Sharing knowledge takes effort and skill, even between two people talking face-to-face. You don’t create that by writing stuff down; you create it by creating robust relationships that give people the confidence to ask questions and learn from each other, and by encouraging the disciplines of asking questions without wasting people’s time, and of answering questions with clarity and power, of telling vivid stories within a shared value system. These are the things that matter, the things businesses need to be good at.
To the extent that this is knowledge management, knowledge management can be useful. But we have words already to describe this process: “teaching” and “learning”. Teaching and learning should be core disciplines for any well-educated person, and organisations should work hard to encourage these skills.
While I think the author overstates the case against KM a bit, I agree wholeheartedly that the best KM skills for an organization to cultivate are teaching and learning skills.
(Found via elearningpost.)
