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What’s in a Game?
One of the challenges we've had in pitching KM is making the connection in people's minds between the problem and the
symptoms. The things people recognize as pain points don't seem connected to KM or Communications, unless you're used to looking at organizations in a certain way. Once you are, you see KM&C at the
root of all kinds of failures in process and understanding.
We were presenting to a business networking group recently, and hit on the idea of a game. We wanted something that would be fast,
interactive and fun, and that led us to K Street Bingo.
To play, you only need a group, a moderator and a copy of the game. Hand out the cards, mix up the tokens in a fishbowl or shoe box or other
handy container, and let the moderator make the calls. ("B - I waste so much time looking for stuff!") The players search their cards for this phrase, and while they do, the moderator provides
interpretative comments. It's a cheap trick, but it does force the audience to read these warning signs of KM&C problems, and provides an opportunity to make the logical connections in the
background. It's much better than talking about tacit and explicit knowledge, which has a tendency to make people’s eyes glaze over.
You can get a sense for how the game works by clicking into our on-line
version. If you'd like a set of cards and chits, drop a note to info@knowledgestreet.com, and we'll send you one.
When Bad Things Happen to Good Communities
The principals of Knowledge Street (a.k.a. Chris Riemer and Pam Coulter
Enright) are also involved with the local leadership of the Knowledge & Innovation Management Professional Society, or KMPro for short. So we've decided to use a bit of space in this issue to promote an upcoming New Jersey chapter event. If you're based here in the Garden State, or will be nearby in early December, we're sponsoring a networking and presentation evening. We hope it will be the first in a series of events running into 2004.
It's scheduled to begin at 6:00 PM EDT, on Wednesday, December 3rd, in Bridgewater, NJ. The speaker is Steven John, and he'll be talking about Communities of Practice at Arthur Andersen. You can
read the details and also send an RSVP, from the chapter's web page.
KM can be a lonely field of endeavor, and this is a chance
to meet some other like-minded folks. If you decide to come, be sure to come up and say hello.
Good Clicks
The holiday season being almost upon us, maybe you'd like to do your bit for charity. You may (or may not)
be aware of the many sites that let you shift money to the cause of your choice, simply by dropping in and clicking. It's not your money - it comes from advertisers who've agreed to make small
contributions for every click.
The concept isn't new; the pioneering Hunger Site has been active since 2000, and according to its own count, funded almost 3,000 metric tons of food for the world's hungry in 2002 alone. There are lots of charities to choose from. You can help save the rain forests, plant a tree in Brazil or take your pick from other nature-related things. You can fund mammograms, do something to fight poverty or support animal rescue work.
If you like the idea, but not these causes, just run your own search. Try "Free Click
Donation" in Google, and odds are you'll find what you're looking for. What's this got to do with Knowledge Management you ask? Not a thing.
Leading with Knowledge
Dr. Madanmohan Rao is one of India's leading experts on Knowledge Management, and has
recently finished work on Leading with Knowledge: Knowledge Management Practices in Global InfoTech Companies. This book is a review of international KM practices in 15 IT firms (including EDS, IBM,
Novell, Oracle and Xerox) and also includes chapters on the American Productivity and Quality Center, IDC and Gartner Group. Fujitsu Consulting is one of the companies featured, with a chapter co-written
by Alan Brompton and Chris Riemer, before Chris came to labor here on Knowledge Street. It's an interesting collection of war stories, which together demonstrate that despite a lot of official support
from business leaders, KM still faces an uphill fight in many organizational cultures. At Fujitsu Consulting, we described it as a journey...
In his introduction, Dr. Rao sees this volume of
essays as useful for companies in the IT sector, but thinks its lessons will be informative for other businesses as well: "The most successful IT companies have certainly blazed a fiery trail on the
KM front, and we all have a lot to learn and benchmark from them."
Published by Tata-McGraw Hill, this book is not yet available outside India. But you can read more about it, and check out
the table of contents here.
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