I’ve always found the transformational nature (data turns into information, which turns into knowledge, which turns into wisdom) as well as the lack of  focus on context (‘wisdom’ — whatever wisdom is — is not always necessarily better to have than data) a bit annoying. But read Patrick’s post, it’s very informative and makes some great points.

The video has to be your own work and publicly available for people to watch, but other than that, there’s not really many rules as far as content or subject matter go. So if you’ve got something to say about knowledge management, or are just super-talented at making viral videos, why not submit something?

Patrick’s also giving away some prizes: KM Method Cards, KM Approaches, Methods and Tools – A Guidebook, and his Organisation Culture Cards (worth US$140).

Before I get into these signs however, I want to point out two things. First, while the presence of any of these indicators may be a death knell for your current strategy, this should be viewed as an opportunity to craft a new strategy that better meets the challenge you and your organization are facing — not that you should put your head in your hands and give up.

Second, the presence of any one (or even several) of these indicators in not necessarily a sign that your strategy is totally off-base — these indicators are meant to be used as a warning that you should be constantly adapting your strategy to new challenges. At the same time however, don’t get so mired in strategic decision-making that you never actually get any work done. Strategize, adapt and move forward — making major strategy changes only when things are not going the way you had hoped.

That being said, keep these warning signs in mind when you are examining (or reexamining) your current or upcoming knowledge management strategy.

1. People outside your group don’t understand what you’re doing.

I’ve listed this as warning sign number one, since I personally believe it’s one of the most dangerous indicators that your strategy is not accomplishing its intended goals. Assuming you’re communicating your strategy appropriately (and yes, communicating your strategy is important), the fact that no one else gets it usually means that far from being too brilliant to grasp, that instead you’ve simply got your head in the clouds. Talk to your stakeholders and consider rebuilding your strategy from the ground up.

2. You keep changing vendors/technologies/products.

As stated above, this isn’t always a bad thing. There are times when vendors/products/technologies are just difficult to deal with, and you need to simply change directions. However, these types of strategic changes should be exactly that — strategic. Look very carefully to make sure that what you’re attributing to be a set of technology defects or a vendor deficiency isn’t actually a non-existent content management process or broken governance model. Changing vendors/technologies/products won’t help you with those sorts of issues.

3. You keep layering vendors/technologies/products on top of each other.

More’s better right? Unfortunately, it’s usually not. More vendors and products to deal with usually also means added complexity — and unless you have a strategy and the resources to deal with that added complexity, you’re going to drop a few when trying to juggle all those balls. Before looking at new vendors, I would strongly recommend two things.

First make sure that your current suite of products can’t already do what you need — most of the time, enterprise products (such as content management systems, financial systems or project/process management software) have all kinds of features you didn’t know were  in there — do your research before going out and buying something else.

Second of all, make sure that your clients (even if those are internal clients), actually need the functionality/features you believe they do. Have conversations with everyone who’s going to be using this type of functionality, and make sure you understand what they need almost as well as they do. You don’t want to buy something that’s never going to get used.

4. You find it difficult to explain what you’re trying to accomplish.

This is another big one. When this happens, you may wonder if it’s your listener who’s just not getting it (or, perhaps wonder if you haven’t crafted your explanation very well). Both of these assumptions are dangerous. If it’s really that tough to explain what you want to get done, it’s probably going to be really tough to get the money, support and people to get it done. That’s not to say that complex things that are difficult to explain should never be done — just don’t underestimate the complexity when you start out.

5. You’re prescribing organizational change.

Okay, so prescribing organizational change doesn’t automatically get you a failing mark. Organizations can be changed — but a knowledge management strategy that seeks to change every part of an organization at once is pretty much doomed to fail. Seeking organizational change also comes across too often when there are immediate problems that are difficult to address and the solution is unknown. Use the phrase “organizational change” sparingly and extremely carefully.

6. You’re making big promises.

Again, making promises isn’t a bad thing — knowledge management should be there to generally make things better for everybody. If you aren’t making things better, you’re not really doing your job (and of course, that’s not just true of KM, it’s also true of human resources, finance and every other group). But don’t promise things you aren’t sure you can deliver — or assume that certain longstanding problems can be fixed via knowledge management.

This is related to my point above; some problems are more deeply entrenched than they may at first seem to be. Take a long, careful look at what you really think you can change, and reach just beyond what you’ve promised.

You can also get a free expo pass — just use this link to get both the discount and the free pass. Thanks to KMWorld for providing the discount and enjoy the conference!

As I was reading the latest post I’ve linked to above, it made me think about why I send email and how I feel about email. I’m sort of ambivalent about the actual act of sending an email — I often get the sense that there are certain things I’d be better off sending through instant messaging, posting somewhere fixed (especially in terms of files) or simply picking up the phone.

I won’t run through an exhaustive list of the disadvantages of email (a quick Google search brings up a ton of results on email’s cons), but its main disadvantages are pretty obvious. Email is impersonal, error-prone (ever forget to cc someone crucial?), fractured, and is often misinterpreted.

So if email is so imperfect, why do we all send so many of them every day? Because most of the time, email is the path of least resistance. Conversations (even instant messaging ones) require commitment from you and the other party, and sadly, using collaborative tools often consists of logins, attachment uploading time and some planning. It’s simply easier to just fire off emails without really thinking about it.

And I think this also sums up at least part of Luis’ point about email. The purpose is not to eliminate email completely from the work world, but just to get people to think more closely and when and why they use email. For example, even the possibility of being misunderstood is a good reason to simply pick up the phone.

And from the collaboration perspective, more collaboration tools that integrate seamlessly into people’s work are needed (yes, I know, a tall order). There are too many collaboration tools that are built with great intentions and end up becoming distant silos, hidden behind login screens, forgotten passwords and connecitivty issues.

From my perspective, this means bridging the concepts of the ’network’ and the ‘desktop’, so that collaborative spaces are no longer a case of ‘oh yeah, I should’ve use the workspace’, but instead just the de facto standard when it comes to sharing and collaborating.

Now back to my email.

There are some fascinating talks available on the site from some of the world’s smartest and most influential people. As the TED site says, they’re “building here a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world’s most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other.” To get you started, here’s Bill Gates talking about mosquitos, malaria and education:

The authors go on to describe a ‘framework of competence’, through which competence can be managed. It’s the authors opinion that competence matters a great deal more than just knowledge, and that by extension, the management of competence is of greater value to an organization than the management of knowledge.

Yet it would seem to me that there is an assumption inherent to the phrase ‘knowledge management’ (rightly or wrongly) that assumes that knowledge is, in fact, applied information. Not that I want to open the (very tired) data-information-knowledge(-wisdom?) can of worms. The interesting part about the word ‘competence’ to me however, is that it denotes something entirely different than what is denoted by the data-information-knowledge hierarchy, and I don’t think ‘competence’ really fits in there hierarchically. Either way, definitely an interesting read.

The article I’ve linked to however, is in fact about enterprise search (while there is a caveat about half way through the article about progress working practices being necessary to thrive, the article is not really about knowledge management in general).

While I think the article title would have been more accurate if you replaced ‘knowledge management’ with ‘enterprise search’, it’s a small detail. There are also some important generalizations about search in this article, which, while still being generalizations, paint a somewhat accurate picture of the state of search. I found this paragraph particularly interesting:

Overwhelmingly, it [enterprise search] was felt it wasn’t meeting the needs of businesses – 63% of those surveyed stated that they believed enterprise search tools should be as easy for staff to use as consumer search engines, yet two thirds said that wasn’t currently the case. The study also discovered widespread concern about lengthy set up times – 73% said they believed it would take more than six months for an enterprise search tool to be useable by employees, with a staggering 68% stating they thought it would take between 18 months to two years to generate any return on investment (ROI). A further 19% estimated it would take over two years to generate ROI.

I’m not really that surprised that 63% of people found that search should be as easy to use as web search engines — but I’m incredibly surprised that 37% didn’t think that. I would have been very interested to know what that 37% of users did expect — that they’d have to put together more queries? That the interface would be more difficult to use? More time wading through irrelevant results?

I find the ROI question a bit too general to really tell us very much. Enterprise search is obviously a major technology deployment, and I don’t think there are really many large-scale deployments that anyone would say generate immediate return on investment (not to mention it’s often difficult to measure the return on investment in these cases — if you upgrade your time and expense system, how do you measure the return on that investment?). And again, without knowing why they felt the ROI would take so long to mature, it’s difficult to gauge the potential veracity of their gut feelings on search ROI.

The article concludes by stating that decision-makers don’t feel that enterprise search is adding much immediate ROI — and the statistics presented would seem to back that up. Yet enterprise search instances abound, and I would put forward that more than 32% (presumably the number who apparently felt that ROI would take less than 18 months) of organizations are venturing into enterprise search. I don’t have any stats to back that up, but if it is true, it would again be interesting to know why they are still doing it even though they feel the ROI’s very far down the road.

Finally, there’s the statement that the evidence presented in the article “illustrate[s] to what extent vendors are limiting the potential of their search tools by failing to take on feedback”. I think most vendors would be happy to improve their tools if there was an easy way to do it — improved search tools, after all, would help them sell their products.

I don’t think we can place the blame squarely on the vendors. It’s also often difficult for businesses to articulate the issues they’re having — and many of those issues fall outside the realm of the vendor. For instance, getting people to understand and use enhancements to the engine or interface takes time, and it’s not necessarily something the vendor can really do much about.

Feedback from an organization like ‘it takes too much to see any ROI on an enterprise search implementation’ is kind of a tough thing for vendors to really address. While vendors should be tailoring their toolset to ensure that ROI can be achieved sooner if possible, vendors should be helping their client’s decision-makers to understand that sometimes ROI just takes time.

So to answer the question I posed in the headline, no, I don’t think it’s that vendors just aren’t listening — it’s just that they don’t always have easy answers for their clients. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

As always, if you have a site that you’d like to suggest for this list, please just let me know and I’ll take a look at it. If it fits the bill (high quality, frequent posting, and it hasn’t been around only since yesterday), it’ll get on the list.

One small suggestion to the many bloggers out there with knowledge management blogs, however. Create an ‘About’ page! There are so many great sites that I’ve found that I’ve been unable to attribute to a person or organization because they lacked an ‘About’ page. And with that small request, on to the list.

1. Aa..ha! – This blog is an eclectic mix of thinking about the human condition as well as knowledge management. There’s a good mix of knowledge management, wisdom and just general stuff about life.

2. Above and Beyond KM – “A discussion of knowledge management that goes above and beyond technology.” Has somewhat of a law focus, but often discusses non-legal knowledge management issues.

3. ActKM – I have to give Keith De La Rue credit for pointing this one out to me (as per his comment below). A great site for finding out what’s happening in the KM world.

4. The American Productivity & Quality Center’s Knowledge Management Blog – Thoughts and discussions on knowledge management by Jim Lee from the APQC.

5. Anecdote – Anecdote is a consulting firm that specializes in organizational change, leadership and storytelling. While not a strictly KM site, the blog on the front page includes many thoughts and links related to communities of practice and other KM-related areas (thanks Vincent).

6. Association of Knowledgework – At the Association of Knowledgework, people from every specialty cross professional, geographic, cultural, economic and hierarchical barriers to learn together.

7. Boxes and Arrows – While this site doesn’t focus exclusively on knowledge management, it does have a great deal of content in peripheral areas like content management and design.

8. Brad Hinton’s Plain Speaking – Lots of good storytelling and business narrative-type stuff here, as well as some great collaboration and communities of practice resources.

9. BRINT – Developing leading edge thinking and practice on contemporary business, technology, and knowledge management issues to facilitate organizational and individual performance, success, and fulfillment.

10. ChiefTech – While this blog is mostly about information technology, there is some very interesting stuff there about the web and social networking. This site also talked (very kindly I might add) about this blog.

11. Chris Collison’s blog – This is an excellent resource for collaboration-related knowledge management stuff. Chris is a fantastic resource on anything collaborative (and has even been kind enough to leave an insightful comment here).

12. Cindy Gordon – Focuses upon knowledge management, human capital and innovation.

13. CIO’s Knowledge Management section – The magazine about business, technology and leadership has a specific section on their website devoted to KM. The other sections are also interesting and definitely worth checking out as well.

14. Cognitive Edge – Dave Snowden’s Cognitive Edge talks about all aspects of knowledge management, and is updated quite frequently.

15. Collaborative Enterprise – Blog belonging to an Indian social software consultant that deals with managingknowledge, KM systems and social media.

16. Collaborative Thinking – Mike Gotta’s blog on collaboration, social software, social networking and knowledge management trends, including community-building methods and practices.

17. Column Two – News and opinion articles by James Robertson on the general topics of knowledge management and content management. Features archives and RSS/XML syndication.

18. A Compound of Alchymie – John Curran’s viewpoints on knowledge management, intellectual capital, social networking and related topics.

19. Creative Chaos: Dina Mehta’s blog – An eclectic mix of posts about knowledge, blogs, marketing and more.

20. DaChispa – This is a site I’ve never come across before, but has some terrific knowledge management-related content. Unfortunately I can’t find an ‘About’ page to let you know who owns the blog (perhaps you would rather remain anonymous?).

21. Dissident – Dissident is the blog of Stephen Dale — who talks mainly about 3rd-generation knowledge management and social media tools. He was also kind enough to mention me and this list, so I thought I would point to his site — lots of interesting content.

22. Dove Lane – Kaye Vivian’s blog addressing knowledge management and communities.

23. Dr. Dan’s Daily Dose – Critical review, evaluation, and discussion of all things knowledge management.

24. Eclectic Bill – Focus is on knowledge management, change management, learning organizations, mental models, and Theory of Constraints as applied to government, non-profits, and higher education.

25. eLearning Technology – While it’s not ’strictly’ knowledge management, there’s a ton of great stuff on here about learning, technology and even social networking.

26. Elsua – A blog about knowledge management, knowledge, online communities, social networking and work-life balance. Available RSS/Atom feeds.

27. The FASTForward Blog – FAST’s contribution to the knowledge management and enterprise collaboration discussion. This blog usually includes posts from a whole host of knowledge management folks you’d probably recognize from other spaces.

28. The Ferryman – Barry Hardy’s blog on knowledge management and innovation. A rather eclectic mix of knowledge management and other topics.

29. Forrester Blog for Information and Knowledge Management Professionals – This is Forrester’s official voice in the information and knowledge management realm. The blog’s written by different authors and covers pretty much the whole swath of IM/KM.

30. Frogpond – A blog that’s mainly about enterprise collaboration consulting, with leadership, knowledge management and management in general often thrown into the mix. While most content’s in English, some’s only in German.

31. Full Circle Online Interaction – Nancy White blog focusing on distributed Communities of Practice (CoPs), communities, online interaction, and distance learning.

32. Government of Canada’s Information Management Portal – While obviously focusing more on information management, there are some knowledge management links and resources on here worth checking out.

33. Green Chameleon – Lots of great stuff here — including knowledge management, Web 2.0 and personal knowledge management (something I’m very interested in).

34. Gurteen Knowledge – David Gurteen’s personal site that supports the Gurteen Knowledge Community. Lots of interesting stuff.

35. How to Save the World – Dave Pollard’s blog with archive articles and papers on knowledge work and business innovation. Includes a table of contents and resources.

36. The Information Architecture Institute – Much like Boxes and Arrows, this site is not necessarily about knowledge management itself, but has a great deal of news, events and resources about information architecture. If you work regularly with any kind of content or knowledge management system with a Web interface, check this site out (I find the ‘Tools’ section of the IA Library particularly useful.

37. InsideKnowledge Magazine – News and articles and content, information and knowledge management.

38. Intelligent Agent – Lots of great topics here, including memes, librarianship, knowledge management and social networking.

39. KM4DEV – KM4Dev describes itself as “a community of international development practitioners who are interested in knowledge management and knowledge sharing issues and approaches”.

40. KM Institute (International Knowledge Management Institute) – The International Knowledge Management Institute is the place to go to become a Certified Knowledge Manager. They also have a newsletter.

41. KM Space – Doug Cornelius’ take on knowledge management, Web 2.0 for the enterprise and social networking for lawyers.

42. KM Talk – A Malaysian knowledge management site (thanks Naguib!). There’s also quite a bit on here that would appeal to a non-Malaysian audience as well.

43. KM Wiki – Provides links, sites and resources on all aspects of knowledge management.

44. KM World – KM World provides news and articles about knowledge management.

45. The KNOW Network – A global community of knowledge-driven organizations dedicated to networking, benchmarking and sharing best practices leading to superior performance.

46. Knowing Knowledge – While it’s not updated that frequently, Knowing Knowledge has some interesting stuff from the book Knowing Knowledge. Worth taking a look at.

47. KnowledgeBoard – KnowledgeBoard was a European Commission-funded Special Support Action, but now is part of the Sift Media portfolio. It’s mainly a discussion board relating to knowledge management.

48. Knowledge Connections – David Skyrme’s website that describes itself as “the place to gain insights into the networked knowledge economy and help in creating successful knowledge management and Internet commerce strategies.”

49. Knowledge Jolt with Jack – Jack Vinson writes about knowledge management, personal effectiveness, theory of constraints and other related disciplines. Available RSS/XML feeds for both the blog headlines and comments.

50. Knowledgeline – Tom Baldwin writes about knowledge management, but also about other related technologies (there seems to be quite a bit of information on search and Microsoft SharePoint on his blog).

51. The Knowledge Management Advantage – A self-described “dynamic and comprehensive knowledge management information resource for organizations striving to achieve competitive advantage and world-class recognition”.

52. KnowledgeThoughts – Matthew Parsons and Neil Richards thoughts on knowledge management, content management and social networking.

53. Lasagna and chips, unexpected combinations for creativity and innovation – Another really great and thought-provoking site on organizational learning and knowledge management by Joitske Hulsebosch, a consultant in the Netherlands.

54. Leveraging Organizational Knowledge – Peter-Anthony Glick’s blog about getting the most out of organizational knowledge.

55. Mathemagenic: Learning and KM Insights – This klog (knowledge blog) is used as a learning diary that documents journey of Lilia Efimova in the land of knowledge workers’ networks, learning, creativity and knowledge sharing.

56. Musings of a Social Architect – Amy Jo Kim’s blog focusing on community architecture, social systems design and knowledge management.

57. Networks, Complexity and Relatedness – A very interesting blog about social networks and network analysis.

58. Portals and KM – Bill Ives’ blog discussing practical applications of portals, blogs, and knowledge management.

59. Reflexions – Another interesting blog that talks mostly about decision-making and innovation.

60. Seth Earley’s Not Otherwise Categorized – I’ve been on a few calls where Seth Earley was speaking about taxonomy – he’s a very animated and engaging speaker. This is his blog (mostly taxonomy-related stuff).

61. Simon’s KM Blog – Simon Goh’s blog on knowledge management. As Simon says: “There’s just so much to cover in KM work and they are so diverse. A blog is probably the best way to retain and manage this mess.” I couldn’t agree more.

62. Social Computing Magazine – Social Computing Magazine provides information on enterprise Web 2.0, social search, tagging and start-ups. There’s lots of great articles on the site — definitely worth some time going through it all.

63. Stan Garfield’s Weekly Knowledge Management Blog – A weekly entry including books, blogs, web sites, and answers to questions on knowledge management. Topics include knowledge sharing and reuse; collaboration and communities of practice; and people, process, and technology elements of successful KM programs.

64. Talking Knowledge Management – A blog that was created to talk about how knowledge management is being applied in the United Kingdom’s National Health Service.

65. Trends in the Living Networks – Ross Dawson’s Trends in the Living Networks blog offers high-level commentary on developments in our intensely networked world, and how it is coming to life. The blog is primarily intended for a general business audience, in identifying critical technology, social, and business trends and their implications.

66. Why Knowledge Management? – Tom Godfrey’s knowledge management blog. This blog covers pretty much everything you’d think of when you think of KM, including collaboration, technology and ’softer’ KM.

We’ve seen banks fail outright, and we’ve seen many companies trying desperately to cut costs; and, in more than one place, I’ve heard the same discussion — can knowledge management save a failing company? Well, the short answer seems to be ‘no’, and the long answer is a decisive, yes, you guessed it, ‘maybe’.

Let me first say that (while I’m not any kind of expert in failing companies or in turning said companies around), that there can be any number of reasons why a company fails. If we’re talking about a start-up, the ‘maybe it was just a bad idea’ reason seems to often be an obvious culprit.

Yet if we’re talking about an established company whose business has suddenly (or even gradually) started to turn, I would argue that there is usually a complex set of interdependent factors that contribute to this turn (while there are examples of singular causes, I would suggest they are more the exception than the rule).

Let me put it this way: a business that’s sick or dying can be sick or dying from many different causes, and they may exacerbating each other. Market pressures from an increasingly global business, inventory problems and low morale may all be manifesting themselves in the organization, but which is really the root cause of the company’s decline? It’s often hard to tell the symptoms from the disease.

Enter knowledge management, which happens to come in so many different flavours that what one company may call knowledge management, another organization may call something else entirely. Knowledge management also rarely sits in the same place in any two organizations.

So while knowledge management will occasionally be the medicine that heals a sick organization, applying the wrong medicine to the wrong illness can still be fatal. A misformed or inappropriate (for that particular organization) KM program can actually make things worse — while also costing you money.

Not to mention the fact that attempting to apply knowledge management principles as a short-term fix for long-term problems is doomed from the outset — while some quick fixes are sometimes the best way to go, they rarely have anything to do with knowledge.

Yet before I sound like I’m spelling out a no-hope situation for knowledge management to improve an organization, I should also say that it goes without saying that the right medicine for the right illness can work wonders — but over the long term, your organization still has to work at staying in good general health.

And KM, applied preventatively, is always going to be more effective than trying to do it after things go wrong.