Don’t worry if it’s “not KM”

How many times have I heard the retort that something “isn’t KM”? It’s almost as if there was a desire to put KM into a box of it’s own, detached from anything else – something more abstract, offline and infrastructural.

The fact is that KM has to be applied, and being applied means being involved in real-world problems and opportunities such as sales enablement, project delivery, operations and so on. That’s when you’re likely to hear “that’s not KM that’s sales enablement” (or whatever). But I don’t think knowledge management is completely a separate function from everything else. Yes, it has aspects and elements that need to be managed “for the sake of KM itself”. But mostly it’s a contributor, along with other disciplines such as IT, for instance, in addressing business, organisational and real-world issues.

What KM will bring to any application is the knowledge perspective. We’ll bring the focus on the users/participants in their different roles with respect to learning, innovation, and sharing and applying knowledge. We’ll look at how something that is at one time fixed, stays fixed by being embedded in a community of experts, practitioners and support roles that sustain and develop it. We’ll have a special input to make on all matters regarding content, because we see content it its usage-learning cycle and not just as a static resource that’ provided. We’ll bring in specialist ways to gain insight into experts’ knowledge and support that for greater productivity.

Doing these kinds of projects is also going to involve a lot of other disciplines and skills as well, besides what you might see as ‘core KM’. There’s likely to be IT, change and project management, perhaps UX design as well as more commercial aspects. And if KM or the KMer are in the lead, then you’re likely to have a hand in all these different aspects.

So if people raise a quizzical eyebrow that what you’re doing as the KMer is “not KM” I’d say don’t worry. It’s the project and the application that matter more than the label – and you’re still adding unique perspectives and inputs from KM.