strategy

weknowmore

During this chat we will digg deeper into knowledge management for non profit organizations! 

Most non profit organizations  have taken steps in adopting some sort of knowledge management strategy, although approaches have varied quite widely, as has the terminology used, and the levels of investment made.

The promise and potential of these initiatives has often yet to be fully realised. But clearly, the knowledge and learning approach can and does provide useful tools and approaches, which, if properly, consistently and thoughtfully applied, can help address some of the symptoms of the institutional malaise faced by modern non profit organisations.

What has tended to happen is that non profit organisations have generally leaned towards linear and technocentric interpretations of knowledge management, in line with the descriptive early traditions of KM and organisational development or ‘institution building’.

Is this still true?

During this chat we will talk about experiences, approaches and best practices for knowledge management in non profit organizations.

1. Are you working or did you work on knowledge mangement (or related fields) for a non profit organization?
2. What (in your opinion or experience) are the differences between knowledge management in profit and not for profit organizations? Or are they similar?
3. Do you know examples of succesful knowledge management strategies, tools, stories and/or practices in non profit organizations? Can you share?
4. What are key lessons you have learned in your work in knowledge management for a non profit?(If you didn't work for a non profit: What lessons you have learned do you think are speficically useful in a non profit context)
5. How can non profit organizations effectively share knowledge between one another? Do you have experiences, examples that worked?
6. Do non profit organizations require a specific change management and adoption strategy? What would you advise for such a strategy?
7. Do you have other tips for those that work on knowledge management in non profit organizations?

KMers.org

 What if everything goes?! What is there were no obstacles what so-ever?! What if the world was perfect?! Let's endulge ourselves in positivity and try to answer the question: what does knowledge management ideally look like? And what impact does it have?

Critical remarks will be ignored :-)

_AxxE_

A popular and endless debate that has animated the minds of all KM’ers (if I may), as to what restricts a KM exercise from succeeding…And it all boils down to the individual stakeholder and the barriers, both internal and external to that individual.

“The Great Wall” is a discussion intended to begin in the generic with rhetoric and eventually touch upon specific questions which are relevant in present times.

1. How & why are individual, organizational, technological and cultural barriers correlated and not mutually exclusive?
2. The earlier the better. In case of new recruits, who are fresh out of college, with little or no KM awareness, how can one impress upon them the importance of KM activities and imbibe in them a habit of knowledge sharing?
3. How effective are incentives in overcoming individual & cultural barriers?
4. How significant a role does knowledge representation play to bridge the gap between the knowledge sharing party and the one at the receiving end, in turn paving the way for  effective knowledge sharing?

chris_collison

I'm doing a keynote to 600 law librarians in the summer, and for many of them, I suspect their experience of KM will be the "straight and narrow" information-centric route. I've promised to take them "off road" to explore some other parts of the KM landscape. I'd love to involve you in helping me figure out some of the features I should show them during this #KMers twitter chat.

The highway.
What KM tools and techniques would we describe as completely middle-of-the-road and "a given" in most organisations? [e.g. SharePoint, Communities of Practice, basic internal Collaboration]

The winding country roads.
Which approaches have you found which have been unexpected, a little off the beaten track, but fairly easy to take people to if they're starting with "regular KM"? [e.g. Storytelling, Externally-focussed communities, Yammer]

The spectacular views.
What about the more surprising techniques that are well off-the beaten-track for many people, but well worth the effort to get there? [e.g. Visualisation, Narrative Sensemaking, Gaming?]

The parallel routes.
What are the canals and railways which are going in the same direction as the KM road -alternative routes if we get a flat tyre... [e.g. Continuous Improvement, Internal Benchmarking, Business Excellence...]

The swamps , quicksand and dead-ends.
Which approaches have you seen which have turned out to be a drain on resources, sucking in effort and money with insufficient return. The things you wished you'd never gotten into... [e.g. Knowledge Audits? Massive multi-level taxonomy projects??]

stephendale

Knowledge Hub will support service improvement, efficiencies and innovation across UK local government. It is a “Web 2” social media development and offers opportunities to foster greater collaboration across the sector and wider use of digitally based information such as open and linked data. Knowledge Hub builds on the successful Communities of Practice (CoP) space with over 75,000 registered users and is considered the most advanced online practitioner group in the public sector.

Access to the new environment will allow councillors, officers and practitioners across the public sector to take advantage of new media tools and techniques for knowledge sharing and improvement.

More than just an IT solution, the KHub is a far-sighted social media resource that could lead to a major cultural change in the public sector

 1. One of the goals of the Knowledge Hub is to join-up conversations happening across the social web, according to topic or meme,  and link these topics/memes to user profiles (e.g. if I'm a Planning Officer I will see conversations associated with planning). Do you think this is achievable, or is it one step beyond what technology will allow? 

2. The Knowledge Hub will bring together communities of practice with data intelligence (statistics, metrics, open and linked data published by government). Do you think this will drive improvement in public services? 

3. The Knowledge Hub will provide tools to build new applications (e.g. mashups) using open/linked public data, for example, visualisations of crime hot-spots. Do you think there is a marketplace for building these apps, and what (if any) will be the benefit to ordinary citizens?

4. Do you know of any similar initiatives to the Knowledge Hub in other countries?

KMers.org

Moderated by Steven Wieneke. @stevenwieneke

This chat is a collaboration between KMers and the SIKM Community. The SIKM Leader teleconference is titled "The Knowledge Management and Application Domain" which is also the title of our new book. The teleconference will be a discussion between the 2 authors, Karla Phlypo-Price and me, about the book. Participants can ask questions as well. The book can be previewed at Google books by following this link:

http://books.google.com/books?id=ETL0pYooT00C&printsec=frontcover&dq=The...

After this conference we'll discuss this topic further in the KMers community using the questions mentioned in the agenda.

1. What is the advantage of modeling (documenting) the focus areas within the KM community?

2. What is the impact on the Knowledge Management community of erring on omission of other disciplines? …inclusion of other disciplines?

3. Should all KMer’s be practicing exactly the same thing or is there room in the community for specialization?

4. If specialization is acknowledged, what is the advantage of maintaining the specialization name under the umbrella of KM rather than relabeling very thing KM?

5. Is there a possibility that a KM strategy that was unsuccessful in the past for some could have been successful for others? If successful, do we all need to implement it or just acknowledge the success?

cdn

KM for business is what we're mostly talking about, by default. At best, we envisage KM for government or for nonprofit organizations. We commonly think that the issues and usage of KM are the same, whatever the environment.

Development projects, such as social entrepreneurship of charity projects in developing countries, are of course different from usual business/government projects. Or are they? Certainly, the circumstances in which these development projects are run may be difficult, but are their KM challenges fundamentally different from day-to-day KM? Isn't it also about bringing a community together (in this case, international development practitioners) and sharing knowledge and experience? Or is the cultural aspect more important, working with a North-South mix of participants, large and small organizations (think UN and local NGO), academics, policy makers, and activists, etc.

In this chat, we'd like to explore:

• What's specific about KM4DEV?
• How can KM provide (better) support for development projects?
• How can we, as a community, leverage our KM capabilities for development?

ChiefExecMom

Knowledge management touches all parts of an organization.  This creates many opportunities and challenges for a KM department.  Organization and decision-making can help your company outperform or hold you back.  What is your organization structure doing for you?

1. Where does Knowledge Management fit in your organization (to whom does the head of KM report)? Is it the right place for it?
2. How many, and what kind of people work within the KM department? How do you find the best people for these jobs? (look for KM experience? other backgrounds?
3. What is the career path for someone in KM?
4. How effectively does your organization make and execute decisions about knowledge management? What helps or gets in the way?

ithorpe

Many organizations develop some sort of "knowledge management strategy". Do organizations need a Knowledge Management Strategy? and if so what should it be like. Is a formal documented strategy needed in order to run an effective KM program? What are the various purposes a KM strategy can serve, and what should a good strategy look like so that it can meet these purposes?

Developing a KM strategy can be a matter not only of content but also of process. What kind of preparation and consultation processes are needed to develop a successful strategy in order to ensure it reflects real business needs? How can those leading the development of a strategy work to ensure that it can gain the organization's support, get funding and have a chance of being implemented successfully.

Noon-1pm USA/ET

JohnReaves

Chat is April 6 at 12pm ET

KMers is pretty new to the scene.  There are other chats that have been around for a much larger portion of Twitter's own existence.  Of those that started early, not all have endured (full list: http://bit.ly/ChatSched).  Those that are still going strong are doing so thanks to a loyal and avid community.

One of those successful chats is #innochat.  We are proud to be partnering with them for a #chatmixer on April 6 and April 8.  April 6 will be the above topic on our (#KMers) hashtag and April 8 will be a similar topic on their (#innochat) hashtag.  It is highly encouraged for the members of each community to attend the others' chat.

There's a strong general feeling in the two communities that innovation and KM have a lot in common in terms of vision, goals and methodologies, and it seems valuable to explore those similarities in a more explicit way. At the same time, it's clear they should generally support each other within an organization ... but are there specific practices or projects which can better leverage the synergies?

Q1: What KM principles are similar to innovation best practices? How are they different? Q2: What information needs to be managed in order to increase innovation? Are ideas the same as information, and do they need to be treated separately? Q3: Organizationally, how should KM and innovation work together? Where do they come together within the community or decision-making structure (formal or informal), and are there any barriers that need to be overcome?

plantpixie

17:00 UTC = 12pm ET

It would be interesting to hear how organisations have branded and marketed their KM interventions into the company. Is this a budget item, what crazy ideas people have tried out, how to do it on a shoestring?

ewenlb

Chat is 12pm ET / 9am PT

 Knowledge management is ill-defined but even more crucially ill-assessed. The inaccuracy and inadequacy of monitoring (1) approaches for KM has left behind a trail of tensions, heated debates, frustrations and disillusions. Differing perspectives on the value of KM and on ways to conduct monitoring have further entrenched these reactions.

How to reconcile expectations from managers / donors on the one hand, from teams in charge of monitoring knowledge management and clients / beneficiaries on the other hand? How to conjugate passion for and belief in knowledge-focused work with business realism and sound management practice?

What are approaches, methods, tools and metrics that seem to provide a useful perspective on monitoring the intangible assets that KM pretends to cherish (and/or manage)? What are promising trends and upcoming hot issues to turn monitoring of KM into a powerful practice to prove the value of knowledge management and to improve KM initiatives?

Join this Twitter chat to hear the buzz and share your perspective...

• What do you see as the biggest challenge in monitoring KM at the moment?
• Who to involve and who to convince when monitoring KM?
• What have been useful tools and approaches to monitor KM initiatives?
• Where is M&E of KM headed? What are the most promising trends (hot issues) on the horizon?

jeffhester

Traditionally, knowledge management initiatives have focused on sharing, collaborating and connecting inside the enterprise. This is the right place to start, but our colleagues, partners, clients, suppliers and even competitors also have knowledge and expertise that we can use. Can KM grow beyond the boundaries of the enterprise to include their participation? 

Regulatory and security issues aside, expanding KM beyond the boundaries of the enterprise holds bright promise. In this week's Tweetchat, we'll explore the potential advantages and obstacles of extra-enterprise knowledge management, and share strategies for pushing KM's boundaries "beyond the firewall." 

• How does extra-enterprise KM strengthen (or compromise) our competitive advantage?
• What can we do to establish and distinguish credibility among internal and external participants?
• When and where do we engage people outside our organizations?

cdn

Modern organizations need a new, collaborative, value-driven approach to Innovation, which is challenging traditional views. It appears that the “Knowledge Management side of Innovation” is not fully exploited. Closer synergy between Knowledge and Innovation practices would certainly benefit the innovation process.

 Questions for this chat session:
- What could Open Innovation learn from KM?
- Which KM practices are applicable in an Open Innovation environment?
- What constraints are imposed by Open Innovation?

weknowmore

17:00 UTC = 12pm ET same day

Predictions are hard for any one person to make. The essence of stock markets is that many different decision makers all making bets on their own predictions leads to a consensus of where corporate performance is heading.

The same sort of crowd decision making can be used for anything. If you are interested in this topic, but not familiar with Prediction Markets, there is a lot of interesting research and interesting tools available.

This chat will be a little less formal than a prediction market. We will see what our small sample size of people thinks is going to happen in 2010 and we will hash it out to see if we can get some interesting learning out of it.

10 min. Welcome and KM New Year Resolutions
15 min. What (changes) do you predict around KM strategies in 2010?
15 min. What (changes) do you predict around KM technologies in 2010?
15 min. What (changes) do you predict for the role of knowledge managers in 2010?
5 min.   What topics would you like to discuss in future chats on KMers.org in 2010?