Two great Knowledge Management practitioners just posted great insights about how Enterprise Social Software transforms the practice into Doing Management.
Dave Pollard contributes a paper on the Future of Knowledge Management. He addresses the primary failings of traditional KM, the rise of new tools and the need for line worker productivity converging towards a Social Software approach for KM.
I believe that if KM hopes to save itself from imminent extinction, it needs to acknowledge and act upon the truth of Drucker’s assertion [greatest challenge to business management in the 21st century is, and will be, improving the personal productivity and effectiveness of front-line workers doing increasingly complex and unique jobs], and the following two principles that reflect what ‘improving personal productivity and effectiveness of front-line workers’ means with regards to knowledge:1. Knowledge is most effectively and efficiently conveyed to front-line workers by other front-line workers or outside experts, one-on-one, just-in-time, and in the context of solving a specific business problem...
2. Front-line workers have a large array of tools and technologies at their disposal, but rarely know how to use these tools and technologies competently, and when they do, they often find that these tools and technologies force them to think and work in ways that are not intuitive to them, interfering with rather than helping their work effectiveness...
KM is in desperate need of a new monkier, given the costly failings of the previous top-down approach. The bottom-up approach enabled by Enterprise Social Software puts doing things first -- because doing things socially and openly can be more productive, with social capital and institutional memory as postive by-products of effort.
The new emphasis on doing can by found in Jay Fienberg's post on recommendations for an enterprise system that encourages collaboration in a public sphere. He describes a set of activities that are ideal for wikis, weblogs and other forms of micro-content ranging from meetings, documents, metrics and reports, individual and group uses. Notice the focus isn't on specifically identifying experts or more valuable content -- but activities that if done openly using simple and flexible tools yield lasting benefits.
From theory to practice we are seeing Enterprise Social Software being considered not as knowledge management, but as a better way of doing management. The knowing-doing gap is closing, but not as we expected. Facilitate doing in a social context and you gain learning and insights in social context.
