ross Dawson, blogging about the same topic:

In an article on The Future of Knowledge Management (...) I explained why I felt it was time to move on from knowledge management, at the time identifying five successors to the movement: social networks, collaboration, relevance, workflow, and knowledge-based relationships. Moving on, this year I have found a large proportion of my energy spent on the future of media and media strategy, closely linked to my work on social networks, both inside organizations and in technology-enabled social media.

Does that mean the party is over and that it's time to go back to real work? Definitely not. As a matter of fact, it's just the beginning. Hopefully, the acronym KM will stay around for a while before a new name crystallizes the strategic shift from capturing and storing "knowledge" and "sharing best practices" to social networking, network-centric management, collaborative leadership and effects-based operations. As Dave puts it:

(...) the objectives of KM theory and practice persist and will continue to be of great importance. They are clear, simple and important and can be summarised as follows:
1. To support effective decision making
2. To create the conditions for innovation

Exactly. But how CEOs will address the issue now that all CKOs are gone remains an open issue. Can it be left only to consultants?

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