Do we really need to establish a professional certification for knowledge management? Don’t get me wrong, I believe in professional certifications, but KM? Even project management doesn’t have the greatest of reputations for their professional certification of a PMP. Yes, I know many companies dangle that little certification out there for applicants to have. But the reality is, I can go and take the test and add those 3 little letters after my name and it still doesn’t mean I am an experienced practitioner. I admit, I am probably biased, since I followed the route that I recommend… take some training, read some books and then go do it!

Really, If you still think a professional certification for KM is needed, I would at least follow the HR Certification Institute model:  Separate training from testing for certification, allowing anyone to do the training.  Make every individual wanting a certification prove experience with proof of responsibilities.  (I would even require recommendations from leadership, though HRCI does not require this.)   Have the testing and certification process cost only a couple hundred dollars/euros, and require annual recertification through continued training.

Here’s the bottom line to me… If you are really experienced in KM, you know that this functional area will eventually be part of the company’s culture and just a matter of how a company does business – fully integrated into their business processes.   So any type of professional certification would eventually be useless.  And, when it comes to the corporate bottom line, a company shouldn’t have to hire additional people who have this certification to “do” knowledge management.  If they are going to survive in the 21st century as a corporation, the company better be training all employees on these concepts, as KM builds organizational effectiveness.

Just my 2 cents worth!

Let me give you an example….  My creative process kicks into high gear when I talk with someone.   If I am to work at my most creative level, allow me to talk with people about my ideas.  Inevitably, my idea will evolve, shift, and move like an ameoba every time I talk with someone.  It’s not that I change my mind, it’s that each encounter feeds my ideas and at each step perfects my thoughts.  And, let me just say, that this is not a preference, this is a fundamental requirement for me to work.  I definitely am not the type of person that you tell to go off and think about something and come back later with a solution.  That would be like telling me to go and write an article without using my hands. 

This is in distinct contrast to someone like my husband who’s creativity comes from alone time and physical labor.  He processes information best through physical movement.  Don’t expect him to give you a response to a question right away.  He needs time for his brain to process it and to go into that file cabinet of a brain and bring out all the possible pieces of information and experiences related to that request.  He needs to cogitate by himself and then he can come back and talk about it. 

If I force him to respond immediately, I’m doomed.  I won’t get anything from him.  But, if I plant my request like a seed, and then come back later, I am greeted with a full grown plant around which we can have that conversation and dialogue that I need in order to eventually come up with the best and most creative idea. 

Between his process and mine, there is significant disconnect in the timing of creativity.  The key here is to  recognize the differences and build out a new way of working that supports both processes.  If you do, then you will find that you have created a highly effective creative community where all members are able to bring their most creative selves to creating new and innovative products and services.

 Any of these sound familiar?  Content management has become the bane of our business existence.  Supposedly we went from the pain of paper, to a paperless wonderland.  But all we really did was transfer the content hairball from one system to another.  And, when we find the latest and greatest tech tool, we continue to move the content hairball around.   We constantly move from one tool to another , never fixing the underlying structure of the problem…. Garbage in, garbage out!

 How do you get rid of the content hairball?   The reality is you can’t get rid of the content hairball until you do some detangling… something that cuts through the mess…  I call it Content Rationalization .   In other words, do some in-house organizing…. Any Home Organizer will tell you there are some simple steps to organizing your home.  I’ve converted these into simple steps for Content Rationalization for small or large content hairballs….

• Assess – Figure out what you have and where you have it
• Plan – Figure out what you want to have in the end
• Rationalize – Go through everything and organize it all into 3 buckets
  1. Keep
  2. Save for possible future use
  3. Get rid of it
• Organize – Based on what you want to have and what you want to keep, determine the right “system” (based on people, process and technology)
• Sustain – Develop a content management process that everyone can live with that prevents having to do major content rationalization again.

Content Rationalization is a buzzword for organizing your content and getting rid of the “noise” content in your company.  It’s not fun, and it’s not pretty, but you have to do it.  It’s a huge job when you leave it alone and don’t touch it for years.  But, if you invest up front time to do content rationalization and create an on-going process for content management – a cradle to grave process, then your business content landscape becomes much more tolerable and you start eliminating your content hairballs.  And, you won’t say… Why the hell can’t I find it?…

Wow.. This was probably written in 1991, published in 1992 and now 17 years later, we have so many examples of how this is playing out in our society.  “Open Source” code, “social networking”,  “transparency”  if you look at these “open systems” you can see how the information that flows  through these systems provides a steady stream of change, of continuous improvement. 

It seems interesting to me that there has been so much talk about “finding balance”, and really what we should be doing is constantly finding the imbalance in life.  It’s the change in life that makes us more and more vibrant, and provides greater opportunity.  Maybe the idea is to ebb and flow from one area of focus to another so that we can constantly integrate newness into what we are doing and who we are.

Nick Milton at Knoco, Ltd. Based in the UK, has a blog entry on this topic (We only learn when we don’t know what to do)   He provides a much more business oriented example of what it looks like to really keep disequilibrium in the system.  And, to Nick’s point of creating a “knowledge seeking” culture, rather than just a “knowledge sharing culture”…  I would suggest that for a company to stay agile in today’s marketplace, you need to ebb and flow between one and the other. 

Since starting my own business (thank you EDS (HP)) I have exposed myself to more new information and am living in a constant state of disequilibrium… and the reality is, I feel more alive and energized than I ever did in the last few years of my corporate career.  I am constantly moving from a knowledge seeking mode to a knowledge sharing mode.    

What’s your thought?  Find balance or imbalance in life?