Congrats to you  Stan.  The success of this group is a tribute to your leadership and effort.

Al

Dear Stan,

Congratulations to you and all the SIKM members.

In these days of accelerated change where job rotations in the western world are close to a 3-year average, and 4 years for tenure in company, 10 years of longevity leading is a major achievement! I call this the power of persistency.

In his book “Outliers” Gladwell repeatedly mentions the "10,000-Hour Rule", claiming that the key to achieving world class expertise in any skill, is, to a large extent, a matter of practicing the correct way, for a total of around 10,000h.

I think persistency is another “Outliers” that we don’t talk about and promote enough and it’s not about the time spent master a skill, but the time spent leading successfully.

Happy 10 years anniversary SIKM!

Glad to part of it J

Jean-Claude

The lack of persistency is one of the key barriers to KM in government.  Knowledge management positions are not part of the mainstream business hierarchy; they are staff positions.  Consequently they are often filled with 2-3 year assignments.  Someone with no KM background spends most of their assignment learning what the field is all about, trying some quick fixes, and then moving on to the next step on their career path.  The “KM implementation cycle” then begins all over again.  I shudder to recall the number of times I was asked by a KM newbie: “Tell me everything you know about KM.”  Of course, they only allocate 30 minutes to an hour for the exchange.  We talk, I give them something to read, and ask them to come back with specific questions.  Although they rarely come back, experience has shown that they often don’t grasp what they are reading as they apply analogies from their linear, bureaucratic experience.  With no overlap permitted between incumbents, KM usually shifts direction with each change. 

Even when a knowledge manager stays for a while, executives also change every 3-4 years.  A new executive may come along who doesn’t get it, doesn’t want it, has a different agenda, and wipes out years of progress with a single decision.  So, I would add persistency “in one place.”  Seventeen years of trying to establish KM in six different agencies with little or no executive support and inadequate resources simply isn’t the same!   

Good point Albert

Also, there are two other aspects to consider:

1.       The government is driven by a budget planning, authorization, and appropriation process that requires "requirements" be defined and approved by an organization/agency  12-18 months in advance. Multi-year funding for a KM project is rare.

2.       While industry is focused on "performance," government is focused on "compliance." Understanding that KM is about "continuous performance improvement," within industry the inability to effectively leverage knowledge can lead to loss of competitive position, customers, and even dissolution of the company.  In government, with claims to the contrary, accountability,  for poor performance, is more unlikely.  If an organization has an early adopter or innovative leader who finds value in KM, the likelihood that they will rotate out can be high, and with them goes the initiative and momentum, further exacerbated by the lack of funding over the longer term.  Industry is willing to fund longer term investments in K, whereas in government it is rarer.

best

Bill Kaplan