What makes a good Knowledge Manager?

What makes a good Knowledge Manager?

I’ve been experimenting with ChatGPT (an artificial intelligence chatbot developed by OpenAI). The following is the result of my question in the title of this post, namely “What makes a good knowledge manager?”. I thought it was a pretty good response, though I would have liked to have seen some mention of innovation. What do you think? Could this be a useful tool for KMers? A good Knowledge Management (KM) practitioner possesses a unique set of skills and qualities that…

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Personal Knowledge Management Maturity Model

Personal Knowledge Management Maturity Model

Knowledge management is often based on the notion that knowledge is socially constructed. Consequently, organisational knowledge management (OKM) programmes tend to focus on techniques and approaches such as peer assists, after-action reviews, project retrospectives, knowledge retention, communities of practice, storytelling, and innovation jams – all of which involve multiple people…But there’s a snag… Since these KM techniques first came into being, something happened: Employees got busier than ever. Organisations now do a lot more with much less – and modern…

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Tips for Building Successful Communities of Practice

Tips for Building Successful Communities of Practice

This is a refresh of an earlier blog published here in 2016 My experience of knowledge sharing in organisations stems mainly from my involvement in setting up Communities of Practice (CoPs) for UK local government. This was part of a broader Knowledge Management strategy that I was commissioned to deliver for the Improvement and Development Agency and Local Government Agency. It has since migrated to the private sector and continues to thrive as the Knowledge Hub. When I left the…

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Working in the new Covid era

Working in the new Covid era

To quote from a recent article by Lee Bryant,  “What and where is the fabric of your organisation? How would you describe it? When the buildings are empty and the conference rooms are silent, what actually *is* the organisation? Some might argue it is the sum of conversations, or processes, value chains or organisational structures. But where is it and how is it manifested?”. He goes on to say:-  “In the digital era, the digital workplace should be that fabric. But it isn’t….

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Curation: The Cure For Information Overload?

Curation: The Cure For Information Overload?

The Institute for the Future at the University of Phoenix Research Institute published  Future Work Skills 2020, a study designed to look at how we think about work, what constitutes work, and the skills we will need to be productive over the coming decade. The report was published in 2011, but is as relevant today as it was 4 years ago. The skills they identified include: Sense-making: the ability to determine significance. Social intelligence: the ability to connect with others in a deep way. Adaptive thinking:…

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Community of Practice and Technology in Education

Community of Practice and Technology in Education

Education and technology have always driven one another to improve. And from this mutually beneficial relationship, different approaches to organizing education emerge, some poised to disrupt the entire industry. As you read this, the education system is in the midst of introducing major alterations. The normalisation of indispensable tools like the internet is leaving room for terrific innovations. And with it come opportunities to introduce new dynamics of learning or reinvent previously existing ones. And the intersection of teaching, technology,…

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Learning Before, During and After

Learning Before, During and After

I’ve made it a personal choice to avoid the perennial discussions and debates about defining “knowledge management”, which more often than not seem to focus on the typology and semantics rather than getting to grips with the actual practice. I like simplicity, and whatever your preference for intellectually precise definitions, it inevitably boils down to the actions that encourage and support learning, and specifically, learning before, during and after.  In his book “Knowledge Management for Teams and Projects”, Nick Milton…

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Centralised vs. Decentralised Decision Making

Centralised vs. Decentralised Decision Making

The UK Government’s failure to achieve its target of 25,000 tests per day for Covid-19 provides an excellent case study on the differences and impact of centralised vs. decentralised working and decision making. Whilst accepting there might be a problem with the sourcing of reagent chemicals for the DNA testing, according to a former director of the World Health Organisation we are not making the most of the opportunities currently available to us. Public Health England (PHE) want to control…

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What is ‘knowledge curation’ and why is it so important?

What is ‘knowledge curation’ and why is it so important?

I don’t think I need to convince anyone who regularly uses the Internet or World Wide Web that finding useful and relevant information amongst the volumes of dross we get from advertisers, marketers, brand mangers and ‘those-that-want-to-be-heard-but-have-nothing-of-value-to-say’, which unfortunately accounts for the largest proportion of content that swills around our in-boxes and search results, is becoming increasingly difficult. Information is being pumped at us almost 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This was bad enough when we were…

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