So I'm looking up some information for work and dealing with the concept of "knowledge management" or how to know what we know as a company. It strikes me that this group is also participating in a form of knowledge management and the sharing of information used/owned by the group.

'Community of practice' is the term used and I think that is what this effort really at Equipped to Survive is. Plug the term into Google or whatever and you will get a bunch of web sites explaining the concept. Basically it's a group of like-minded people sharing knowledge in a specific area and exploring the development of the common topic. Comments?

Paul -

The short, blunt answer is that it is a buzzword/fad/gimmick.

"Knowledge Management" is attractive to managers who really want to believe that they can “manage knowledge” without regard to knowledgeable and experienced people.

This is no different than other ideas like “Total Quality Management” or the “ISO9000 Quality Management System”.

Notice the word management is the key to all these. They are designed to appeal to and be sold to managers. They are not quality systems or knowledge systems, they are management systems.

On the other hand, when a bunch of people get together and share their experience, good stuff happens. Simple. Too simple to make any money off of as a consultant or auditor.

pforeman,

As a survivor of the Air Force trying to implement a COP concept, I agree with your observation. What I experienced in the USAF was more akin to each "community" having a dedicated respository that we were allowed to basically extract info from and not necessarily inject info. Typical Government practices. This Forum, on the other hand, is more along the lines of a true COP. While I'm sure there could be some tweaking of the areas of interest (not meant to be a negative statement) this is a great example. With the Forum being administered by people with other lives to lead (volunteers) it still functions great. That in itself is a testament to the all involved.

Second, with the broad range of topics examined in the Forum under three broad areas there is sometimes a little overlap. This is to be expected. Sometimes when structuring something like this there is a tendency to keep it relatively quick to access and use. I speak from the POV of a chronic pigeon-holer. If I were to structure this thing it would have about 30 sub-categories in each of the main categories thereby making it useless to everyone but me. Because "I know what I mean" when it comes to the breakout of the subcategories. ETS is lucky I'm not involved in that way because I'm sure they would pack up in the middle of the night, not tell me where they were moving to, and restructure it in a common sense manner.

All in all, you should recommend a meeting with the bigwigs, go online, and review this site with them. It would serve as a great model of success.

2 cents

thseng,

You are dead-on with your short analysis and response.

I also suffered the Great TQM Onslaught of the '90s. I was able to dodge the ISO Meteor, however.

Poor management is threatened by an environment of continuous improvement because it measures their performance. Whether called TQM or ICO, it is not the system or approach that fails, it is the failure of management to lead where the system or approach takes them – to a mirror of their own flaws.

Western managers know that focusing on the mathematics of quality reduces costs, increase productivity and profits, captures market share, and provides more and more stable jobs. Japanese scholars of quality noted that, in the West, management is satisfied to improve quality to a level where profits increase due to increased productivity but then doubt the benefit of further improvement in quality at the expense of profit. Even American scholars of quality, like Edward Deming, demonstrated over and over that it is continuous investment in improved quality that is the true job of good management.

A few companies, schools, hospitals, websites, etc. always seem to be listening, but usually only for a while. When they are listening to their consumers and workers, they thrive. When they stop it is a slow death. Think American steel industry.

ETS is a place where people share their skills and knowledge. It is an example of the enthusiasm ready to be tapped everywhere if management did their true job. The success of web forums on all topics should speak volumes to management who barely gets anything in the proverbial suggestion box.

“With the storehouse of skills and knowledge contained in its millions of unemployed, and with the even more appalling underuse, misuse, and abuse of skills and knowledge in the army of employed people in all ranks in all industries, the United States may be today the most underdeveloped nation in the world.” W. Edwards Deming, Out of the Crisis ,p. 6. 1986 MIT.

As a recreational and information space, ETS is great because by and large the “inmates run the asylum.” Information flows freely here without having to follow much in the way of management-dictated plans. And so we have a river of stuff going by in which to play as we chose; it’s fun!