The goal of knowledge management - one-liner wordcloud

I asked on LinkedIn in a KM specialist group to define in a one-liner what the goal of KM should be.... to play around a little, I put the result (first 18 answers) in a word cloud.
This is the result - follow us on Twitter: @GeertSWillems - www.whiteravensconsulting.com

Learning skill independent knowledge management strategies

www.whiteravensconsulting.com - Twitter: GeertSWillems

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It's about a year ago that a remark during a KM training came "OK - waw, you really introduced us in knowledge techniques and how to approach this strategically, but you didn't tell anything (yet) on learning techniques". A few moments later the same person shared that indeed her - hospital - colleagues learned in different ways. 
And today I had a conversation on representing a framework. During the discussion it became clear that - in contradiction to the audio-visual person I am, the other person clearly had another way of absorbing knowledge. In a very constructive way - realising that her colleague structured and absorbed information in another way.
The same discussions over and over again when structuring document management systems: do we use metadata or a directory tree to structure everyhting? And as a result faulty implementations occur because either one of the two directions are taken. Unfortunately technology is not (yet) evolved to a point where metadata is generated and searched and structured automatically, although some really good efforts have been made on this point.

So what is the solution?
It's staring us in the face,

because, in fact there are no options.

There is no choice.

When you want to have a great knowledge and learning flow - wether it is internally or even towards customers - you need to create a solution strategy where all forms of learning are provided.
Fortunately training techniques have evolved so far that for a minimal add-on in cost and effort, compared with developping material that can be used by one type of person, can be used by every type of person.

Unfortunately, 
although this insight is so clear,
it has been made troubled by solution providers only supporting one or two learning techniques.

Strategic knowledge management - the value of your pieces of chess

www.whiteravensconsulting.com - Twitter: GeertSWillems

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Today I visited a CEO of a world famous company, leading in their field.

Doesn't happen to me often that I'm nervous - well I was today. These persons have the tendency to ask all kinds of strange questions and not sharing any information unless they are sure they know who they are dealing with. They tend to surprise me.

So I was surprised, because this very relaxed, open, unstressed, likeable CEO asked very logical questions. And sometimes those are the hardest when you are really in depth in your area of expertise (...I should write another time on that).

But an intresting topic was raised:

I try to avoid slides, but this time I used some of them. And on one of those slides more than 160 used techniques popped up. One by one. For 80 seconds, a new topic every half a second: "document management system", "CoP", "Knowledge Café", "Capturing meeting".

And this CEO surprised me really reading what was appearing saying "yes, we have this, we use that, yes, virtual teams too,..."

But the question was not "Do you know or use these tools and techniques".
The question is: do you use the right tools the right way in a coordinated way to grow in knowledge maturity?

When CoP is considered as a killer application within KM - it's a Queen on your chessboard.
A use of a knowledge based quality management system can be the king. And knowledge café's your horse.

But when there is no strategy behind all using these different tools and techniques,
when there is no strategy in coordinating alle the pieces of game,... you'll loose.

A knowledge strategy is not about 'hé, this is a new tool or technique - let's use it!'. It's not about 'we are already implementing a plan do check act cycle and continuous improvement'.

It's about unleashing the power of asking 'why'. Why are you moving your Queen, and does that effect the tower? Tools may be great in distributing knowledge - but is this knowledge reused?

The value of the field of expertise called knowledge management is the added value that you get when you coordinate the why with the how with the why again and with the whose, again asking yourself 'why'.

Just a pitty I didn not came up with this chess analogy this morning!