| Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 03:28:01 -0800 | 04 00067 61 00113001 |
Jack Park, jackpark@thinkalong.com
Eyken, Henry van, vaneyken@sympatico.ca
| Subject: | Culture of Knowledge |
|
SDS Supports Learning KM by Doing KM |
Henry, Jack,
Thanks very much for encouraging the team to think about how to start doing KM, per the proposal on November 21, 2000.
We now have some good feedback from Eugene and Grant on the core issue, which is that Doug has made a request for the team to comment by linking, and nobody is doing it, with one exception. The only question is how to empower others to do KM, since that is what Doug has set as a requirement.
Eugene's proposal on November 26, 2000 for manual KM steps is not only rejected by Grant Bowman, as untenable without SDS-type tools, and by the lack of linking by other team members, but, also, Eugene's proposal is inherently conflicting in failing to provide either links or anchors.
The aim is not to criticize Eugene, but to focus on the fact that at this hour there is only one way to do KM.
Nominally, the DKR project by definition generates demand for KM. The history of all other KM projects failing, should sound the alert that moving forward requires gaining hands on experience using SDS.
Eugene's follow up letter proposing that members can try SDS and report to the team on the results, would seem to beg the question. The team has a report from Dick Karpinski at the beginning of the project and one from Henry a year later. It, also, has a year of support showing what KM means. The other day the team got an SDS log with several thousand project documents that all have anchors and links called out by Doug, and each document is positioned in the context of related history. Those anchors and links were not entered by authors of the documents, because they were limited by using conventional IT. SDS created these attributes of KM by making a single click. So, this isn't the time for more reports, its time to start doing KM, because that is the only way to "listen to Doug," in order to learn what is needed to create better tools.
So, again, I appreciate the efforts you guys have made. The challenge we have is education which requires positioning people to do KM in order to create a culture of knowledge.
I talked to Doug last night to wish him a good trip to Washington D.C. for receiving his award. We talked for about 30 minutes.
Doug feels frustrated about how to move the DKR project forward.
I explained the battle is solely to build a culture of knowledge that gives people faith to invest time for adding "intelligence" to information.
We know how to do KM, but getting people to actually do KM requires helping them cross the emotional divide between rewards from information that are recognized immediately by biological senses (e.g., seeing, speaking and hearing), and bigger, but deferred, rewards of knowledge that are devoid of the emotional charge derived from information. So the deck of short-term common sense (see NWO) is stacked heavily against investing time to do KM long enough to discover it saves time and money, for the reasons set out in the letter to the team on September 20, 1000. When we get an email, the emotional urge is to send information telling others what we "know," rather than put that letter in the record, and add subjects and links for organization, alignment, accuracy and context, in order to discover what we know, and then figure out how to respond, see POIMS. That ain't no fun, but its Communication Metrics, and it yields better results. We have a culture of farming, of finance, of education, which entail similar front-end investment, explained in the letter to the team on November 2, 2000. We have to build a culture of knowledge in order to take the next step in the march of civilization, which above all requires finding customers to perform KM, not just talk about it.
Here is detailed review of letters from Henry, Eugene and Grant, which may provide some helpful links you can use to spread the word....
Again, thanks very much.
THE WELCH COMPANY
Rod Welch
rowelch@attglobal.net