|
Aprill Allen <aprill@...>
As above... Are any consultants here thinking about the CILIP chartership? Wondering what the value of joining will be when I can't get an employer to cover the cost. -- 
Aprill Allen
Founder and Managing Director | Knowledge Bird
KM Consulting & KCS Training
M: +61 (0)400 101 961
knowledgebird.com
|
|
|
I've done the PMP, CISSP, CSSLP and am a PE and PhD. I haven't seen anything saying this cert has value so I wasn't thinking of doing it. I would love to also hear from those who do have it or say it has value (and why).....murray jennex
-----Original Message-----
From: Aprill Allen <aprill@...>
To: main@SIKM.groups.io
Sent: Sun, Mar 21, 2021 3:17 pm
Subject: [SIKM] CILIP - Is anyone thinking about taking up the KM #chartership... and what about consultants?
As above...
Are any consultants here thinking about the CILIP chartership? Wondering what the value of joining will be when I can't get an employer to cover the cost.
--
Aprill Allen
Founder and Managing Director | Knowledge Bird
KM Consulting & KCS Training
M: +61 (0)400 101 961
knowledgebird.com
|
|
|
Hi Aprill
ISKO Singapore is holding a virtual panel with CILIP on the KM Chartership on 18 June (the panel will include a couple of chartership candidates, one of whom is a consultant). You (and other list members) are welcome to register and participate in this event - there is no charge. Note the timing is 4pm Singapore time.
P
On 22 Mar 2021, at 6:17 AM, Aprill Allen < aprill@...> wrote:
As above... Are any consultants here thinking about the CILIP chartership? Wondering what the value of joining will be when I can't get an employer to cover the cost. --
Aprill Allen
Founder and Managing Director | Knowledge Bird
KM Consulting & KCS Training
M: +61 (0)400 101 961
knowledgebird.com
|
|
|
Hi Patrick,
I'm very much looking forward to this session. BTW, I ended up
re-reading a 2006
article of yours and think it is definitely worth
considering to what extent CILIP is or is not a "certification"
program, noting the the challenges and goals you outlined so
nicely back then.
I have taken the liberty of lightly revising what you wrote to
reflect my assessment of our present situation as per the below:
What would you expect to see in a professional KM
certification programme?
A "strong" KM certification programme would need diverse
instructional and testing in:
- Knowledge: taught input and verbal testing (ie
describe the difference between a knowledge strategy and a
knowledge management strategy)
- Skills: demonstration, supervised practice and
outcomes based testing (ie put together a project plan for a
knowledge audit; conduct an after action review session for a
project team)
- Attitudes and Values: cannot be taught or tested, can
only be modelled and observed in an environment of continuing
professional interaction and peer review
- Aptitudes: cannot be taught, can only be uncovered
and fostered over time, most likely in a mentoring/coaching
kind of partnership
And therefore a good KM certification programme would need to
have:
- taught and examined knowledge input
- guided and assessed practice
- continuing professional interaction and peer review over
time
- mentoring and coaching structures
Professional societies or networks are clearly the best
candidates for providing this combination of features: as good
as universities are, few of them are well placed to develop and
deliver the practice based skills and professional interaction
areas. To avoid the inevitable distortions of commercial gain,
certification and training courses in KM should be
not-for-profit and non-commercial in nature.
A problem is that -- with the possible exception of the ISO
30401 KMS standard -- there is still no commonly accepted set of
concepts, theories and practices that embody KM. As such we must
acknowledge that from the "knowledge" point of view (as distinct
from skills, values and aptitudes), any certification is likely
to only represent one perspective among many.
Based on what I know of the CILIP chartership, my assessment is
that the focus is primarily on demonstrated skills. There is
definitely some intent to test demonstrated attitudes and values
as well, but it appears to be neither designed or intended to
address the knowledge or aptitude components of a hypothetical
"certification".
Having this option still represents a significant
leap forward from the status quo of course! However, I am
interested to unpack and discuss we can make progress as a
community in the other areas as well.
Cheers,
Stephen.
====================================
Stephen Bounds
Executive, Information Management
Cordelta
E: stephen.bounds@...
M: 0401 829 096
====================================
On 22/03/2021 12:00 pm, Patrick Lambe
wrote:
Hi Aprill
ISKO Singapore is holding a virtual panel with CILIP
on the KM Chartership on 18 June (the panel will include a
couple of chartership candidates, one of whom is a consultant).
You (and other list members) are welcome to register and
participate in this event - there is no charge. Note the timing
is 4pm Singapore time.
P
On 22 Mar 2021, at 6:17 AM, Aprill Allen < aprill@...>
wrote:
As above...
Are any consultants here thinking about the CILIP
chartership? Wondering what the value of joining will be
when I can't get an employer to cover the cost.
--
Aprill Allen
Founder and Managing Director | Knowledge
Bird
KM Consulting & KCS Training
M: +61 (0)400 101 961
knowledgebird.com
|
|
|
Thanks Stephen, very astute comments as always.
You are quite right, the CILIP programme is not a certification programme in the traditional sense of testing acquired knowledge and skills.
My understanding is that CILIP reviewed the professional landscape and concluded that there was ample (if of inconsistent quality) provision for certification in KM, whether from commercial providers, not for profits, commercial providers masquerading as not for profits, or academic institutions.
The gap they identified was precisely in the area of demonstrated skills and experience based on a professional portfolio and peer review, and that is why they aligned the KM chartership programme with their existing LIS chartership programme rather than developing a taught/tested certification programme.
That’s my understanding of the background, and we can certainly test this out in the ISKO session in June.
P
On 22 Mar 2021, at 12:29 PM, Stephen Bounds < km@...> wrote:
Hi Patrick, I'm very much looking forward to this session. BTW, I ended up
re-reading a 2006
article of yours and think it is definitely worth
considering to what extent CILIP is or is not a "certification"
program, noting the the challenges and goals you outlined so
nicely back then.
I have taken the liberty of lightly revising what you wrote to
reflect my assessment of our present situation as per the below:
What would you expect to see in a professional KM
certification programme?
A "strong" KM certification programme would need diverse
instructional and testing in:
- Knowledge: taught input and verbal testing (ie
describe the difference between a knowledge strategy and a
knowledge management strategy)
- Skills: demonstration, supervised practice and
outcomes based testing (ie put together a project plan for a
knowledge audit; conduct an after action review session for a
project team)
- Attitudes and Values: cannot be taught or tested, can
only be modelled and observed in an environment of continuing
professional interaction and peer review
- Aptitudes: cannot be taught, can only be uncovered
and fostered over time, most likely in a mentoring/coaching
kind of partnership
And therefore a good KM certification programme would need to
have:
- taught and examined knowledge input
- guided and assessed practice
- continuing professional interaction and peer review over
time
- mentoring and coaching structures
Professional societies or networks are clearly the best
candidates for providing this combination of features: as good
as universities are, few of them are well placed to develop and
deliver the practice based skills and professional interaction
areas. To avoid the inevitable distortions of commercial gain,
certification and training courses in KM should be
not-for-profit and non-commercial in nature. A problem is that -- with the possible exception of the ISO
30401 KMS standard -- there is still no commonly accepted set of
concepts, theories and practices that embody KM. As such we must
acknowledge that from the "knowledge" point of view (as distinct
from skills, values and aptitudes), any certification is likely
to only represent one perspective among many.
Based on what I know of the CILIP chartership, my assessment is
that the focus is primarily on demonstrated skills. There is
definitely some intent to test demonstrated attitudes and values
as well, but it appears to be neither designed or intended to
address the knowledge or aptitude components of a hypothetical
"certification". Having this option still represents a significant
leap forward from the status quo of course! However, I am
interested to unpack and discuss we can make progress as a
community in the other areas as well.
Cheers,
Stephen.
====================================
Stephen Bounds
Executive, Information Management
Cordelta
E: stephen.bounds@...
M: 0401 829 096
====================================
On 22/03/2021 12:00 pm, Patrick Lambe
wrote:
Hi Aprill
ISKO Singapore is holding a virtual panel with CILIP
on the KM Chartership on 18 June (the panel will include a
couple of chartership candidates, one of whom is a consultant).
You (and other list members) are welcome to register and
participate in this event - there is no charge. Note the timing
is 4pm Singapore time.
P
On 22 Mar 2021, at 6:17 AM, Aprill Allen < aprill@...>
wrote:
As above...
Are any consultants here thinking about the CILIP
chartership? Wondering what the value of joining will be
when I can't get an employer to cover the cost.
--
Aprill Allen
Founder and Managing Director | Knowledge
Bird
KM Consulting & KCS Training
M: +61 (0)400 101 961
knowledgebird.com
|
|
|
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
From: main@SIKM.groups.io <main@SIKM.groups.io> On Behalf Of
Stephen Bounds via groups.io
Sent: Sunday, March 21, 2021 21:29
To: main@SIKM.groups.io
Subject: Re: [SIKM] CILIP - Is anyone thinking about taking up the KM #chartership... and what about consultants?
Hi Patrick,
I'm very much looking forward to this session. BTW, I ended up re-reading a
2006 article of yours and think it is definitely worth considering to what extent CILIP is or is not a "certification" program, noting the the challenges and goals you outlined so nicely back then.
I have taken the liberty of lightly revising what you wrote to reflect my assessment of our present situation as per the below:
What would you expect to see in a professional KM certification programme?
A "strong" KM certification programme would need diverse instructional and testing in:
-
Knowledge: taught input and verbal testing (ie describe the difference between a knowledge strategy and a knowledge management strategy)
-
Skills: demonstration, supervised practice and outcomes based testing (ie put together a project plan for a knowledge audit; conduct an after action review session for a project team)
-
Attitudes and Values: cannot be taught or tested, can only be modelled and observed in an environment of continuing professional interaction and peer review
-
Aptitudes: cannot be taught, can only be uncovered and fostered over time, most likely in a mentoring/coaching kind of partnership
And therefore a good KM certification programme would need to have:
-
taught and examined knowledge input
-
guided and assessed practice
-
continuing professional interaction and peer review over time
-
mentoring and coaching structures
Professional societies or networks are clearly the best candidates for providing this combination of features: as good as universities are, few of them are well placed to develop and deliver the practice based skills and professional interaction areas. To
avoid the inevitable distortions of commercial gain, certification and training courses in KM should be not-for-profit and non-commercial in nature.
A problem is that -- with the possible exception of the ISO 30401 KMS standard -- there is still no commonly accepted set of concepts, theories and practices that embody KM. As such we must acknowledge that from the "knowledge" point of view (as distinct
from skills, values and aptitudes), any certification is likely to only represent one perspective among many.
Based on what I know of the CILIP chartership, my assessment is that the focus is primarily on demonstrated skills. There is definitely some intent to test demonstrated attitudes and values as well, but it appears to be neither designed or intended to address
the knowledge or aptitude components of a hypothetical "certification".
Having this option still represents a significant leap forward from the status quo of course! However, I am interested to unpack and discuss we can make progress as a community in the other areas as well.
Cheers,
Stephen.
====================================
Stephen Bounds
Executive, Information Management
Cordelta
E: stephen.bounds@...
M: 0401 829 096
====================================
On 22/03/2021 12:00 pm, Patrick Lambe wrote:
Hi Aprill
ISKO Singapore is holding a virtual panel with CILIP on the KM Chartership on 18 June (the panel will include a couple of chartership candidates, one of whom is a consultant). You (and other list members) are welcome to register and participate
in this event - there is no charge. Note the timing is 4pm Singapore time.
On 22 Mar 2021, at 6:17 AM, Aprill Allen <aprill@...> wrote:
As above...
Are any consultants here thinking about the CILIP chartership? Wondering what the value of joining will be when I can't get an employer to cover the cost.
--
Aprill Allen
Founder and Managing Director | Knowledge Bird
KM Consulting & KCS Training
M: +61 (0)400 101 961
knowledgebird.com
|
|
|
Thanks Bill. I especially like the way you advocate separation between certification and training. However while the Body of Knowledge (BOK) approach does appear at first sight to hold value, some providers have merged their training content with “BOK” claims, thus blurring that separation. We still lack independent means of verifying a body of knowledge around KM, and I think we are still a very long way off from having anything that is sufficiently diverse and deep to cover the diversity of work contexts we deal with.
What I like about the CILIP offering is that it is practical. It advances the experience-based evaluation of KM practices, using portfolio building, mentors and the mechanism of peer review. That is a framework we have sadly lacked in the past.
There is no lack of training in KM, whether “certification”-oriented or otherwise and my instinct would be that (aside from foundational education programmes in KM), there may be more value in seeking out specialised training in deep niches for the specialised aspects of KM we may be dealing with at any given time.
KM practices and needs (as you point out) are so diverse that I am not sure how valuable a generalised (context-free) certification course can be, aside from building some foundational knowledge, which is useful for beginners but rapidly loses value when we get into more specialised areas of work. That is precisely the same problem that a BOK approach runs into.
P
On 22 Mar 2021, at 1:53 PM, bill@... wrote:
Stephen and Patrick-- This subject resurfaces regularly. I can share two Linked In articles I posted on certification in KM and why it cannot yet exist. The articles share many of your points. Training organizations offer “certification” but in reality the “certification” is a certificate demonstrating completion of offered training. While there may be personal value in taking the training it is not certification around a body of knowledge. best Bill <image002.png> Hi Patrick, I'm very much looking forward to this session. BTW, I ended up re-reading a 2006 article of yours and think it is definitely worth considering to what extent CILIP is or is not a "certification" program, noting the the challenges and goals you outlined so nicely back then. I have taken the liberty of lightly revising what you wrote to reflect my assessment of our present situation as per the below: What would you expect to see in a professional KM certification programme? A "strong" KM certification programme would need diverse instructional and testing in: - Knowledge: taught input and verbal testing (ie describe the difference between a knowledge strategy and a knowledge management strategy)
- Skills: demonstration, supervised practice and outcomes based testing (ie put together a project plan for a knowledge audit; conduct an after action review session for a project team)
- Attitudes and Values: cannot be taught or tested, can only be modelled and observed in an environment of continuing professional interaction and peer review
- Aptitudes: cannot be taught, can only be uncovered and fostered over time, most likely in a mentoring/coaching kind of partnership
And therefore a good KM certification programme would need to have: - taught and examined knowledge input
- guided and assessed practice
- continuing professional interaction and peer review over time
- mentoring and coaching structures
Professional societies or networks are clearly the best candidates for providing this combination of features: as good as universities are, few of them are well placed to develop and deliver the practice based skills and professional interaction areas. To avoid the inevitable distortions of commercial gain, certification and training courses in KM should be not-for-profit and non-commercial in nature. A problem is that -- with the possible exception of the ISO 30401 KMS standard -- there is still no commonly accepted set of concepts, theories and practices that embody KM. As such we must acknowledge that from the "knowledge" point of view (as distinct from skills, values and aptitudes), any certification is likely to only represent one perspective among many.
Based on what I know of the CILIP chartership, my assessment is that the focus is primarily on demonstrated skills. There is definitely some intent to test demonstrated attitudes and values as well, but it appears to be neither designed or intended to address the knowledge or aptitude components of a hypothetical "certification". Having this option still represents a significant leap forward from the status quo of course! However, I am interested to unpack and discuss we can make progress as a community in the other areas as well. Cheers,
Stephen. ==================================== Stephen Bounds Executive, Information Management Cordelta E: stephen.bounds@... M: 0401 829 096 ==================================== On 22/03/2021 12:00 pm, Patrick Lambe wrote: Hi Aprill ISKO Singapore is holding a virtual panel with CILIP on the KM Chartership on 18 June (the panel will include a couple of chartership candidates, one of whom is a consultant). You (and other list members) are welcome to register and participate in this event - there is no charge. Note the timing is 4pm Singapore time. On 22 Mar 2021, at 6:17 AM, Aprill Allen < aprill@...> wrote: As above... Are any consultants here thinking about the CILIP chartership? Wondering what the value of joining will be when I can't get an employer to cover the cost. --
Aprill Allen
Founder and Managing Director | Knowledge Bird
KM Consulting & KCS Training
M: +61 (0)400 101 961
knowledgebird.com
|
|
|
All great points Patrick!
Thank you
On Mar 21, 2021, at 23:13, Patrick Lambe via groups.io <plambe@...> wrote:
Thanks Bill. I especially like the way you advocate separation between certification and training. However while the Body of Knowledge (BOK) approach does appear at first sight to hold value, some providers have merged their training content
with “BOK” claims, thus blurring that separation. We still lack independent means of verifying a body of knowledge around KM, and I think we are still a very long way off from having anything that is sufficiently diverse and deep to cover the diversity of
work contexts we deal with.
What I like about the CILIP offering is that it is practical. It advances the experience-based evaluation of KM practices, using portfolio building, mentors and the mechanism of peer review. That is a framework we have sadly lacked in the past.
There is no lack of training in KM, whether “certification”-oriented or otherwise and my instinct would be that (aside from foundational education programmes in KM), there may be more value in seeking out specialised training in deep niches for
the specialised aspects of KM we may be dealing with at any given time.
KM practices and needs (as you point out) are so diverse that I am not sure how valuable a generalised (context-free) certification course can be, aside from building some foundational knowledge, which is useful for beginners but rapidly loses
value when we get into more specialised areas of work. That is precisely the same problem that a BOK approach runs into.
P
On 22 Mar 2021, at 1:53 PM,
bill@... wrote:
Stephen and Patrick--
This subject resurfaces regularly. I can share two Linked In articles I posted on certification in KM and why it cannot yet exist. The articles share many of your points.
Training organizations offer “certification” but in reality the “certification” is a certificate demonstrating completion of offered training. While there may be personal value in taking the training it is not certification around a body of knowledge.
best
Bill
<image002.png>
Hi Patrick,
I'm very much looking forward to this session. BTW, I ended up re-reading a 2006
article of yours and think it is definitely worth considering to what extent CILIP is or is not a "certification" program, noting the the challenges and goals you outlined so nicely back then.
I have taken the liberty of lightly revising what you wrote to reflect my assessment of our present situation as per the below:
What would you expect to see in a professional KM certification programme?
A "strong" KM certification programme would need diverse instructional and testing in:
-
Knowledge: taught input and verbal testing (ie describe the difference between a knowledge strategy and a knowledge management strategy)
-
Skills: demonstration, supervised practice and outcomes based testing (ie put together a project plan for a knowledge audit; conduct an after action review session for a project team)
-
Attitudes and Values: cannot be taught or tested, can only be modelled and observed in an environment of continuing professional interaction and peer review
-
Aptitudes: cannot be taught, can only be uncovered and fostered over time, most likely in a mentoring/coaching kind of partnership
And therefore a good KM certification programme would need to have:
-
taught and examined knowledge input
-
guided and assessed practice
-
continuing professional interaction and peer review over time
-
mentoring and coaching structures
Professional societies or networks are clearly the best candidates for providing this combination of features: as good as universities are, few of them are well placed to develop and deliver the practice based skills and professional interaction
areas. To avoid the inevitable distortions of commercial gain, certification and training courses in KM should be not-for-profit and non-commercial in nature.
A problem is that -- with the possible exception of the ISO 30401 KMS standard -- there is still no commonly accepted set of concepts, theories and practices that embody KM. As such we must acknowledge that from the "knowledge" point of view (as
distinct from skills, values and aptitudes), any certification is likely to only represent one perspective among many.
Based on what I know of the CILIP chartership, my assessment is that the focus is primarily on demonstrated skills. There is definitely some intent to test demonstrated attitudes and values as well, but it appears to be neither designed or intended
to address the knowledge or aptitude components of a hypothetical "certification".
Having this option still represents a significant leap forward from the status quo of course! However, I am interested to unpack
and discuss we can make progress as a community in the other areas as well.
Cheers,
Stephen.
====================================
Stephen Bounds
Executive, Information Management
Cordelta
E: stephen.bounds@...
M: 0401 829 096
====================================
On 22/03/2021 12:00 pm, Patrick Lambe wrote:
Hi Aprill
ISKO Singapore is holding a virtual panel with CILIP on the KM Chartership on 18 June (the panel will include a couple of chartership candidates, one of whom is a consultant). You (and other list members) are welcome to register and participate in this event
- there is no charge. Note the timing is 4pm Singapore time.
On 22 Mar 2021, at 6:17 AM, Aprill Allen < aprill@...> wrote:
As above...
Are any consultants here thinking about the CILIP chartership? Wondering what the value of joining will be when I can't get an employer to cover the cost.
--
Aprill Allen
Founder and Managing Director | Knowledge Bird
KM Consulting & KCS Training
M: +61 (0)400 101 961
knowledgebird.com
|
|
|
I would argue that it is not the lack of a body of knowledge that makes certification difficult, it is the lack of standard outcomes and how to achieve them that makes certification impossible as there is not a measuring stick to measure against, hence you can't certify anyone to a base level of performance......murray jennex
-----Original Message-----
From: bill@... <bill@...>
To: main@sikm.groups.io <main@sikm.groups.io>
Sent: Mon, Mar 22, 2021 12:42 am
Subject: Re: [SIKM] CILIP - Is anyone thinking about taking up the KM #chartership... and what about consultants?
All great points Patrick!
Thank you
Bill
On Mar 21, 2021, at 23:13, Patrick Lambe via groups.io <plambe@...> wrote:
Thanks Bill. I especially like the way you advocate separation between certification and training. However while the Body of Knowledge (BOK) approach does appear at first sight to hold value, some providers have merged their training content
with “BOK” claims, thus blurring that separation. We still lack independent means of verifying a body of knowledge around KM, and I think we are still a very long way off from having anything that is sufficiently diverse and deep to cover the diversity of
work contexts we deal with.
What I like about the CILIP offering is that it is practical. It advances the experience-based evaluation of KM practices, using portfolio building, mentors and the mechanism of peer review. That is a framework we have sadly lacked in the past.
There is no lack of training in KM, whether “certification”-oriented or otherwise and my instinct would be that (aside from foundational education programmes in KM), there may be more value in seeking out specialised training in deep niches for
the specialised aspects of KM we may be dealing with at any given time.
KM practices and needs (as you point out) are so diverse that I am not sure how valuable a generalised (context-free) certification course can be, aside from building some foundational knowledge, which is useful for beginners but rapidly loses
value when we get into more specialised areas of work. That is precisely the same problem that a BOK approach runs into.
P
On 22 Mar 2021, at 1:53 PM,
bill@... wrote:
Stephen and Patrick--
This subject resurfaces regularly. I can share two Linked In articles I posted on certification in KM and why it cannot yet exist. The articles share many of your points.
Training organizations offer “certification” but in reality the “certification” is a certificate demonstrating completion of offered training. While there may be personal value in taking the training it is not certification around a body of knowledge.
best
Bill
<image002.png>
Hi Patrick,
I'm very much looking forward to this session. BTW, I ended up re-reading a 2006
article of yours and think it is definitely worth considering to what extent CILIP is or is not a "certification" program, noting the the challenges and goals you outlined so nicely back then. I have taken the liberty of lightly revising what you wrote to reflect my assessment of our present situation as per the below:
What would you expect to see in a professional KM certification programme?
A "strong" KM certification programme would need diverse instructional and testing in:
-
Knowledge: taught input and verbal testing (ie describe the difference between a knowledge strategy and a knowledge management strategy)
-
Skills: demonstration, supervised practice and outcomes based testing (ie put together a project plan for a knowledge audit; conduct an after action review session for a project team)
-
Attitudes and Values: cannot be taught or tested, can only be modelled and observed in an environment of continuing professional interaction and peer review
-
Aptitudes: cannot be taught, can only be uncovered and fostered over time, most likely in a mentoring/coaching kind of partnership
And therefore a good KM certification programme would need to have:
-
taught and examined knowledge input
-
guided and assessed practice
-
continuing professional interaction and peer review over time
-
mentoring and coaching structures
Professional societies or networks are clearly the best candidates for providing this combination of features: as good as universities are, few of them are well placed to develop and deliver the practice based skills and professional interaction
areas. To avoid the inevitable distortions of commercial gain, certification and training courses in KM should be not-for-profit and non-commercial in nature.
A problem is that -- with the possible exception of the ISO 30401 KMS standard -- there is still no commonly accepted set of concepts, theories and practices that embody KM. As such we must acknowledge that from the "knowledge" point of view (as
distinct from skills, values and aptitudes), any certification is likely to only represent one perspective among many.
Based on what I know of the CILIP chartership, my assessment is that the focus is primarily on demonstrated skills. There is definitely some intent to test demonstrated attitudes and values as well, but it appears to be neither designed or intended
to address the knowledge or aptitude components of a hypothetical "certification".
Having this option still represents a significant leap forward from the status quo of course! However, I am interested to unpack
and discuss we can make progress as a community in the other areas as well.
Cheers,
Stephen.
====================================
Stephen Bounds
Executive, Information Management
Cordelta
E: stephen.bounds@...
M: 0401 829 096
====================================
On 22/03/2021 12:00 pm, Patrick Lambe wrote:
Hi Aprill
ISKO Singapore is holding a virtual panel with CILIP on the KM Chartership on 18 June (the panel will include a couple of chartership candidates, one of whom is a consultant). You (and other list members) are welcome to register and participate in this event
- there is no charge. Note the timing is 4pm Singapore time.
On 22 Mar 2021, at 6:17 AM, Aprill Allen < aprill@...> wrote:
As above...
Are any consultants here thinking about the CILIP chartership? Wondering what the value of joining will be when I can't get an employer to cover the cost.
--
Aprill Allen
Founder and Managing Director | Knowledge Bird
KM Consulting & KCS Training
M: +61 (0)400 101 961
knowledgebird.com
|
|
|
Hi Murray
I partly agree and partly disagree with you.
I absolutely agree on the need to link “knowledge” to outcomes. “BOK" can be and often is used as a context-free term, and certifying against a BOK and not against outcomes is as nonsensical as it is common.
I agree with you to the extent that “Body of Knowledge” can be taken just to mean a body of documented knowledge relating to a field that can be used as a reference resource. I think this is sometimes used as a distraction from the really hard work of demonstrating practical improvements (we compile some content and call it a BOK and teach it in a course and hey presto magic competencies can be inferred).
I reserve my agreement when it comes to a deeper meaning for Body of Knowledge - which in the certification context, should in principle comprise a body of independently validated and widely applicable knowledge, that: - is applicable across multiple organisational and cultural contexts,
- is clearly documented and organised and available for use, and
- has the quality of good evidence - i.e. the practices being documented are evidenced in practice and are known to produce reliable outcomes within defined boundaries.
I do think this connotation for BOK would be entirely consistent with, and supportive of, an outcomes focused approach.
Moreover, a purely outcomes-focused approach without any attention to systematic knowledge-building, learning and improvement, and to the quality of evidence in support of the approaches being used, is the equivalent of throwing whatever is to hand in our personal repertoires and experience at any problem we meet and seeing what sticks.
We’ve been doing that for the past 25 years or more, and it has been a slow, hard and contentious crawl out of that slime (trying to make sense of all the things that “stuck” without knowing about all the things that didn’t) and towards some semblance of consistency and common ground in our community.
So I am both sceptical of the rush to approval of supposed “BOKs” in KM, but I am also convinced of the need for systematic knowledge building and sharing in our professional community. We are still a long way off from that goal. In the meantime, certifying against outcomes does seem like a practical interim approach.
I have one other small niggle, though. I am not sure that it is possible to measure against achievement of “standard” outcomes in all contexts, particularly in relation to very complex and unstructured environments. I would be happier if we talked about “improved” outcomes against baselines.
So I think agree with you on your main point but would express things differently (if less elegantly) on the detail.
P
I would argue that it is not the lack of a body of knowledge that makes certification difficult, it is the lack of standard outcomes and how to achieve them that makes certification impossible as there is not a measuring stick to measure against, hence you can't certify anyone to a base level of performance......murray jennex
-----Original Message-----
From: bill@... < bill@...>
To: main@sikm.groups.io < main@sikm.groups.io>
Sent: Mon, Mar 22, 2021 12:42 am
Subject: Re: [SIKM] CILIP - Is anyone thinking about taking up the KM #chartership... and what about consultants?
All great points Patrick!
Thank you
Bill
Thanks Bill. I especially like the way you advocate separation between certification and training. However while the Body of Knowledge (BOK) approach does appear at first sight to hold value, some providers have merged their training content
with “BOK” claims, thus blurring that separation. We still lack independent means of verifying a body of knowledge around KM, and I think we are still a very long way off from having anything that is sufficiently diverse and deep to cover the diversity of
work contexts we deal with.
What I like about the CILIP offering is that it is practical. It advances the experience-based evaluation of KM practices, using portfolio building, mentors and the mechanism of peer review. That is a framework we have sadly lacked in the past.
There is no lack of training in KM, whether “certification”-oriented or otherwise and my instinct would be that (aside from foundational education programmes in KM), there may be more value in seeking out specialised training in deep niches for
the specialised aspects of KM we may be dealing with at any given time.
KM practices and needs (as you point out) are so diverse that I am not sure how valuable a generalised (context-free) certification course can be, aside from building some foundational knowledge, which is useful for beginners but rapidly loses
value when we get into more specialised areas of work. That is precisely the same problem that a BOK approach runs into.
P
On 22 Mar 2021, at 1:53 PM,
bill@... wrote:
Stephen and Patrick--
This subject resurfaces regularly. I can share two Linked In articles I posted on certification in KM and why it cannot yet exist. The articles share many of your points.
Training organizations offer “certification” but in reality the “certification” is a certificate demonstrating completion of offered training. While there may be personal value in taking the training it is not certification around a body of knowledge.
best
Bill
<image002.png>
Hi Patrick,
I'm very much looking forward to this session. BTW, I ended up re-reading a 2006
article of yours and think it is definitely worth considering to what extent CILIP is or is not a "certification" program, noting the the challenges and goals you outlined so nicely back then. I have taken the liberty of lightly revising what you wrote to reflect my assessment of our present situation as per the below:
What would you expect to see in a professional KM certification programme?
A "strong" KM certification programme would need diverse instructional and testing in:
-
Knowledge: taught input and verbal testing (ie describe the difference between a knowledge strategy and a knowledge management strategy)
-
Skills: demonstration, supervised practice and outcomes based testing (ie put together a project plan for a knowledge audit; conduct an after action review session for a project team)
-
Attitudes and Values: cannot be taught or tested, can only be modelled and observed in an environment of continuing professional interaction and peer review
-
Aptitudes: cannot be taught, can only be uncovered and fostered over time, most likely in a mentoring/coaching kind of partnership
And therefore a good KM certification programme would need to have:
-
taught and examined knowledge input
-
guided and assessed practice
-
continuing professional interaction and peer review over time
-
mentoring and coaching structures
Professional societies or networks are clearly the best candidates for providing this combination of features: as good as universities are, few of them are well placed to develop and deliver the practice based skills and professional interaction
areas. To avoid the inevitable distortions of commercial gain, certification and training courses in KM should be not-for-profit and non-commercial in nature.
A problem is that -- with the possible exception of the ISO 30401 KMS standard -- there is still no commonly accepted set of concepts, theories and practices that embody KM. As such we must acknowledge that from the "knowledge" point of view (as
distinct from skills, values and aptitudes), any certification is likely to only represent one perspective among many.
Based on what I know of the CILIP chartership, my assessment is that the focus is primarily on demonstrated skills. There is definitely some intent to test demonstrated attitudes and values as well, but it appears to be neither designed or intended
to address the knowledge or aptitude components of a hypothetical "certification".
Having this option still represents a significant leap forward from the status quo of course! However, I am interested to unpack
and discuss we can make progress as a community in the other areas as well.
Cheers,
Stephen.
====================================
Stephen Bounds
Executive, Information Management
Cordelta
E: stephen.bounds@...
M: 0401 829 096
====================================
On 22/03/2021 12:00 pm, Patrick Lambe wrote:
Hi Aprill
ISKO Singapore is holding a virtual panel with CILIP on the KM Chartership on 18 June (the panel will include a couple of chartership candidates, one of whom is a consultant). You (and other list members) are welcome to register and participate in this event
- there is no charge. Note the timing is 4pm Singapore time.
On 22 Mar 2021, at 6:17 AM, Aprill Allen < aprill@...> wrote:
As above...
Are any consultants here thinking about the CILIP chartership? Wondering what the value of joining will be when I can't get an employer to cover the cost.
--
Aprill Allen
Founder and Managing Director | Knowledge Bird
KM Consulting & KCS Training
M: +61 (0)400 101 961
knowledgebird.com
|
|
|
Sorry I’m late to the party but allow me to offer a few thoughts based on my experience in a couple of different arenas.
First, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that certification is an indication that someone has met the standard. The problem, as Patrick and Murray point to, is that we don’t have a standard.
Having been involved in the certification process for a vendor and an industry association, I can tell you setting a standard isn’t as easy as it seems and it can easily be drawn into a bad place by the subject matter experts deciding that
their area of specialty is the most important. (It can equally be pulled off by people who are not practical. I’ll get to that in a moment.) When you’re building a fundamentals, or baseline, certification it’s easy enough to select the key things that
everyone should know. The fundamental models (correct or not) that people should be aware of since they’re likely to encounter them. It becomes difficult, as Patrick points to when you get to the point of the knowledge being specialized.
The answer then is – and should be – to develop the associate/beginner certification which includes the things that everyone should know. Connecting this to academia – it’s all the stuff that goes in the 101 course for other disciplines.
The advanced stuff doesn’t psychometrically validate well and setting a “cut score” becomes challenging. Consider an exam and certification with four major areas. Let’s say that someone demonstrates good competency in three of the four areas but has no knowledge
whatsoever in the fourth. You end up with 85/85/85/20 resulting in a 68.75%. Should that be passing? (By the way, I assume 20% because I’m assuming multiple choice 5 answer questions and pure guesses since they psychometrically validate well.) Cut scores
are generally set around 70%. However, the more challenging problem is that the certification meets a standard. One should reasonably expect that someone certified should know all four content areas. (This was precisely a question I had to help answer on
an exam/certification that failed in the market.)
The second truth to advanced certifications is that they’re not profitable. You don’t drive enough volume to justify your development costs. Years ago the most lucrative certification was A+ for CompTIA because of the volume. It served
a real place in the market. The “big box” retailers needed a way to certify their computer technicians. It drove a ton of volume. So while subject matter experts want to work on advanced certifications, it’s the wrong place to go if you want the market
to move. My work with the Server+ certification is public knowledge so I can say that while we did the right things for skills match there wasn’t a market demand because no one used it as a screening criteria for candidates.
I can tell you if you include too many people’s personal beliefs into what’s important it will sink the validity of the certification. The market won’t care and they won’t interpret it as valid. The reason that A+ worked is because it
was directly relevant to the job skills necessary to be successful. Doing that with a more heuristic role is exponentially more difficult.
Let me share my experience with my work on change management. Change management suffers the same fate as KM relative to certification. In their case ACMP is pushing their CCMP certification which is based on their “Standard.” (literally
that’s what it’s called.) The problem is the standard is garbage. It’s a project management approach to change management that just doesn’t work but they’re still off certifying people because it’s something. The Change Management Institute (CMI) is certifying
folks but they’ve got a sole-source training contract with a vendor and a body of knowledge that got pulled into a book and really unwound. It turned into a mishmash of everything that someone might want to know with no focus. Prosci is the big commercial
player and they’re certifying people on their model. The problem is that it doesn’t make people broadly more able to manage change. I put together what I think are fundamentals to the profession but then again I’m building training. I don’t care about certifying
people because I want them to have the skills and I don’t think I could set the standard if I want to. Neither of the industry associations are doing an effective job at creating an entry level certification that indicates basic competence.
(Sidebar: Consider the fact that there’s very little difference between the skills necessary for change management and knowledge management. The core skills overlap is very large.)
Let me shift to project management where PMI has their PMP. Everyone thinks about this as the “gold standard.” It requires experience. It’s relatively difficult. The problem is that it’s too hard for the project coordinators that a
project or program manager needs to manage projects. The result, is that project coordinators (lower level staff) get certified with CompTIA’s Project+. It’s a step towards project management’s gold standard PMP certification but indicates baseline skills
and lexicon that a PMP certified project manager should expect. As a result, it’s successful. So while PMI is successful with their PMP program, it’s a bit in spite of themselves. Others in the market filled the gap.
However, PMI raises an interesting point… Do you have to have experience to get the certification? My answer is an emphatic no. However, as a certification provider you want the answer to be yes. Because you want to demonstrate that
your certification is higher value. However, I’ve met people with the same first year experience twenty times – and people that have crammed 20 years of experience into less than a year. So in my mind, experience means nothing. However, it guards the certification
provider against the claim that people don’t know the things that the certification is supposed to ensure. (Paper MCSEs was common for the Windows NT 4 days because people couldn’t do the work.) My answer to this is improve the relevance of your questions
to the real world skills that people are being asked to demonstrate.
Oh, and ACMP requires that you demonstrate 21 hours of training from one of their qualified training providers – or you come up with some way of them agreeing that you’ve done 21 hours of training. As most of you here know, I’ve read and
reviewed a book every single week for several years. I’ve got 270 book reviews on the confident change management site. However, it’s unclear if they’d count this as “training.” As a point of fact, I applied to become one of their qualified education providers
and my application was denied. The point of this – requiring training to get a certification is not a good idea for a certification. At the same time, I recognize and support the reason why training providers have to do this. The market demands it of them.
In the absence of a good certification, any certification will do.
In short, we need an entry level certification for KM that works from the mode of the things that everyone needs to know, that’s practical to the real work we all do (and the others on our team do).
Rob
-------------------
Robert L. Bogue
O: (317) 844-5310 M: (317) 506-4977 Blog:
http://www.thorprojects.com/blog
Want to be confident about your change management efforts?
https://ConfidentChangeManagement.com
Are you burned out?
https://ExtinguishBurnout.com can help you get out of it (for free)
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
From: main@SIKM.groups.io <main@SIKM.groups.io> On Behalf Of
Murray Jennex via groups.io
Sent: Monday, March 22, 2021 4:08 AM
To: main@SIKM.groups.io
Subject: Re: [SIKM] CILIP - Is anyone thinking about taking up the KM #chartership... and what about consultants?
I would argue that it is not the lack of a body of knowledge that makes certification difficult, it is the lack of standard outcomes
and how to achieve them that makes certification impossible as there is not a measuring stick to measure against, hence you can't certify anyone to a base level of performance......murray jennex
-----Original Message-----
From: bill@... <bill@...>
To: main@sikm.groups.io <main@sikm.groups.io>
Sent: Mon, Mar 22, 2021 12:42 am
Subject: Re: [SIKM] CILIP - Is anyone thinking about taking up the KM #chartership... and what about consultants?
All great points Patrick!
Bill
On Mar 21, 2021, at 23:13, Patrick Lambe via groups.io <plambe@...> wrote:
Thanks Bill. I especially like the way you advocate separation between certification
and training. However while the Body of Knowledge (BOK) approach does appear at first sight to hold value, some providers have merged their training content with “BOK” claims, thus blurring that separation. We still lack independent means of verifying a body
of knowledge around KM, and I think we are still a very long way off from having anything that is sufficiently diverse and deep to cover the diversity of work contexts we deal with.
What I like about the CILIP offering is that it is practical. It advances the experience-based evaluation of KM practices, using portfolio building, mentors and the
mechanism of peer review. That is a framework we have sadly lacked in the past.
There is no lack of training in KM, whether “certification”-oriented or otherwise and my instinct would be that (aside from foundational education programmes in KM),
there may be more value in seeking out specialised training in deep niches for the specialised aspects of KM we may be dealing with at any given time.
KM practices and needs (as you point out) are so diverse that I am not sure how valuable a generalised (context-free) certification course can be, aside from building
some foundational knowledge, which is useful for beginners but rapidly loses value when we get into more specialised areas of work. That is precisely the same problem that a BOK approach runs into.
On 22 Mar 2021, at 1:53 PM,
bill@... wrote:
This subject resurfaces regularly. I can share two Linked In articles I posted on certification in KM and why it cannot yet exist. The articles share many of your points.
Training organizations offer “certification” but in reality the “certification” is a certificate demonstrating completion of offered training. While there may be personal value in taking the training it is not
certification around a body of knowledge.
I'm very much looking forward to this session. BTW, I ended up re-reading a 2006
article of yours and think it is definitely worth considering to what extent CILIP is or is not a "certification" program, noting the the challenges and goals you outlined so nicely back then.
I have taken the liberty of lightly revising what you wrote to reflect my assessment of our present situation as per the below:
What would you expect to see in a professional KM certification programme?
A "strong" KM certification programme would need diverse instructional and testing in:
-
Knowledge: taught input and verbal testing (ie describe the difference between a knowledge strategy and a knowledge management strategy)
-
Skills: demonstration, supervised practice and outcomes based testing (ie put together a project plan for a knowledge audit; conduct an after action review session for a project team)
-
Attitudes and Values: cannot be taught or tested, can only be modelled and observed in an environment of continuing professional interaction and peer review
-
Aptitudes: cannot be taught, can only be uncovered and fostered over time, most likely in a mentoring/coaching kind of partnership
And therefore a good KM certification programme would need to have:
-
taught and examined knowledge input
-
guided and assessed practice
-
continuing professional interaction and peer review over time
-
mentoring and coaching structures
Professional societies or networks are clearly the best candidates for providing this combination of features: as good as universities are, few of them are well
placed to develop and deliver the practice based skills and professional interaction areas. To avoid the inevitable distortions of commercial gain, certification and training courses in KM should be not-for-profit and non-commercial in nature.
A problem is that -- with the possible exception of the ISO 30401 KMS standard -- there is still no commonly accepted set of concepts, theories and practices that
embody KM. As such we must acknowledge that from the "knowledge" point of view (as distinct from skills, values and aptitudes), any certification is likely to only represent one perspective among many.
Based on what I know of the CILIP chartership, my assessment is that the focus is primarily on demonstrated skills. There is definitely some intent to test demonstrated
attitudes and values as well, but it appears to be neither designed or intended to address the knowledge or aptitude components of a hypothetical "certification".
Having this option still represents a significant leap
forward from the status quo of course! However, I am interested to unpack and discuss we can make progress as a community in the other areas as well.
====================================
Stephen Bounds
Executive, Information Management
Cordelta
E: stephen.bounds@...
M: 0401 829 096
====================================
On 22/03/2021 12:00 pm, Patrick Lambe wrote:
ISKO Singapore is holding a virtual panel with CILIP on the KM Chartership on 18 June (the panel will include a couple of chartership candidates, one of whom is a consultant). You (and other list members) are welcome
to register and participate in this event - there is no charge. Note the timing is 4pm Singapore time.
On 22 Mar 2021, at 6:17 AM, Aprill Allen <aprill@...> wrote:
As above...
Are any consultants here thinking about the CILIP chartership? Wondering what the value of joining will be when I can't get an employer to cover the cost.
--
Aprill Allen
Founder and Managing Director | Knowledge Bird
KM Consulting & KCS Training
M: +61 (0)400 101 961
knowledgebird.com
|
|
|
Amazing stuff Robert -- thanks!
You've put your finger on one of the key problems with KM
certification: What does the role of an associate / beginner KM
professional look like? Does such a thing exist?
It would have to incorporate some of the skills that will develop
into a more expert role down the line, otherwise there's no
meaningful connection or progression between the two. But it can't
be so complex in terms of experience or otherwise, as you say,
practitioners will be less likely to think they need it
(especially if they already have a postgraduate qualification) and
the market demand to possess the formal certification is likely to
remain low.
So we need both a starting point and a pathway. There are three
basic ways I can think of to organise a profession:
- Tiered roles primarily distinguished by experience and
competence, eg Project Coordinator (Project+) ->
Project Manager (PMP) -> Program Manager
- Base entry role leading to multiple specialisations, eg
Service Desk Operator -> System Administrator -> ICT
Manager / Solutions Architect / Database Administrator / etc
- Multiple entry roles, each with different career
advancement paths, eg Nurse -> Nurse Practitioner /
Remote Medicine vs Doctor -> GP / Surgeon / ENT etc
I believe there has previously been an assumption (including by
me) that any "basic" KM role would be oriented linearly towards
more expert KM opportunities.
However, when I attempted at documenting
a typology of KM roles a while back, I divided them without
a great deal of thought into senior and operational roles. Now I
am wondering whether it would be better to think of them as two
separate career streams:
- Strategic roles
- Knowledge Program Manager
- Knowledge Manager
- Knowledge Architect
- Operational roles
- Knowledge Process Manager
- Knowledge Analyst
- Knowledge Process Officer
It seems unlikely that a deep understanding of ISO30401 would
greatly benefit the operational type of role. On the other hand I
believe it would be possible to outline a pragmatic curriculum to
improve effectiveness, teach fundamentals (ie what a complex
system is and why it matters) and a common set of terminology and
methods recommended for adoption. It would fit the bill for
meaningful competence training without a great deal of prior
experience and match the described market need for
most base to mid level KM roles.
On the other hand, a strategic role benefits more from study in
complex systems, individual and group psychology, and information
sciences along with training in key KM methods for diagnosing
problems and then designing, implementing and managing new and
effective KM interventions (often implemented by the operational
roles). These are meaty subjects that are probably best suited to
tertiary study, along with significant hands-on experience (or a
simulation of the real thing). It seems unlikely that we'll ever
achieve meaningful certification for these types of roles --
perhaps a "gold standard" style PMP if we're lucky and with a
significant increase in market demand. (There will also likely be
far fewer full-time roles in this space with a tendency towards
consultations.)
Could be completely on the wrong track of course. Thoughts?
Cheers,
Stephen.
====================================
Stephen Bounds
Executive, Information Management
Cordelta
E: stephen.bounds@...
M: 0401 829 096
====================================
On 22/03/2021 10:32 pm, Robert L. Bogue
wrote:
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
Sorry I’m late to the party but allow me to
offer a few thoughts based on my experience in a couple of
different arenas.
First, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact
that certification is an indication that someone has met the
standard. The problem, as Patrick and Murray point to, is
that we don’t have a standard.
Having been involved in the certification
process for a vendor and an industry association, I can tell
you setting a standard isn’t as easy as it seems and it can
easily be drawn into a bad place by the subject matter experts
deciding that their area of specialty is the most important.
(It can equally be pulled off by people who are not
practical. I’ll get to that in a moment.) When you’re
building a fundamentals, or baseline, certification it’s easy
enough to select the key things that everyone should know.
The fundamental models (correct or not) that people should be
aware of since they’re likely to encounter them. It becomes
difficult, as Patrick points to when you get to the point of
the knowledge being specialized.
The answer then is – and should be – to
develop the associate/beginner certification which includes
the things that everyone should know. Connecting this to
academia – it’s all the stuff that goes in the 101 course for
other disciplines. The advanced stuff doesn’t
psychometrically validate well and setting a “cut score”
becomes challenging. Consider an exam and certification with
four major areas. Let’s say that someone demonstrates good
competency in three of the four areas but has no knowledge
whatsoever in the fourth. You end up with 85/85/85/20
resulting in a 68.75%. Should that be passing? (By the way,
I assume 20% because I’m assuming multiple choice 5 answer
questions and pure guesses since they psychometrically
validate well.) Cut scores are generally set around 70%.
However, the more challenging problem is that the
certification meets a standard. One should reasonably expect
that someone certified should know all four content areas.
(This was precisely a question I had to help answer on an
exam/certification that failed in the market.)
The second truth to advanced certifications
is that they’re not profitable. You don’t drive enough volume
to justify your development costs. Years ago the most
lucrative certification was A+ for CompTIA because of the
volume. It served a real place in the market. The “big box”
retailers needed a way to certify their computer technicians.
It drove a ton of volume. So while subject matter experts
want to work on advanced certifications, it’s the wrong place
to go if you want the market to move. My work with the
Server+ certification is public knowledge so I can say that
while we did the right things for skills match there wasn’t a
market demand because no one used it as a screening criteria
for candidates.
I can tell you if you include too many
people’s personal beliefs into what’s important it will sink
the validity of the certification. The market won’t care and
they won’t interpret it as valid. The reason that A+ worked
is because it was directly relevant to the job skills
necessary to be successful. Doing that with a more heuristic
role is exponentially more difficult.
Let me share my experience with my work on
change management. Change management suffers the same fate as
KM relative to certification. In their case ACMP is pushing
their CCMP certification which is based on their “Standard.”
(literally that’s what it’s called.) The problem is the
standard is garbage. It’s a project management approach to
change management that just doesn’t work but they’re still off
certifying people because it’s something. The Change
Management Institute (CMI) is certifying folks but they’ve got
a sole-source training contract with a vendor and a body of
knowledge that got pulled into a book and really unwound. It
turned into a mishmash of everything that someone might want
to know with no focus. Prosci is the big commercial player
and they’re certifying people on their model. The problem is
that it doesn’t make people broadly more able to manage
change. I put together what I think are fundamentals to the
profession but then again I’m building training. I don’t care
about certifying people because I want them to have the skills
and I don’t think I could set the standard if I want to.
Neither of the industry associations are doing an effective
job at creating an entry level certification that indicates
basic competence.
(Sidebar: Consider the fact that there’s
very little difference between the skills necessary for change
management and knowledge management. The core skills overlap
is very large.)
Let me shift to project management where
PMI has their PMP. Everyone thinks about this as the “gold
standard.” It requires experience. It’s relatively
difficult. The problem is that it’s too hard for the project
coordinators that a project or program manager needs to manage
projects. The result, is that project coordinators (lower
level staff) get certified with CompTIA’s Project+. It’s a
step towards project management’s gold standard PMP
certification but indicates baseline skills and lexicon that a
PMP certified project manager should expect. As a result,
it’s successful. So while PMI is successful with their PMP
program, it’s a bit in spite of themselves. Others in the
market filled the gap.
However, PMI raises an interesting point…
Do you have to have experience to get the certification? My
answer is an emphatic no. However, as a certification
provider you want the answer to be yes. Because you want to
demonstrate that your certification is higher value. However,
I’ve met people with the same first year experience twenty
times – and people that have crammed 20 years of experience
into less than a year. So in my mind, experience means
nothing. However, it guards the certification provider
against the claim that people don’t know the things that the
certification is supposed to ensure. (Paper MCSEs was common
for the Windows NT 4 days because people couldn’t do the
work.) My answer to this is improve the relevance of your
questions to the real world skills that people are being asked
to demonstrate.
Oh, and ACMP requires that you demonstrate
21 hours of training from one of their qualified training
providers – or you come up with some way of them agreeing that
you’ve done 21 hours of training. As most of you here know,
I’ve read and reviewed a book every single week for several
years. I’ve got 270 book reviews on the confident change
management site. However, it’s unclear if they’d count this
as “training.” As a point of fact, I applied to become one of
their qualified education providers and my application was
denied. The point of this – requiring training to get a
certification is not a good idea for a certification. At the
same time, I recognize and support the reason why training
providers have to do this. The market demands it of them. In
the absence of a good certification, any certification will
do.
In short, we need an entry level
certification for KM that works from the mode of the things
that everyone needs to know, that’s practical to the real work
we all do (and the others on our team do).
Rob
-------------------
Robert L. Bogue
O: (317)
844-5310 M: (317) 506-4977 Blog:
http://www.thorprojects.com/blog
Want to be
confident about your change management efforts?
https://ConfidentChangeManagement.com
Are you burned
out?
https://ExtinguishBurnout.com can help you get out of it (for free)
I
would argue that it is not the lack of a body of knowledge
that makes certification difficult, it is the lack of
standard outcomes and how to achieve them that makes
certification impossible as there is not a measuring stick
to measure against, hence you can't certify anyone to a
base level of performance......murray jennex
-----Original
Message-----
From: bill@...
<bill@...>
To: main@sikm.groups.io <main@sikm.groups.io>
Sent: Mon, Mar 22, 2021 12:42 am
Subject: Re: [SIKM] CILIP - Is anyone thinking about
taking up the KM #chartership... and what about
consultants?
All
great points Patrick!
Bill
On
Mar 21, 2021, at 23:13, Patrick Lambe via
groups.io
<plambe@...>
wrote:
Thanks Bill. I especially like the way you
advocate separation between certification and
training. However while the Body of Knowledge
(BOK) approach does appear at first sight to
hold value, some providers have merged their
training content with “BOK” claims, thus
blurring that separation. We still lack
independent means of verifying a body of
knowledge around KM, and I think we are still
a very long way off from having anything that
is sufficiently diverse and deep to cover the
diversity of work contexts we deal with.
What
I like about the CILIP offering is that it
is practical. It advances the
experience-based evaluation of KM practices,
using portfolio building, mentors and the
mechanism of peer review. That is a
framework we have sadly lacked in the past.
There
is no lack of training in KM, whether
“certification”-oriented or otherwise and my
instinct would be that (aside from
foundational education programmes in KM),
there may be more value in seeking out
specialised training in deep niches for the
specialised aspects of KM we may be dealing
with at any given time.
KM
practices and needs (as you point out) are
so diverse that I am not sure how valuable a
generalised (context-free) certification
course can be, aside from building some
foundational knowledge, which is useful for
beginners but rapidly loses value when we
get into more specialised areas of work.
That is precisely the same problem that a
BOK approach runs into.
On
22 Mar 2021, at 1:53 PM,
bill@...
wrote:
This
subject resurfaces regularly.
I can share two Linked In
articles I posted on
certification in KM and why it
cannot yet exist. The
articles share many of your
points.
Training
organizations offer
“certification” but in reality
the “certification” is a
certificate demonstrating
completion of offered
training. While there may be
personal value in taking the
training it is not
certification around a body of
knowledge.
I'm
very much looking forward to
this session. BTW, I ended up
re-reading a 2006
article of yours and
think it is definitely worth
considering to what extent
CILIP is or is not a
"certification" program,
noting the the challenges and
goals you outlined so nicely
back then.
I
have taken the liberty of
lightly revising what you
wrote to reflect my assessment
of our present situation as
per the below:
What
would you expect to see in
a professional KM
certification programme?
A
"strong" KM certification
programme would need diverse
instructional and testing
in:
-
Knowledge: taught
input and verbal testing (ie
describe the difference
between a knowledge strategy
and a knowledge management
strategy)
-
Skills: demonstration,
supervised practice and
outcomes based testing (ie put
together a project plan for a
knowledge audit; conduct an
after action review session
for a project team)
-
Attitudes and Values: cannot be taught or
tested, can only be modelled
and observed in an environment
of continuing professional
interaction and peer review
-
Aptitudes: cannot
be taught, can only be
uncovered and fostered over
time, most likely in a
mentoring/coaching kind of
partnership
And
therefore a good KM
certification programme
would need to have:
-
taught and examined knowledge
input
-
guided and assessed practice
-
continuing professional
interaction and peer review
over time
-
mentoring and coaching
structures
Professional
societies or networks are
clearly the best candidates
for providing this
combination of features: as
good as universities are,
few of them are well placed
to develop and deliver the
practice based skills and
professional interaction
areas. To avoid the
inevitable distortions of
commercial gain,
certification and training
courses in KM should be
not-for-profit and
non-commercial in nature.
A
problem is that -- with the
possible exception of the
ISO 30401 KMS standard --
there is still no commonly
accepted set of concepts,
theories and practices that
embody KM. As such we must
acknowledge that from the
"knowledge" point of view
(as distinct from skills,
values and aptitudes), any
certification is likely to
only represent one
perspective among many.
Based
on what I know of the CILIP
chartership, my assessment is
that the focus is primarily on
demonstrated skills. There is
definitely some intent to test
demonstrated attitudes and
values as well, but it appears
to be neither designed or
intended to address the
knowledge or aptitude
components of a hypothetical
"certification".
Having
this option still represents a significant leap forward from the
status quo of course! However,
I am interested to unpack and
discuss we can make progress
as a community in the other
areas as well.
====================================
Stephen Bounds
Executive, Information Management
Cordelta
E: stephen.bounds@...
M: 0401 829 096
====================================
On
22/03/2021 12:00 pm, Patrick
Lambe wrote:
ISKO
Singapore is holding a
virtual panel with CILIP
on the KM Chartership on
18 June (the panel will
include a couple of
chartership candidates,
one of whom is a
consultant). You (and
other list members) are
welcome to register and
participate in this event
- there is no charge. Note
the timing is 4pm
Singapore time.
On
22 Mar 2021, at 6:17
AM, Aprill Allen
<aprill@...>
wrote:
As
above...
Are any consultants
here thinking about
the CILIP
chartership?
Wondering what the
value of joining
will be when I can't
get an employer to
cover the cost.
--
Aprill
Allen
Founder
and Managing
Director | Knowledge
Bird
KM
Consulting &
KCS Training
M:
+61 (0)400 101 961
knowledgebird.com
|
|
|
Stephen –
I don’t think you’re off track but I’d like to share a trick that was shared with me – that may give you a more productive track.
About 2010 I wrote a course for Microsoft “Implementing ECM on SharePoint.” It was for their partners and enterprise customers. We got very caught up in the best way to do things for the largest organizations and the challenges that they
might encounter. My client and friend suggested that I consider 80%-80% as a rule. What is about 80% of what someone would need to know for the deployments that were in the implementation of the bottom 80% of the market. Later in the project we used the
idea that you’ve got an expert running the project but you just need to know enough to communicate with them intelligently. What would you need to know?
For me, I think in the core skills category, there’s at least an introduction to motivation. I think there’s a bit of systems thinking. There’s a bit of community building.
I could probably keep going and identify some broad areas… and underneath that define what key skills, behaviors, or techniques that I think everyone should know about, and then I’d decide what level they’d have to know. For instance,
I think everyone should understand World Café – not because they have to run it but because they should understand how and why it works. I’d put this as a requisite skill for any KM practitioner at any level.
I think foundations on trust are essential. I’d make the key skill identification of behaviors that erode trust. They don’t have to solve them… just see them and be able to research/learn more or get a lead involved to help fix it.
I could go on… I think that you’re trying to solve the right problem but I’m not sure the approach to decomposition will lead to the results you desire. I think that you’ll be better off to think about the kind of person that you’d like
to mentor and what you want them to know at or near the beginning of their career. (This is the same as above just reframed.)
Rob
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
From: main@SIKM.groups.io <main@SIKM.groups.io> On Behalf Of
Stephen Bounds via groups.io
Sent: Monday, March 22, 2021 10:31 AM
To: main@SIKM.groups.io
Subject: Re: [SIKM] CILIP - Is anyone thinking about taking up the KM #chartership... and what about consultants?
Amazing stuff Robert -- thanks!
You've put your finger on one of the key problems with KM certification: What does the role of an associate / beginner KM professional look like? Does such a thing exist?
It would have to incorporate some of the skills that will develop into a more expert role down the line, otherwise there's no meaningful connection or progression between the two. But it can't be so complex in terms of experience or otherwise, as you say,
practitioners will be less likely to think they need it (especially if they already have a postgraduate qualification) and the market demand to possess the formal certification is likely to remain low.
So we need both a starting point and a pathway. There are three basic ways I can think of to organise a profession:
-
Tiered roles primarily distinguished by experience and competence, eg Project Coordinator (Project+) -> Project Manager (PMP) -> Program Manager
-
Base entry role leading to multiple specialisations, eg Service Desk Operator -> System Administrator -> ICT Manager / Solutions Architect / Database Administrator / etc
-
Multiple entry roles, each with different career advancement paths, eg Nurse -> Nurse Practitioner / Remote Medicine vs Doctor -> GP / Surgeon / ENT etc
I believe there has previously been an assumption (including by me) that any "basic" KM role would be oriented linearly towards more expert KM opportunities.
However, when I attempted at
documenting a typology of KM roles a while back, I divided them without a great deal of thought into senior and operational roles. Now I am wondering whether it would be better to think of them as two separate career streams:
-
Strategic roles
-
Knowledge Program Manager
-
Knowledge Manager
-
Knowledge Architect
-
Operational roles
-
Knowledge Process Manager
-
Knowledge Analyst
-
Knowledge Process Officer
It seems unlikely that a deep understanding of ISO30401 would greatly benefit the operational type of role. On the other hand I believe it would be possible to outline a pragmatic curriculum to improve effectiveness, teach fundamentals (ie what a complex
system is and why it matters) and a common set of terminology and methods recommended for adoption. It would fit the bill for meaningful competence training without a great deal of prior experience
and match the described market need for most base to mid level KM roles.
On the other hand, a strategic role benefits more from study in complex systems, individual and group psychology, and information sciences along with training in key KM methods for diagnosing problems and then designing, implementing and managing new and
effective KM interventions (often implemented by the operational roles). These are meaty subjects that are probably best suited to tertiary study, along with significant hands-on experience (or a simulation of the real thing). It seems unlikely that we'll
ever achieve meaningful certification for these types of roles -- perhaps a "gold standard" style PMP if we're lucky and with a significant increase in market demand. (There will also likely be far fewer full-time roles in this space with a tendency towards
consultations.)
Could be completely on the wrong track of course. Thoughts?
Cheers,
Stephen.
====================================
Stephen Bounds
Executive, Information Management
Cordelta
E: stephen.bounds@...
M: 0401 829 096
====================================
On 22/03/2021 10:32 pm, Robert L. Bogue wrote:
Sorry I’m late to the party but allow me to offer a few thoughts based on my experience in a couple of different arenas.
First, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that certification is an indication that someone has met the standard. The problem, as Patrick and Murray point to, is that we don’t have a standard.
Having been involved in the certification process for a vendor and an industry association, I can tell you setting a standard isn’t as easy as it seems and it can easily be drawn into a bad place by the subject matter experts deciding that
their area of specialty is the most important. (It can equally be pulled off by people who are not practical. I’ll get to that in a moment.) When you’re building a fundamentals, or baseline, certification it’s easy enough to select the key things that
everyone should know. The fundamental models (correct or not) that people should be aware of since they’re likely to encounter them. It becomes difficult, as Patrick points to when you get to the point of the knowledge being specialized.
The answer then is – and should be – to develop the associate/beginner certification which includes the things that everyone should know. Connecting this to academia – it’s all the stuff that goes in the 101 course for other disciplines.
The advanced stuff doesn’t psychometrically validate well and setting a “cut score” becomes challenging. Consider an exam and certification with four major areas. Let’s say that someone demonstrates good competency in three of the four areas but has no knowledge
whatsoever in the fourth. You end up with 85/85/85/20 resulting in a 68.75%. Should that be passing? (By the way, I assume 20% because I’m assuming multiple choice 5 answer questions and pure guesses since they psychometrically validate well.) Cut scores
are generally set around 70%. However, the more challenging problem is that the certification meets a standard. One should reasonably expect that someone certified should know all four content areas. (This was precisely a question I had to help answer on
an exam/certification that failed in the market.)
The second truth to advanced certifications is that they’re not profitable. You don’t drive enough volume to justify your development costs. Years ago the most lucrative certification was A+ for CompTIA because of the volume. It served
a real place in the market. The “big box” retailers needed a way to certify their computer technicians. It drove a ton of volume. So while subject matter experts want to work on advanced certifications, it’s the wrong place to go if you want the market
to move. My work with the Server+ certification is public knowledge so I can say that while we did the right things for skills match there wasn’t a market demand because no one used it as a screening criteria for candidates.
I can tell you if you include too many people’s personal beliefs into what’s important it will sink the validity of the certification. The market won’t care and they won’t interpret it as valid. The reason that A+ worked is because it
was directly relevant to the job skills necessary to be successful. Doing that with a more heuristic role is exponentially more difficult.
Let me share my experience with my work on change management. Change management suffers the same fate as KM relative to certification. In their case ACMP is pushing their CCMP certification which is based on their “Standard.” (literally
that’s what it’s called.) The problem is the standard is garbage. It’s a project management approach to change management that just doesn’t work but they’re still off certifying people because it’s something. The Change Management Institute (CMI) is certifying
folks but they’ve got a sole-source training contract with a vendor and a body of knowledge that got pulled into a book and really unwound. It turned into a mishmash of everything that someone might want to know with no focus. Prosci is the big commercial
player and they’re certifying people on their model. The problem is that it doesn’t make people broadly more able to manage change. I put together what I think are fundamentals to the profession but then again I’m building training. I don’t care about certifying
people because I want them to have the skills and I don’t think I could set the standard if I want to. Neither of the industry associations are doing an effective job at creating an entry level certification that indicates basic competence.
(Sidebar: Consider the fact that there’s very little difference between the skills necessary for change management and knowledge management. The core skills overlap is very large.)
Let me shift to project management where PMI has their PMP. Everyone thinks about this as the “gold standard.” It requires experience. It’s relatively difficult. The problem is that it’s too hard for the project coordinators that a
project or program manager needs to manage projects. The result, is that project coordinators (lower level staff) get certified with CompTIA’s Project+. It’s a step towards project management’s gold standard PMP certification but indicates baseline skills
and lexicon that a PMP certified project manager should expect. As a result, it’s successful. So while PMI is successful with their PMP program, it’s a bit in spite of themselves. Others in the market filled the gap.
However, PMI raises an interesting point… Do you have to have experience to get the certification? My answer is an emphatic no. However, as a certification provider you want the answer to be yes. Because you want to demonstrate that
your certification is higher value. However, I’ve met people with the same first year experience twenty times – and people that have crammed 20 years of experience into less than a year. So in my mind, experience means nothing. However, it guards the certification
provider against the claim that people don’t know the things that the certification is supposed to ensure. (Paper MCSEs was common for the Windows NT 4 days because people couldn’t do the work.) My answer to this is improve the relevance of your questions
to the real world skills that people are being asked to demonstrate.
Oh, and ACMP requires that you demonstrate 21 hours of training from one of their qualified training providers – or you come up with some way of them agreeing that you’ve done 21 hours of training. As most of you here know, I’ve read and
reviewed a book every single week for several years. I’ve got 270 book reviews on the confident change management site. However, it’s unclear if they’d count this as “training.” As a point of fact, I applied to become one of their qualified education providers
and my application was denied. The point of this – requiring training to get a certification is not a good idea for a certification. At the same time, I recognize and support the reason why training providers have to do this. The market demands it of them.
In the absence of a good certification, any certification will do.
In short, we need an entry level certification for KM that works from the mode of the things that everyone needs to know, that’s practical to the real work we all do (and the others on our team do).
Rob
-------------------
Robert L. Bogue
O: (317) 844-5310 M: (317) 506-4977 Blog:
http://www.thorprojects.com/blog
Want to be confident about your change management efforts?
https://ConfidentChangeManagement.com
Are you burned out?
https://ExtinguishBurnout.com can help you get out of it (for free)
I would argue that it is not the lack of a body of knowledge that makes certification difficult, it is the lack of standard outcomes
and how to achieve them that makes certification impossible as there is not a measuring stick to measure against, hence you can't certify anyone to a base level of performance......murray jennex
-----Original Message-----
From: bill@...
<bill@...>
To: main@sikm.groups.io
<main@sikm.groups.io>
Sent: Mon, Mar 22, 2021 12:42 am
Subject: Re: [SIKM] CILIP - Is anyone thinking about taking up the KM #chartership... and what about consultants?
All great points Patrick!
Bill
On Mar 21, 2021, at 23:13, Patrick Lambe via groups.io
<plambe@...> wrote:
Thanks Bill. I especially like the way you advocate separation between certification
and training. However while the Body of Knowledge (BOK) approach does appear at first sight to hold value, some providers have merged their training content with “BOK” claims, thus blurring that separation. We still lack independent means of verifying a body
of knowledge around KM, and I think we are still a very long way off from having anything that is sufficiently diverse and deep to cover the diversity of work contexts we deal with.
What I like about the CILIP offering is that it is practical. It advances the experience-based evaluation of KM practices, using portfolio building, mentors and the
mechanism of peer review. That is a framework we have sadly lacked in the past.
There is no lack of training in KM, whether “certification”-oriented or otherwise and my instinct would be that (aside from foundational education programmes in KM),
there may be more value in seeking out specialised training in deep niches for the specialised aspects of KM we may be dealing with at any given time.
KM practices and needs (as you point out) are so diverse that I am not sure how valuable a generalised (context-free) certification course can be, aside from building
some foundational knowledge, which is useful for beginners but rapidly loses value when we get into more specialised areas of work. That is precisely the same problem that a BOK approach runs into.
On 22 Mar 2021, at 1:53 PM,
bill@... wrote:
This subject resurfaces regularly. I can share two Linked In articles I posted on certification in KM and why it cannot yet exist. The articles share many of your points.
Training organizations offer “certification” but in reality the “certification” is a certificate demonstrating completion of offered training. While there may be personal value in taking the training it is not
certification around a body of knowledge.
I'm very much looking forward to this session. BTW, I ended up re-reading a 2006
article of yours and think it is definitely worth considering to what extent CILIP is or is not a "certification" program, noting the the challenges and goals you outlined so nicely back then.
I have taken the liberty of lightly revising what you wrote to reflect my assessment of our present situation as per the below:
What would you expect to see in a professional KM certification programme?
A "strong" KM certification programme would need diverse instructional and testing in:
-
Knowledge: taught input and verbal testing (ie describe the difference between a knowledge strategy and a knowledge management strategy)
-
Skills: demonstration, supervised practice and outcomes based testing (ie put together a project plan for a knowledge audit; conduct an after action review session for a project team)
-
Attitudes and Values: cannot be taught or tested, can only be modelled and observed in an environment of continuing professional interaction and peer review
-
Aptitudes: cannot be taught, can only be uncovered and fostered over time, most likely in a mentoring/coaching kind of partnership
And therefore a good KM certification programme would need to have:
-
taught and examined knowledge input
-
guided and assessed practice
-
continuing professional interaction and peer review over time
-
mentoring and coaching structures
Professional societies or networks are clearly the best candidates for providing this combination of features: as good as universities are, few of them are well
placed to develop and deliver the practice based skills and professional interaction areas. To avoid the inevitable distortions of commercial gain, certification and training courses in KM should be not-for-profit and non-commercial in nature.
A problem is that -- with the possible exception of the ISO 30401 KMS standard -- there is still no commonly accepted set of concepts, theories and practices that
embody KM. As such we must acknowledge that from the "knowledge" point of view (as distinct from skills, values and aptitudes), any certification is likely to only represent one perspective among many.
Based on what I know of the CILIP chartership, my assessment is that the focus is primarily on demonstrated skills. There is definitely some intent to test demonstrated
attitudes and values as well, but it appears to be neither designed or intended to address the knowledge or aptitude components of a hypothetical "certification".
Having this option still represents a significant leap
forward from the status quo of course! However, I am interested to unpack and discuss we can make progress as a community in the other areas as well.
====================================
Stephen Bounds
Executive, Information Management
Cordelta
E: stephen.bounds@...
M: 0401 829 096
====================================
On 22/03/2021 12:00 pm, Patrick Lambe wrote:
ISKO Singapore is holding a virtual panel with CILIP on the KM Chartership on 18 June (the panel will include a couple of chartership candidates, one of whom is a consultant). You (and other list members) are welcome
to register and participate in this event - there is no charge. Note the timing is 4pm Singapore time.
On 22 Mar 2021, at 6:17 AM, Aprill Allen <aprill@...> wrote:
As above...
Are any consultants here thinking about the CILIP chartership? Wondering what the value of joining will be when I can't get an employer to cover the cost.
--
Aprill Allen
Founder and Managing Director | Knowledge Bird
KM Consulting & KCS Training
M: +61 (0)400 101 961
knowledgebird.com
|
|
|
Hi Robert,
I really like what you're saying but I was a bit surprised to see
you singling out World Cafés. Can you expand a bit on why you see
this as essential?
Cheers,
Stephen.
====================================
Stephen Bounds
Executive, Information Management
Cordelta
E: stephen.bounds@...
M: 0401 829 096
====================================
On 23/03/2021 12:49 am, Robert L. Bogue
wrote:
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
Stephen –
I don’t think you’re off track but I’d like
to share a trick that was shared with me – that may give you a
more productive track.
About 2010 I wrote a course for Microsoft
“Implementing ECM on SharePoint.” It was for their partners
and enterprise customers. We got very caught up in the best
way to do things for the largest organizations and the
challenges that they might encounter. My client and friend
suggested that I consider 80%-80% as a rule. What is about
80% of what someone would need to know for the deployments
that were in the implementation of the bottom 80% of the
market. Later in the project we used the idea that you’ve got
an expert running the project but you just need to know enough
to communicate with them intelligently. What would you need
to know?
For me, I think in the core skills
category, there’s at least an introduction to motivation. I
think there’s a bit of systems thinking. There’s a bit of
community building.
I could probably keep going and identify
some broad areas… and underneath that define what key skills,
behaviors, or techniques that I think everyone should know
about, and then I’d decide what level they’d have to know.
For instance, I think everyone should understand World Café –
not because they have to run it but because they should
understand how and why it works. I’d put this as a requisite
skill for any KM practitioner at any level.
I think foundations on trust are
essential. I’d make the key skill identification of behaviors
that erode trust. They don’t have to solve them… just see
them and be able to research/learn more or get a lead involved
to help fix it.
I could go on… I think that you’re trying
to solve the right problem but I’m not sure the approach to
decomposition will lead to the results you desire. I think
that you’ll be better off to think about the kind of person
that you’d like to mentor and what you want them to know at or
near the beginning of their career. (This is the same as
above just reframed.)
Rob
Amazing stuff Robert -- thanks!
You've put your finger on one of the key problems with KM
certification: What does the role of an associate / beginner
KM professional look like? Does such a thing exist?
It would have to incorporate some of the skills that will
develop into a more expert role down the line, otherwise
there's no meaningful connection or progression between the
two. But it can't be so complex in terms of experience or
otherwise, as you say, practitioners will be less likely to
think they need it (especially if they already have a
postgraduate qualification) and the market demand to possess
the formal certification is likely to remain low.
So we need both a starting point and a pathway. There are
three basic ways I can think of to organise a profession:
-
Tiered roles primarily distinguished by experience and
competence, eg Project Coordinator (Project+) ->
Project Manager (PMP) -> Program Manager
-
Base entry role leading to multiple specialisations, eg
Service Desk Operator -> System Administrator -> ICT
Manager / Solutions Architect / Database Administrator / etc
-
Multiple entry roles, each with different career
advancement paths, eg Nurse -> Nurse Practitioner /
Remote Medicine vs Doctor -> GP / Surgeon / ENT etc
I believe there has previously been an assumption (including
by me) that any "basic" KM role would be oriented linearly
towards more expert KM opportunities.
However, when I attempted at
documenting a typology of KM roles a while back, I
divided them without a great deal of thought into senior and
operational roles. Now I am wondering whether it would be
better to think of them as two separate career streams:
-
Strategic roles
-
Knowledge Program Manager
-
Knowledge Manager
-
Knowledge Architect
-
Operational roles
-
Knowledge Process Manager
-
Knowledge Analyst
-
Knowledge Process Officer
It seems unlikely that a deep understanding of ISO30401 would
greatly benefit the operational type of role. On the other
hand I believe it would be possible to outline a pragmatic
curriculum to improve effectiveness, teach fundamentals (ie
what a complex system is and why it matters) and a common set
of terminology and methods recommended for adoption. It would
fit the bill for meaningful competence training without a
great deal of prior experience
and match the described market need for most
base to mid level KM roles.
On the other hand, a strategic role benefits more from study
in complex systems, individual and group psychology, and
information sciences along with training in key KM methods for
diagnosing problems and then designing, implementing and
managing new and effective KM interventions (often implemented
by the operational roles). These are meaty subjects that are
probably best suited to tertiary study, along with significant
hands-on experience (or a simulation of the real thing). It
seems unlikely that we'll ever achieve meaningful
certification for these types of roles -- perhaps a "gold
standard" style PMP if we're lucky and with a significant
increase in market demand. (There will also likely be far
fewer full-time roles in this space with a tendency towards
consultations.)
Could be completely on the wrong track of course. Thoughts?
Cheers,
Stephen.
====================================
Stephen Bounds
Executive, Information Management
Cordelta
E: stephen.bounds@...
M: 0401 829 096
====================================
On 22/03/2021 10:32 pm, Robert L. Bogue
wrote:
Sorry I’m late to the party but allow me
to offer a few thoughts based on my experience in a couple
of different arenas.
First, we shouldn’t lose sight of the
fact that certification is an indication that someone has
met the standard. The problem, as Patrick and Murray point
to, is that we don’t have a standard.
Having been involved in the certification
process for a vendor and an industry association, I can tell
you setting a standard isn’t as easy as it seems and it can
easily be drawn into a bad place by the subject matter
experts deciding that their area of specialty is the most
important. (It can equally be pulled off by people who are
not practical. I’ll get to that in a moment.) When you’re
building a fundamentals, or baseline, certification it’s
easy enough to select the key things that everyone should
know. The fundamental models (correct or not) that people
should be aware of since they’re likely to encounter them.
It becomes difficult, as Patrick points to when you get to
the point of the knowledge being specialized.
The answer then is – and should be – to
develop the associate/beginner certification which includes
the things that everyone should know. Connecting this to
academia – it’s all the stuff that goes in the 101 course
for other disciplines. The advanced stuff doesn’t
psychometrically validate well and setting a “cut score”
becomes challenging. Consider an exam and certification
with four major areas. Let’s say that someone demonstrates
good competency in three of the four areas but has no
knowledge whatsoever in the fourth. You end up with
85/85/85/20 resulting in a 68.75%. Should that be passing?
(By the way, I assume 20% because I’m assuming multiple
choice 5 answer questions and pure guesses since they
psychometrically validate well.) Cut scores are generally
set around 70%. However, the more challenging problem is
that the certification meets a standard. One should
reasonably expect that someone certified should know all
four content areas. (This was precisely a question I had to
help answer on an exam/certification that failed in the
market.)
The second truth to advanced
certifications is that they’re not profitable. You don’t
drive enough volume to justify your development costs.
Years ago the most lucrative certification was A+ for
CompTIA because of the volume. It served a real place in
the market. The “big box” retailers needed a way to certify
their computer technicians. It drove a ton of volume. So
while subject matter experts want to work on advanced
certifications, it’s the wrong place to go if you want the
market to move. My work with the Server+ certification is
public knowledge so I can say that while we did the right
things for skills match there wasn’t a market demand because
no one used it as a screening criteria for candidates.
I can tell you if you include too many
people’s personal beliefs into what’s important it will sink
the validity of the certification. The market won’t care
and they won’t interpret it as valid. The reason that A+
worked is because it was directly relevant to the job skills
necessary to be successful. Doing that with a more
heuristic role is exponentially more difficult.
Let me share my experience with my work
on change management. Change management suffers the same
fate as KM relative to certification. In their case ACMP is
pushing their CCMP certification which is based on their
“Standard.” (literally that’s what it’s called.) The
problem is the standard is garbage. It’s a project
management approach to change management that just doesn’t
work but they’re still off certifying people because it’s
something. The Change Management Institute (CMI) is
certifying folks but they’ve got a sole-source training
contract with a vendor and a body of knowledge that got
pulled into a book and really unwound. It turned into a
mishmash of everything that someone might want to know with
no focus. Prosci is the big commercial player and they’re
certifying people on their model. The problem is that it
doesn’t make people broadly more able to manage change. I
put together what I think are fundamentals to the profession
but then again I’m building training. I don’t care about
certifying people because I want them to have the skills and
I don’t think I could set the standard if I want to.
Neither of the industry associations are doing an effective
job at creating an entry level certification that indicates
basic competence.
(Sidebar: Consider the fact that there’s
very little difference between the skills necessary for
change management and knowledge management. The core skills
overlap is very large.)
Let me shift to project management where
PMI has their PMP. Everyone thinks about this as the “gold
standard.” It requires experience. It’s relatively
difficult. The problem is that it’s too hard for the
project coordinators that a project or program manager needs
to manage projects. The result, is that project
coordinators (lower level staff) get certified with
CompTIA’s Project+. It’s a step towards project
management’s gold standard PMP certification but indicates
baseline skills and lexicon that a PMP certified project
manager should expect. As a result, it’s successful. So
while PMI is successful with their PMP program, it’s a bit
in spite of themselves. Others in the market filled the
gap.
However, PMI raises an interesting point…
Do you have to have experience to get the certification? My
answer is an emphatic no. However, as a certification
provider you want the answer to be yes. Because you want to
demonstrate that your certification is higher value.
However, I’ve met people with the same first year experience
twenty times – and people that have crammed 20 years of
experience into less than a year. So in my mind, experience
means nothing. However, it guards the certification
provider against the claim that people don’t know the things
that the certification is supposed to ensure. (Paper MCSEs
was common for the Windows NT 4 days because people couldn’t
do the work.) My answer to this is improve the relevance of
your questions to the real world skills that people are
being asked to demonstrate.
Oh, and ACMP requires that you
demonstrate 21 hours of training from one of their qualified
training providers – or you come up with some way of them
agreeing that you’ve done 21 hours of training. As most of
you here know, I’ve read and reviewed a book every single
week for several years. I’ve got 270 book reviews on the
confident change management site. However, it’s unclear if
they’d count this as “training.” As a point of fact, I
applied to become one of their qualified education providers
and my application was denied. The point of this –
requiring training to get a certification is not a good idea
for a certification. At the same time, I recognize and
support the reason why training providers have to do this.
The market demands it of them. In the absence of a good
certification, any certification will do.
In short, we need an entry level
certification for KM that works from the mode of the things
that everyone needs to know, that’s practical to the real
work we all do (and the others on our team do).
Rob
-------------------
Robert L. Bogue
O: (317)
844-5310 M: (317) 506-4977 Blog:
http://www.thorprojects.com/blog
Want to be
confident about your change management efforts?
https://ConfidentChangeManagement.com
Are you
burned out?
https://ExtinguishBurnout.com can help you get out of it (for free)
I
would argue that it is not the lack of a body of
knowledge that makes certification difficult, it is the
lack of standard outcomes and how to achieve them that
makes certification impossible as there is not a
measuring stick to measure against, hence you can't
certify anyone to a base level of
performance......murray jennex
-----Original
Message-----
From: bill@...
<bill@...>
To: main@sikm.groups.io
<main@sikm.groups.io>
Sent: Mon, Mar 22, 2021 12:42 am
Subject: Re: [SIKM] CILIP - Is anyone thinking about
taking up the KM #chartership... and what about
consultants?
All
great points Patrick!
Bill
On
Mar 21, 2021, at 23:13, Patrick Lambe via
groups.io
<plambe@...>
wrote:
Thanks Bill. I especially like the way you
advocate separation between certification
and training. However while the Body of
Knowledge (BOK) approach does appear at
first sight to hold value, some providers
have merged their training content with
“BOK” claims, thus blurring that separation.
We still lack independent means of verifying
a body of knowledge around KM, and I think
we are still a very long way off from having
anything that is sufficiently diverse and
deep to cover the diversity of work contexts
we deal with.
What
I like about the CILIP offering is that it
is practical. It advances the
experience-based evaluation of KM
practices, using portfolio building,
mentors and the mechanism of peer review.
That is a framework we have sadly lacked
in the past.
There
is no lack of training in KM, whether
“certification”-oriented or otherwise and
my instinct would be that (aside from
foundational education programmes in KM),
there may be more value in seeking out
specialised training in deep niches for
the specialised aspects of KM we may be
dealing with at any given time.
KM
practices and needs (as you point out) are
so diverse that I am not sure how valuable
a generalised (context-free) certification
course can be, aside from building some
foundational knowledge, which is useful
for beginners but rapidly loses value when
we get into more specialised areas of
work. That is precisely the same problem
that a BOK approach runs into.
On
22 Mar 2021, at 1:53 PM,
bill@...
wrote:
This
subject resurfaces
regularly. I can share two
Linked In articles I posted
on certification in KM and
why it cannot yet exist.
The articles share many of
your points.
Training
organizations offer
“certification” but in
reality the “certification”
is a certificate
demonstrating completion of
offered training. While
there may be personal value
in taking the training it is
not certification around a
body of knowledge.
I'm
very much looking forward to
this session. BTW, I ended
up re-reading a 2006
article of yours and think it is
definitely worth considering
to what extent CILIP is or
is not a "certification"
program, noting the the
challenges and goals you
outlined so nicely back
then.
I
have taken the liberty of
lightly revising what you
wrote to reflect my
assessment of our present
situation as per the below:
What
would you expect to see
in a professional KM
certification programme?
A
"strong" KM certification
programme would need
diverse instructional and
testing in:
-
Knowledge: taught
input and verbal testing (ie
describe the difference
between a knowledge strategy
and a knowledge management
strategy)
-
Skills: demonstration,
supervised practice and
outcomes based testing (ie
put together a project plan
for a knowledge audit;
conduct an after action
review session for a project
team)
-
Attitudes and Values: cannot be taught or
tested, can only be modelled
and observed in an
environment of continuing
professional interaction and
peer review
-
Aptitudes: cannot
be taught, can only be
uncovered and fostered over
time, most likely in a
mentoring/coaching kind of
partnership
And
therefore a good KM
certification programme
would need to have:
-
taught and examined
knowledge input
-
guided and assessed practice
-
continuing professional
interaction and peer review
over time
-
mentoring and coaching
structures
Professional
societies or networks are
clearly the best
candidates for providing
this combination of
features: as good as
universities are, few of
them are well placed to
develop and deliver the
practice based skills and
professional interaction
areas. To avoid the
inevitable distortions of
commercial gain,
certification and training
courses in KM should be
not-for-profit and
non-commercial in nature.
A
problem is that -- with
the possible exception of
the ISO 30401 KMS standard
-- there is still no
commonly accepted set of
concepts, theories and
practices that embody KM.
As such we must
acknowledge that from the
"knowledge" point of view
(as distinct from skills,
values and aptitudes), any
certification is likely to
only represent one
perspective among many.
Based
on what I know of the CILIP
chartership, my assessment
is that the focus is
primarily on demonstrated
skills. There is definitely
some intent to test
demonstrated attitudes and
values as well, but it
appears to be neither
designed or intended to
address the knowledge or
aptitude components of a
hypothetical
"certification".
Having
this option still represents
a significant leap forward from the
status quo of course!
However, I am interested to
unpack and discuss we can
make progress as a community
in the other areas as well.
====================================
Stephen Bounds
Executive, Information Management
Cordelta
E: stephen.bounds@...
M: 0401 829 096
====================================
On
22/03/2021 12:00 pm,
Patrick Lambe wrote:
ISKO
Singapore is holding a
virtual panel with CILIP
on the KM Chartership on
18 June (the panel will
include a couple of
chartership candidates,
one of whom is a
consultant). You (and
other list members) are
welcome to register and
participate in this
event - there is no
charge. Note the timing
is 4pm Singapore time.
On 22 Mar 2021, at 6:17 AM, Aprill Allen <aprill@...> wrote:
As above...
Are any
consultants here
thinking about the
CILIP chartership?
Wondering what the
value of joining
will be when I
can't get an
employer to cover
the cost.
--
Aprill
Allen
Founder
and Managing
Director | Knowledge
Bird
KM
Consulting &
KCS Training
M:
+61 (0)400 101
961
knowledgebird.com
|
|
|
we are in agreement Patrick, I tend to try to use few words and I agreed with the discussion on the body of knowledge but just thought the point was being missed that you don't certify anyone to how well they know a bok, you certify to how well you apply it and that is what my comment on having no standard outcomes with standard approaches for achieving them. I've got 3 certifications and 1 professional license and all tested on applying the bok, not on just knowing the bok (although for my engineering license there is a precursor cert called eit or engineer in training which focuses on making sure the bok is known by the test taker). Since certifications are usually used as a basis for a job or for conveying credibility to a client, certifying to a performance standard rather than the bok is the norm. Although as stated you can't do the performance standard if you don't know the bok. Also note that all the certifications and license that I possess required an experience component also, again to show that you can do the job without being supervised, that you can in fact lead the job. One of my other certs (not mentioned above) is that I am a level 3 nuclear containment test supervisor. There are only a handful (literally 5 or 6) of use left alive from the heyday of nuclear power and a level 3 cert is required to supervise an actual test so we are in demand. This cert of course required knowing the bok but also being able to apply it and to have a history of applying it. I'm still on the nuclear standards committee for this activity, So I guess I'm saying that all the certs I have or have had (there are more than discussed here) were all based on applying a bok and not on knowing the bok and all had an experience component.....murray jennex
-----Original Message-----
From: Patrick Lambe <plambe@...>
To: main@SIKM.groups.io
Sent: Mon, Mar 22, 2021 2:31 am
Subject: Re: [SIKM] CILIP - Is anyone thinking about taking up the KM #chartership... and what about consultants?
Hi Murray
I partly agree and partly disagree with you.
I absolutely agree on the need to link “knowledge” to outcomes. “BOK" can be and often is used as a context-free term, and certifying against a BOK and not against outcomes is as nonsensical as it is common.
I agree with you to the extent that “Body of Knowledge” can be taken just to mean a body of documented knowledge relating to a field that can be used as a reference resource. I think this is sometimes used as a distraction from the really hard work of demonstrating practical improvements (we compile some content and call it a BOK and teach it in a course and hey presto magic competencies can be inferred).
I reserve my agreement when it comes to a deeper meaning for Body of Knowledge - which in the certification context, should in principle comprise a body of independently validated and widely applicable knowledge, that:
- is applicable across multiple organisational and cultural contexts,
- is clearly documented and organised and available for use, and
- has the quality of good evidence - i.e. the practices being documented are evidenced in practice and are known to produce reliable outcomes within defined boundaries.
I do think this connotation for BOK would be entirely consistent with, and supportive of, an outcomes focused approach.
Moreover, a purely outcomes-focused approach without any attention to systematic knowledge-building, learning and improvement, and to the quality of evidence in support of the approaches being used, is the equivalent of throwing whatever is to hand in our personal repertoires and experience at any problem we meet and seeing what sticks.
We’ve been doing that for the past 25 years or more, and it has been a slow, hard and contentious crawl out of that slime (trying to make sense of all the things that “stuck” without knowing about all the things that didn’t) and towards some semblance of consistency and common ground in our community.
So I am both sceptical of the rush to approval of supposed “BOKs” in KM, but I am also convinced of the need for systematic knowledge building and sharing in our professional community. We are still a long way off from that goal. In the meantime, certifying against outcomes does seem like a practical interim approach.
I have one other small niggle, though. I am not sure that it is possible to measure against achievement of “standard” outcomes in all contexts, particularly in relation to very complex and unstructured environments. I would be happier if we talked about “improved” outcomes against baselines.
So I think agree with you on your main point but would express things differently (if less elegantly) on the detail.
P
I would argue that it is not the lack of a body of knowledge that makes certification difficult, it is the lack of standard outcomes and how to achieve them that makes certification impossible as there is not a measuring stick to measure against, hence you can't certify anyone to a base level of performance......murray jennex
-----Original Message-----
From: bill@... <bill@...>
To: main@sikm.groups.io <main@sikm.groups.io>
Sent: Mon, Mar 22, 2021 12:42 am
Subject: Re: [SIKM] CILIP - Is anyone thinking about taking up the KM #chartership... and what about consultants?
All great points Patrick!
Thank you
Bill
Thanks Bill. I especially like the way you advocate separation between certification and training. However while the Body of Knowledge (BOK) approach does appear at first sight to hold value, some providers have merged their training content
with “BOK” claims, thus blurring that separation. We still lack independent means of verifying a body of knowledge around KM, and I think we are still a very long way off from having anything that is sufficiently diverse and deep to cover the diversity of
work contexts we deal with.
What I like about the CILIP offering is that it is practical. It advances the experience-based evaluation of KM practices, using portfolio building, mentors and the mechanism of peer review. That is a framework we have sadly lacked in the past.
There is no lack of training in KM, whether “certification”-oriented or otherwise and my instinct would be that (aside from foundational education programmes in KM), there may be more value in seeking out specialised training in deep niches for
the specialised aspects of KM we may be dealing with at any given time.
KM practices and needs (as you point out) are so diverse that I am not sure how valuable a generalised (context-free) certification course can be, aside from building some foundational knowledge, which is useful for beginners but rapidly loses
value when we get into more specialised areas of work. That is precisely the same problem that a BOK approach runs into.
P
On 22 Mar 2021, at 1:53 PM,
bill@... wrote:
Stephen and Patrick--
This subject resurfaces regularly. I can share two Linked In articles I posted on certification in KM and why it cannot yet exist. The articles share many of your points.
Training organizations offer “certification” but in reality the “certification” is a certificate demonstrating completion of offered training. While there may be personal value in taking the training it is not certification around a body of knowledge.
best
Bill
<image002.png>
Hi Patrick,
I'm very much looking forward to this session. BTW, I ended up re-reading a 2006
article of yours and think it is definitely worth considering to what extent CILIP is or is not a "certification" program, noting the the challenges and goals you outlined so nicely back then. I have taken the liberty of lightly revising what you wrote to reflect my assessment of our present situation as per the below:
What would you expect to see in a professional KM certification programme?
A "strong" KM certification programme would need diverse instructional and testing in:
-
Knowledge: taught input and verbal testing (ie describe the difference between a knowledge strategy and a knowledge management strategy)
-
Skills: demonstration, supervised practice and outcomes based testing (ie put together a project plan for a knowledge audit; conduct an after action review session for a project team)
-
Attitudes and Values: cannot be taught or tested, can only be modelled and observed in an environment of continuing professional interaction and peer review
-
Aptitudes: cannot be taught, can only be uncovered and fostered over time, most likely in a mentoring/coaching kind of partnership
And therefore a good KM certification programme would need to have:
-
taught and examined knowledge input
-
guided and assessed practice
-
continuing professional interaction and peer review over time
-
mentoring and coaching structures
Professional societies or networks are clearly the best candidates for providing this combination of features: as good as universities are, few of them are well placed to develop and deliver the practice based skills and professional interaction
areas. To avoid the inevitable distortions of commercial gain, certification and training courses in KM should be not-for-profit and non-commercial in nature.
A problem is that -- with the possible exception of the ISO 30401 KMS standard -- there is still no commonly accepted set of concepts, theories and practices that embody KM. As such we must acknowledge that from the "knowledge" point of view (as
distinct from skills, values and aptitudes), any certification is likely to only represent one perspective among many.
Based on what I know of the CILIP chartership, my assessment is that the focus is primarily on demonstrated skills. There is definitely some intent to test demonstrated attitudes and values as well, but it appears to be neither designed or intended
to address the knowledge or aptitude components of a hypothetical "certification".
Having this option still represents a significant leap forward from the status quo of course! However, I am interested to unpack
and discuss we can make progress as a community in the other areas as well.
Cheers,
Stephen.
====================================
Stephen Bounds
Executive, Information Management
Cordelta
E: stephen.bounds@...
M: 0401 829 096
====================================
On 22/03/2021 12:00 pm, Patrick Lambe wrote:
Hi Aprill
ISKO Singapore is holding a virtual panel with CILIP on the KM Chartership on 18 June (the panel will include a couple of chartership candidates, one of whom is a consultant). You (and other list members) are welcome to register and participate in this event
- there is no charge. Note the timing is 4pm Singapore time.
On 22 Mar 2021, at 6:17 AM, Aprill Allen < aprill@...> wrote:
As above...
Are any consultants here thinking about the CILIP chartership? Wondering what the value of joining will be when I can't get an employer to cover the cost.
--
Aprill Allen
Founder and Managing Director | Knowledge Bird
KM Consulting & KCS Training
M: +61 (0)400 101 961
knowledgebird.com
|
|
|
I agree with most of what you say and in my last post I mentioned that the PE has the EIT as its entry level cert. PMI also has an entry level cert as the PMP is not meant to be that, it is the CAPM (Certified Associate Project Manager) and is based on understanding the PMI BOK. I teach the CAPM in my undergraduate PM courses and encourage undergrads to take the CAPM exam. I do believe all final certifications require experience and be performance based.....murray jennex
-----Original Message-----
From: Robert L. Bogue <rbogue@...>
To: main@SIKM.groups.io <main@SIKM.groups.io>
Sent: Mon, Mar 22, 2021 5:32 am
Subject: Re: [SIKM] CILIP - Is anyone thinking about taking up the KM #chartership... and what about consultants?
Sorry I’m late to the party but allow me to offer a few thoughts based on my experience in a couple of different arenas.
First, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that certification is an indication that someone has met the standard. The problem, as Patrick and Murray point to, is that we don’t have a standard.
Having been involved in the certification process for a vendor and an industry association, I can tell you setting a standard isn’t as easy as it seems and it can easily be drawn into a bad place by the subject matter experts deciding that
their area of specialty is the most important. (It can equally be pulled off by people who are not practical. I’ll get to that in a moment.) When you’re building a fundamentals, or baseline, certification it’s easy enough to select the key things that
everyone should know. The fundamental models (correct or not) that people should be aware of since they’re likely to encounter them. It becomes difficult, as Patrick points to when you get to the point of the knowledge being specialized.
The answer then is – and should be – to develop the associate/beginner certification which includes the things that everyone should know. Connecting this to academia – it’s all the stuff that goes in the 101 course for other disciplines.
The advanced stuff doesn’t psychometrically validate well and setting a “cut score” becomes challenging. Consider an exam and certification with four major areas. Let’s say that someone demonstrates good competency in three of the four areas but has no knowledge
whatsoever in the fourth. You end up with 85/85/85/20 resulting in a 68.75%. Should that be passing? (By the way, I assume 20% because I’m assuming multiple choice 5 answer questions and pure guesses since they psychometrically validate well.) Cut scores
are generally set around 70%. However, the more challenging problem is that the certification meets a standard. One should reasonably expect that someone certified should know all four content areas. (This was precisely a question I had to help answer on
an exam/certification that failed in the market.)
The second truth to advanced certifications is that they’re not profitable. You don’t drive enough volume to justify your development costs. Years ago the most lucrative certification was A+ for CompTIA because of the volume. It served
a real place in the market. The “big box” retailers needed a way to certify their computer technicians. It drove a ton of volume. So while subject matter experts want to work on advanced certifications, it’s the wrong place to go if you want the market
to move. My work with the Server+ certification is public knowledge so I can say that while we did the right things for skills match there wasn’t a market demand because no one used it as a screening criteria for candidates.
I can tell you if you include too many people’s personal beliefs into what’s important it will sink the validity of the certification. The market won’t care and they won’t interpret it as valid. The reason that A+ worked is because it
was directly relevant to the job skills necessary to be successful. Doing that with a more heuristic role is exponentially more difficult.
Let me share my experience with my work on change management. Change management suffers the same fate as KM relative to certification. In their case ACMP is pushing their CCMP certification which is based on their “Standard.” (literally
that’s what it’s called.) The problem is the standard is garbage. It’s a project management approach to change management that just doesn’t work but they’re still off certifying people because it’s something. The Change Management Institute (CMI) is certifying
folks but they’ve got a sole-source training contract with a vendor and a body of knowledge that got pulled into a book and really unwound. It turned into a mishmash of everything that someone might want to know with no focus. Prosci is the big commercial
player and they’re certifying people on their model. The problem is that it doesn’t make people broadly more able to manage change. I put together what I think are fundamentals to the profession but then again I’m building training. I don’t care about certifying
people because I want them to have the skills and I don’t think I could set the standard if I want to. Neither of the industry associations are doing an effective job at creating an entry level certification that indicates basic competence.
(Sidebar: Consider the fact that there’s very little difference between the skills necessary for change management and knowledge management. The core skills overlap is very large.)
Let me shift to project management where PMI has their PMP. Everyone thinks about this as the “gold standard.” It requires experience. It’s relatively difficult. The problem is that it’s too hard for the project coordinators that a
project or program manager needs to manage projects. The result, is that project coordinators (lower level staff) get certified with CompTIA’s Project+. It’s a step towards project management’s gold standard PMP certification but indicates baseline skills
and lexicon that a PMP certified project manager should expect. As a result, it’s successful. So while PMI is successful with their PMP program, it’s a bit in spite of themselves. Others in the market filled the gap.
However, PMI raises an interesting point… Do you have to have experience to get the certification? My answer is an emphatic no. However, as a certification provider you want the answer to be yes. Because you want to demonstrate that
your certification is higher value. However, I’ve met people with the same first year experience twenty times – and people that have crammed 20 years of experience into less than a year. So in my mind, experience means nothing. However, it guards the certification
provider against the claim that people don’t know the things that the certification is supposed to ensure. (Paper MCSEs was common for the Windows NT 4 days because people couldn’t do the work.) My answer to this is improve the relevance of your questions
to the real world skills that people are being asked to demonstrate.
Oh, and ACMP requires that you demonstrate 21 hours of training from one of their qualified training providers – or you come up with some way of them agreeing that you’ve done 21 hours of training. As most of you here know, I’ve read and
reviewed a book every single week for several years. I’ve got 270 book reviews on the confident change management site. However, it’s unclear if they’d count this as “training.” As a point of fact, I applied to become one of their qualified education providers
and my application was denied. The point of this – requiring training to get a certification is not a good idea for a certification. At the same time, I recognize and support the reason why training providers have to do this. The market demands it of them.
In the absence of a good certification, any certification will do.
In short, we need an entry level certification for KM that works from the mode of the things that everyone needs to know, that’s practical to the real work we all do (and the others on our team do).
Rob
-------------------
Robert L. Bogue
From: main@SIKM.groups.io <main@SIKM.groups.io> On Behalf Of
Murray Jennex via groups.io
Sent: Monday, March 22, 2021 4:08 AM
To: main@SIKM.groups.io
Subject: Re: [SIKM] CILIP - Is anyone thinking about taking up the KM #chartership... and what about consultants?
I would argue that it is not the lack of a body of knowledge that makes certification difficult, it is the lack of standard outcomes
and how to achieve them that makes certification impossible as there is not a measuring stick to measure against, hence you can't certify anyone to a base level of performance......murray jennex
-----Original Message-----
From: bill@... <bill@...>
To: main@sikm.groups.io <main@sikm.groups.io>
Sent: Mon, Mar 22, 2021 12:42 am
Subject: Re: [SIKM] CILIP - Is anyone thinking about taking up the KM #chartership... and what about consultants?
All great points Patrick!
Bill
On Mar 21, 2021, at 23:13, Patrick Lambe via groups.io <plambe@...> wrote:
Thanks Bill. I especially like the way you advocate separation between certification
and training. However while the Body of Knowledge (BOK) approach does appear at first sight to hold value, some providers have merged their training content with “BOK” claims, thus blurring that separation. We still lack independent means of verifying a body
of knowledge around KM, and I think we are still a very long way off from having anything that is sufficiently diverse and deep to cover the diversity of work contexts we deal with.
What I like about the CILIP offering is that it is practical. It advances the experience-based evaluation of KM practices, using portfolio building, mentors and the
mechanism of peer review. That is a framework we have sadly lacked in the past.
There is no lack of training in KM, whether “certification”-oriented or otherwise and my instinct would be that (aside from foundational education programmes in KM),
there may be more value in seeking out specialised training in deep niches for the specialised aspects of KM we may be dealing with at any given time.
KM practices and needs (as you point out) are so diverse that I am not sure how valuable a generalised (context-free) certification course can be, aside from building
some foundational knowledge, which is useful for beginners but rapidly loses value when we get into more specialised areas of work. That is precisely the same problem that a BOK approach runs into.
Patrick Lambe
Partner
Straits Knowledge
phone:
+65 98528511
web:
<SK18th_Anniv2020_emailfooter (2).jpg>
On 22 Mar 2021, at 1:53 PM,
bill@... wrote:
This subject resurfaces regularly. I can share two Linked In articles I posted on certification in KM and why it cannot yet exist. The articles share many of your points.
Training organizations offer “certification” but in reality the “certification” is a certificate demonstrating completion of offered training. While there may be personal value in taking the training it is not
certification around a body of knowledge.
I'm very much looking forward to this session. BTW, I ended up re-reading a 2006
article of yours and think it is definitely worth considering to what extent CILIP is or is not a "certification" program, noting the the challenges and goals you outlined so nicely back then.
I have taken the liberty of lightly revising what you wrote to reflect my assessment of our present situation as per the below:
What would you expect to see in a professional KM certification programme?
A "strong" KM certification programme would need diverse instructional and testing in:
-
Knowledge: taught input and verbal testing (ie describe the difference between a knowledge strategy and a knowledge management strategy)
-
Skills: demonstration, supervised practice and outcomes based testing (ie put together a project plan for a knowledge audit; conduct an after action review session for a project team)
-
Attitudes and Values: cannot be taught or tested, can only be modelled and observed in an environment of continuing professional interaction and peer review
-
Aptitudes: cannot be taught, can only be uncovered and fostered over time, most likely in a mentoring/coaching kind of partnership
And therefore a good KM certification programme would need to have:
-
taught and examined knowledge input
-
guided and assessed practice
-
continuing professional interaction and peer review over time
-
mentoring and coaching structures
Professional societies or networks are clearly the best candidates for providing this combination of features: as good as universities are, few of them are well
placed to develop and deliver the practice based skills and professional interaction areas. To avoid the inevitable distortions of commercial gain, certification and training courses in KM should be not-for-profit and non-commercial in nature.
A problem is that -- with the possible exception of the ISO 30401 KMS standard -- there is still no commonly accepted set of concepts, theories and practices that
embody KM. As such we must acknowledge that from the "knowledge" point of view (as distinct from skills, values and aptitudes), any certification is likely to only represent one perspective among many.
Based on what I know of the CILIP chartership, my assessment is that the focus is primarily on demonstrated skills. There is definitely some intent to test demonstrated
attitudes and values as well, but it appears to be neither designed or intended to address the knowledge or aptitude components of a hypothetical "certification".
Having this option still represents a significant leap
forward from the status quo of course! However, I am interested to unpack and discuss we can make progress as a community in the other areas as well.
====================================
Stephen Bounds
Executive, Information Management
Cordelta
E: stephen.bounds@...
M: 0401 829 096
====================================
On 22/03/2021 12:00 pm, Patrick Lambe wrote:
ISKO Singapore is holding a virtual panel with CILIP on the KM Chartership on 18 June (the panel will include a couple of chartership candidates, one of whom is a consultant). You (and other list members) are welcome
to register and participate in this event - there is no charge. Note the timing is 4pm Singapore time.
On 22 Mar 2021, at 6:17 AM, Aprill Allen <aprill@...> wrote:
As above...
Are any consultants here thinking about the CILIP chartership? Wondering what the value of joining will be when I can't get an employer to cover the cost.
--
Aprill Allen
Founder and Managing Director | Knowledge Bird
KM Consulting & KCS Training
M: +61 (0)400 101 961
knowledgebird.com
|
|
|
Good catch. The idea was to highlight a large group interaction that everyone would believe was typical. Technically, it shouldn’t be World Café … but if there was a good representative large group interaction… It’s sort of like facial
tissue and Kleenex. I do, however, think one should be picked to make things as concrete as possible.
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
From: main@SIKM.groups.io <main@SIKM.groups.io> On Behalf Of
Stephen Bounds via groups.io
Sent: Monday, March 22, 2021 7:05 PM
To: main@SIKM.groups.io
Subject: Re: [SIKM] CILIP - Is anyone thinking about taking up the KM #chartership... and what about consultants?
Hi Robert,
I really like what you're saying but I was a bit surprised to see you singling out World Cafés. Can you expand a bit on why you see this as essential?
Cheers,
Stephen.
====================================
Stephen Bounds
Executive, Information Management
Cordelta
E: stephen.bounds@...
M: 0401 829 096
====================================
On 23/03/2021 12:49 am, Robert L. Bogue wrote:
Stephen –
I don’t think you’re off track but I’d like to share a trick that was shared with me – that may give you a more productive track.
About 2010 I wrote a course for Microsoft “Implementing ECM on SharePoint.” It was for their partners and enterprise customers. We got very caught up in the best way to do things for the largest organizations and the challenges that they
might encounter. My client and friend suggested that I consider 80%-80% as a rule. What is about 80% of what someone would need to know for the deployments that were in the implementation of the bottom 80% of the market. Later in the project we used the
idea that you’ve got an expert running the project but you just need to know enough to communicate with them intelligently. What would you need to know?
For me, I think in the core skills category, there’s at least an introduction to motivation. I think there’s a bit of systems thinking. There’s a bit of community building.
I could probably keep going and identify some broad areas… and underneath that define what key skills, behaviors, or techniques that I think everyone should know about, and then I’d decide what level they’d have to know. For instance,
I think everyone should understand World Café – not because they have to run it but because they should understand how and why it works. I’d put this as a requisite skill for any KM practitioner at any level.
I think foundations on trust are essential. I’d make the key skill identification of behaviors that erode trust. They don’t have to solve them… just see them and be able to research/learn more or get a lead involved to help fix it.
I could go on… I think that you’re trying to solve the right problem but I’m not sure the approach to decomposition will lead to the results you desire. I think that you’ll be better off to think about the kind of person that you’d like
to mentor and what you want them to know at or near the beginning of their career. (This is the same as above just reframed.)
Rob
Amazing stuff Robert -- thanks!
You've put your finger on one of the key problems with KM certification: What does the role of an associate / beginner KM professional look like? Does such a thing exist?
It would have to incorporate some of the skills that will develop into a more expert role down the line, otherwise there's no meaningful connection or progression between the two. But it can't be so complex in terms of experience or otherwise, as you say,
practitioners will be less likely to think they need it (especially if they already have a postgraduate qualification) and the market demand to possess the formal certification is likely to remain low.
So we need both a starting point and a pathway. There are three basic ways I can think of to organise a profession:
-
Tiered roles primarily distinguished by experience and competence, eg Project Coordinator (Project+) -> Project Manager (PMP) -> Program Manager
-
Base entry role leading to multiple specialisations, eg Service Desk Operator -> System Administrator -> ICT Manager / Solutions Architect / Database Administrator / etc
-
Multiple entry roles, each with different career advancement paths, eg Nurse -> Nurse Practitioner / Remote Medicine vs Doctor -> GP / Surgeon / ENT etc
I believe there has previously been an assumption (including by me) that any "basic" KM role would be oriented linearly towards more expert KM opportunities.
However, when I attempted at
documenting a typology of KM roles a while back, I divided them without a great deal of thought into senior and operational roles. Now I am wondering whether it would be better to think of them as two separate career streams:
-
Strategic roles
-
Knowledge Program Manager
-
Knowledge Manager
-
Knowledge Architect
-
Operational roles
-
Knowledge Process Manager
-
Knowledge Analyst
-
Knowledge Process Officer
It seems unlikely that a deep understanding of ISO30401 would greatly benefit the operational type of role. On the other hand I believe it would be possible to outline a pragmatic curriculum to improve effectiveness, teach fundamentals (ie what a complex
system is and why it matters) and a common set of terminology and methods recommended for adoption. It would fit the bill for meaningful competence training without a great deal of prior experience
and match the described market need for most base to mid level KM roles.
On the other hand, a strategic role benefits more from study in complex systems, individual and group psychology, and information sciences along with training in key KM methods for diagnosing problems and then designing, implementing and managing new and
effective KM interventions (often implemented by the operational roles). These are meaty subjects that are probably best suited to tertiary study, along with significant hands-on experience (or a simulation of the real thing). It seems unlikely that we'll
ever achieve meaningful certification for these types of roles -- perhaps a "gold standard" style PMP if we're lucky and with a significant increase in market demand. (There will also likely be far fewer full-time roles in this space with a tendency towards
consultations.)
Could be completely on the wrong track of course. Thoughts?
Cheers,
Stephen.
====================================
Stephen Bounds
Executive, Information Management
Cordelta
E: stephen.bounds@...
M: 0401 829 096
====================================
On 22/03/2021 10:32 pm, Robert L. Bogue wrote:
Sorry I’m late to the party but allow me to offer a few thoughts based on my experience in a couple of different arenas.
First, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that certification is an indication that someone has met the standard. The problem, as Patrick and Murray point to, is that we don’t have a standard.
Having been involved in the certification process for a vendor and an industry association, I can tell you setting a standard isn’t as easy as it seems and it can easily be drawn into a bad place by the subject matter experts deciding that
their area of specialty is the most important. (It can equally be pulled off by people who are not practical. I’ll get to that in a moment.) When you’re building a fundamentals, or baseline, certification it’s easy enough to select the key things that
everyone should know. The fundamental models (correct or not) that people should be aware of since they’re likely to encounter them. It becomes difficult, as Patrick points to when you get to the point of the knowledge being specialized.
The answer then is – and should be – to develop the associate/beginner certification which includes the things that everyone should know. Connecting this to academia – it’s all the stuff that goes in the 101 course for other disciplines.
The advanced stuff doesn’t psychometrically validate well and setting a “cut score” becomes challenging. Consider an exam and certification with four major areas. Let’s say that someone demonstrates good competency in three of the four areas but has no knowledge
whatsoever in the fourth. You end up with 85/85/85/20 resulting in a 68.75%. Should that be passing? (By the way, I assume 20% because I’m assuming multiple choice 5 answer questions and pure guesses since they psychometrically validate well.) Cut scores
are generally set around 70%. However, the more challenging problem is that the certification meets a standard. One should reasonably expect that someone certified should know all four content areas. (This was precisely a question I had to help answer on
an exam/certification that failed in the market.)
The second truth to advanced certifications is that they’re not profitable. You don’t drive enough volume to justify your development costs. Years ago the most lucrative certification was A+ for CompTIA because of the volume. It served
a real place in the market. The “big box” retailers needed a way to certify their computer technicians. It drove a ton of volume. So while subject matter experts want to work on advanced certifications, it’s the wrong place to go if you want the market
to move. My work with the Server+ certification is public knowledge so I can say that while we did the right things for skills match there wasn’t a market demand because no one used it as a screening criteria for candidates.
I can tell you if you include too many people’s personal beliefs into what’s important it will sink the validity of the certification. The market won’t care and they won’t interpret it as valid. The reason that A+ worked is because it
was directly relevant to the job skills necessary to be successful. Doing that with a more heuristic role is exponentially more difficult.
Let me share my experience with my work on change management. Change management suffers the same fate as KM relative to certification. In their case ACMP is pushing their CCMP certification which is based on their “Standard.” (literally
that’s what it’s called.) The problem is the standard is garbage. It’s a project management approach to change management that just doesn’t work but they’re still off certifying people because it’s something. The Change Management Institute (CMI) is certifying
folks but they’ve got a sole-source training contract with a vendor and a body of knowledge that got pulled into a book and really unwound. It turned into a mishmash of everything that someone might want to know with no focus. Prosci is the big commercial
player and they’re certifying people on their model. The problem is that it doesn’t make people broadly more able to manage change. I put together what I think are fundamentals to the profession but then again I’m building training. I don’t care about certifying
people because I want them to have the skills and I don’t think I could set the standard if I want to. Neither of the industry associations are doing an effective job at creating an entry level certification that indicates basic competence.
(Sidebar: Consider the fact that there’s very little difference between the skills necessary for change management and knowledge management. The core skills overlap is very large.)
Let me shift to project management where PMI has their PMP. Everyone thinks about this as the “gold standard.” It requires experience. It’s relatively difficult. The problem is that it’s too hard for the project coordinators that a
project or program manager needs to manage projects. The result, is that project coordinators (lower level staff) get certified with CompTIA’s Project+. It’s a step towards project management’s gold standard PMP certification but indicates baseline skills
and lexicon that a PMP certified project manager should expect. As a result, it’s successful. So while PMI is successful with their PMP program, it’s a bit in spite of themselves. Others in the market filled the gap.
However, PMI raises an interesting point… Do you have to have experience to get the certification? My answer is an emphatic no. However, as a certification provider you want the answer to be yes. Because you want to demonstrate that
your certification is higher value. However, I’ve met people with the same first year experience twenty times – and people that have crammed 20 years of experience into less than a year. So in my mind, experience means nothing. However, it guards the certification
provider against the claim that people don’t know the things that the certification is supposed to ensure. (Paper MCSEs was common for the Windows NT 4 days because people couldn’t do the work.) My answer to this is improve the relevance of your questions
to the real world skills that people are being asked to demonstrate.
Oh, and ACMP requires that you demonstrate 21 hours of training from one of their qualified training providers – or you come up with some way of them agreeing that you’ve done 21 hours of training. As most of you here know, I’ve read and
reviewed a book every single week for several years. I’ve got 270 book reviews on the confident change management site. However, it’s unclear if they’d count this as “training.” As a point of fact, I applied to become one of their qualified education providers
and my application was denied. The point of this – requiring training to get a certification is not a good idea for a certification. At the same time, I recognize and support the reason why training providers have to do this. The market demands it of them.
In the absence of a good certification, any certification will do.
In short, we need an entry level certification for KM that works from the mode of the things that everyone needs to know, that’s practical to the real work we all do (and the others on our team do).
Rob
-------------------
Robert L. Bogue
O: (317) 844-5310 M: (317) 506-4977 Blog:
http://www.thorprojects.com/blog
Want to be confident about your change management efforts?
https://ConfidentChangeManagement.com
Are you burned out?
https://ExtinguishBurnout.com can help you get out of it (for free)
I would argue that it is not the lack of a body of knowledge that makes certification difficult, it is the lack of standard outcomes
and how to achieve them that makes certification impossible as there is not a measuring stick to measure against, hence you can't certify anyone to a base level of performance......murray jennex
-----Original Message-----
From: bill@...
<bill@...>
To: main@sikm.groups.io
<main@sikm.groups.io>
Sent: Mon, Mar 22, 2021 12:42 am
Subject: Re: [SIKM] CILIP - Is anyone thinking about taking up the KM #chartership... and what about consultants?
All great points Patrick!
Bill
On Mar 21, 2021, at 23:13, Patrick Lambe via groups.io
<plambe@...> wrote:
Thanks Bill. I especially like the way you advocate separation between certification
and training. However while the Body of Knowledge (BOK) approach does appear at first sight to hold value, some providers have merged their training content with “BOK” claims, thus blurring that separation. We still lack independent means of verifying a body
of knowledge around KM, and I think we are still a very long way off from having anything that is sufficiently diverse and deep to cover the diversity of work contexts we deal with.
What I like about the CILIP offering is that it is practical. It advances the experience-based evaluation of KM practices, using portfolio building, mentors and the
mechanism of peer review. That is a framework we have sadly lacked in the past.
There is no lack of training in KM, whether “certification”-oriented or otherwise and my instinct would be that (aside from foundational education programmes in KM),
there may be more value in seeking out specialised training in deep niches for the specialised aspects of KM we may be dealing with at any given time.
KM practices and needs (as you point out) are so diverse that I am not sure how valuable a generalised (context-free) certification course can be, aside from building
some foundational knowledge, which is useful for beginners but rapidly loses value when we get into more specialised areas of work. That is precisely the same problem that a BOK approach runs into.
On 22 Mar 2021, at 1:53 PM,
bill@... wrote:
This subject resurfaces regularly. I can share two Linked In articles I posted on certification in KM and why it cannot yet exist. The articles share many of your points.
Training organizations offer “certification” but in reality the “certification” is a certificate demonstrating completion of offered training. While there may be personal value in taking the training it is not
certification around a body of knowledge.
I'm very much looking forward to this session. BTW, I ended up re-reading a 2006
article of yours and think it is definitely worth considering to what extent CILIP is or is not a "certification" program, noting the the challenges and goals you outlined so nicely back then.
I have taken the liberty of lightly revising what you wrote to reflect my assessment of our present situation as per the below:
What would you expect to see in a professional KM certification programme?
A "strong" KM certification programme would need diverse instructional and testing in:
-
Knowledge: taught input and verbal testing (ie describe the difference between a knowledge strategy and a knowledge management strategy)
-
Skills: demonstration, supervised practice and outcomes based testing (ie put together a project plan for a knowledge audit; conduct an after action review session for a project team)
-
Attitudes and Values: cannot be taught or tested, can only be modelled and observed in an environment of continuing professional interaction and peer review
-
Aptitudes: cannot be taught, can only be uncovered and fostered over time, most likely in a mentoring/coaching kind of partnership
And therefore a good KM certification programme would need to have:
-
taught and examined knowledge input
-
guided and assessed practice
-
continuing professional interaction and peer review over time
-
mentoring and coaching structures
Professional societies or networks are clearly the best candidates for providing this combination of features: as good as universities are, few of them are well
placed to develop and deliver the practice based skills and professional interaction areas. To avoid the inevitable distortions of commercial gain, certification and training courses in KM should be not-for-profit and non-commercial in nature.
A problem is that -- with the possible exception of the ISO 30401 KMS standard -- there is still no commonly accepted set of concepts, theories and practices that
embody KM. As such we must acknowledge that from the "knowledge" point of view (as distinct from skills, values and aptitudes), any certification is likely to only represent one perspective among many.
Based on what I know of the CILIP chartership, my assessment is that the focus is primarily on demonstrated skills. There is definitely some intent to test demonstrated
attitudes and values as well, but it appears to be neither designed or intended to address the knowledge or aptitude components of a hypothetical "certification".
Having this option still represents a significant leap
forward from the status quo of course! However, I am interested to unpack and discuss we can make progress as a community in the other areas as well.
====================================
Stephen Bounds
Executive, Information Management
Cordelta
E: stephen.bounds@...
M: 0401 829 096
====================================
On 22/03/2021 12:00 pm, Patrick Lambe wrote:
ISKO Singapore is holding a virtual panel with CILIP on the KM Chartership on 18 June (the panel will include a couple of chartership candidates, one of whom is a consultant). You (and other list members) are welcome
to register and participate in this event - there is no charge. Note the timing is 4pm Singapore time.
On 22 Mar 2021, at 6:17 AM, Aprill Allen <aprill@...> wrote:
As above...
Are any consultants here thinking about the CILIP chartership? Wondering what the value of joining will be when I can't get an employer to cover the cost.
--
Aprill Allen
Founder and Managing Director | Knowledge Bird
KM Consulting & KCS Training
M: +61 (0)400 101 961
knowledgebird.com
|
|
|
Further, on the concept of knowledge cafes, aka World Cafe.
At the KM Institute, we have been teaching an entire module on K Cafes...not just the traditional one, which we call the 'Traditional K Cafe', but three variations as well, e.g. the 'KM Solutions Cafe', the 'KM Buzz Session', and the 'Innovative K Cafe'.
Why?
Because we learned long ago that the K Cafe is an exceptionally powerful and easily mastered technique for KM Practitioners in the K Age...whatever their KM experience level. So, mastery of K Cafes are an integral component (aka Learning Objective) of all levels of KM Certification, even the pre-cert, basic primer, the KM101.
Result. Our over 10,000 graduates since June 2001 have consistently rated the K Cafe as one of the best, most easily implemented and beneficial takeaways. We don't tout K Cafes as being KM, per se, but do recommend it as an essential 'Quick Win' in our KM and Transformational Change Mgmt toolbox.
Douglas Weidner Chief CKM Instructor Exec Chairman, KM Institute
On Tue, Mar 23, 2021 at 8:32 AM Robert L. Bogue < rbogue@...> wrote:
Good catch. The idea was to highlight a large group interaction that everyone would believe was typical. Technically, it shouldn’t be World Café … but if there was a good representative large group interaction… It’s sort of like facial
tissue and Kleenex. I do, however, think one should be picked to make things as concrete as possible.
Hi Robert,
I really like what you're saying but I was a bit surprised to see you singling out World Cafés. Can you expand a bit on why you see this as essential?
Cheers,
Stephen.
====================================
Stephen Bounds
Executive, Information Management
Cordelta
E: stephen.bounds@...
M: 0401 829 096
====================================
On 23/03/2021 12:49 am, Robert L. Bogue wrote:
Stephen –
I don’t think you’re off track but I’d like to share a trick that was shared with me – that may give you a more productive track.
About 2010 I wrote a course for Microsoft “Implementing ECM on SharePoint.” It was for their partners and enterprise customers. We got very caught up in the best way to do things for the largest organizations and the challenges that they
might encounter. My client and friend suggested that I consider 80%-80% as a rule. What is about 80% of what someone would need to know for the deployments that were in the implementation of the bottom 80% of the market. Later in the project we used the
idea that you’ve got an expert running the project but you just need to know enough to communicate with them intelligently. What would you need to know?
For me, I think in the core skills category, there’s at least an introduction to motivation. I think there’s a bit of systems thinking. There’s a bit of community building.
I could probably keep going and identify some broad areas… and underneath that define what key skills, behaviors, or techniques that I think everyone should know about, and then I’d decide what level they’d have to know. For instance,
I think everyone should understand World Café – not because they have to run it but because they should understand how and why it works. I’d put this as a requisite skill for any KM practitioner at any level.
I think foundations on trust are essential. I’d make the key skill identification of behaviors that erode trust. They don’t have to solve them… just see them and be able to research/learn more or get a lead involved to help fix it.
I could go on… I think that you’re trying to solve the right problem but I’m not sure the approach to decomposition will lead to the results you desire. I think that you’ll be better off to think about the kind of person that you’d like
to mentor and what you want them to know at or near the beginning of their career. (This is the same as above just reframed.)
Rob
Amazing stuff Robert -- thanks!
You've put your finger on one of the key problems with KM certification: What does the role of an associate / beginner KM professional look like? Does such a thing exist?
It would have to incorporate some of the skills that will develop into a more expert role down the line, otherwise there's no meaningful connection or progression between the two. But it can't be so complex in terms of experience or otherwise, as you say,
practitioners will be less likely to think they need it (especially if they already have a postgraduate qualification) and the market demand to possess the formal certification is likely to remain low.
So we need both a starting point and a pathway. There are three basic ways I can think of to organise a profession:
-
Tiered roles primarily distinguished by experience and competence, eg Project Coordinator (Project+) -> Project Manager (PMP) -> Program Manager
-
Base entry role leading to multiple specialisations, eg Service Desk Operator -> System Administrator -> ICT Manager / Solutions Architect / Database Administrator / etc
-
Multiple entry roles, each with different career advancement paths, eg Nurse -> Nurse Practitioner / Remote Medicine vs Doctor -> GP / Surgeon / ENT etc
I believe there has previously been an assumption (including by me) that any "basic" KM role would be oriented linearly towards more expert KM opportunities.
However, when I attempted at
documenting a typology of KM roles a while back, I divided them without a great deal of thought into senior and operational roles. Now I am wondering whether it would be better to think of them as two separate career streams:
-
Strategic roles
-
Knowledge Program Manager
-
Knowledge Manager
-
Knowledge Architect
-
Operational roles
-
Knowledge Process Manager
-
Knowledge Analyst
-
Knowledge Process Officer
It seems unlikely that a deep understanding of ISO30401 would greatly benefit the operational type of role. On the other hand I believe it would be possible to outline a pragmatic curriculum to improve effectiveness, teach fundamentals (ie what a complex
system is and why it matters) and a common set of terminology and methods recommended for adoption. It would fit the bill for meaningful competence training without a great deal of prior experience
and match the described market need for most base to mid level KM roles.
On the other hand, a strategic role benefits more from study in complex systems, individual and group psychology, and information sciences along with training in key KM methods for diagnosing problems and then designing, implementing and managing new and
effective KM interventions (often implemented by the operational roles). These are meaty subjects that are probably best suited to tertiary study, along with significant hands-on experience (or a simulation of the real thing). It seems unlikely that we'll
ever achieve meaningful certification for these types of roles -- perhaps a "gold standard" style PMP if we're lucky and with a significant increase in market demand. (There will also likely be far fewer full-time roles in this space with a tendency towards
consultations.)
Could be completely on the wrong track of course. Thoughts?
Cheers,
Stephen.
====================================
Stephen Bounds
Executive, Information Management
Cordelta
E: stephen.bounds@...
M: 0401 829 096
====================================
On 22/03/2021 10:32 pm, Robert L. Bogue wrote:
Sorry I’m late to the party but allow me to offer a few thoughts based on my experience in a couple of different arenas.
First, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that certification is an indication that someone has met the standard. The problem, as Patrick and Murray point to, is that we don’t have a standard.
Having been involved in the certification process for a vendor and an industry association, I can tell you setting a standard isn’t as easy as it seems and it can easily be drawn into a bad place by the subject matter experts deciding that
their area of specialty is the most important. (It can equally be pulled off by people who are not practical. I’ll get to that in a moment.) When you’re building a fundamentals, or baseline, certification it’s easy enough to select the key things that
everyone should know. The fundamental models (correct or not) that people should be aware of since they’re likely to encounter them. It becomes difficult, as Patrick points to when you get to the point of the knowledge being specialized.
The answer then is – and should be – to develop the associate/beginner certification which includes the things that everyone should know. Connecting this to academia – it’s all the stuff that goes in the 101 course for other disciplines.
The advanced stuff doesn’t psychometrically validate well and setting a “cut score” becomes challenging. Consider an exam and certification with four major areas. Let’s say that someone demonstrates good competency in three of the four areas but has no knowledge
whatsoever in the fourth. You end up with 85/85/85/20 resulting in a 68.75%. Should that be passing? (By the way, I assume 20% because I’m assuming multiple choice 5 answer questions and pure guesses since they psychometrically validate well.) Cut scores
are generally set around 70%. However, the more challenging problem is that the certification meets a standard. One should reasonably expect that someone certified should know all four content areas. (This was precisely a question I had to help answer on
an exam/certification that failed in the market.)
The second truth to advanced certifications is that they’re not profitable. You don’t drive enough volume to justify your development costs. Years ago the most lucrative certification was A+ for CompTIA because of the volume. It served
a real place in the market. The “big box” retailers needed a way to certify their computer technicians. It drove a ton of volume. So while subject matter experts want to work on advanced certifications, it’s the wrong place to go if you want the market
to move. My work with the Server+ certification is public knowledge so I can say that while we did the right things for skills match there wasn’t a market demand because no one used it as a screening criteria for candidates.
I can tell you if you include too many people’s personal beliefs into what’s important it will sink the validity of the certification. The market won’t care and they won’t interpret it as valid. The reason that A+ worked is because it
was directly relevant to the job skills necessary to be successful. Doing that with a more heuristic role is exponentially more difficult.
Let me share my experience with my work on change management. Change management suffers the same fate as KM relative to certification. In their case ACMP is pushing their CCMP certification which is based on their “Standard.” (literally
that’s what it’s called.) The problem is the standard is garbage. It’s a project management approach to change management that just doesn’t work but they’re still off certifying people because it’s something. The Change Management Institute (CMI) is certifying
folks but they’ve got a sole-source training contract with a vendor and a body of knowledge that got pulled into a book and really unwound. It turned into a mishmash of everything that someone might want to know with no focus. Prosci is the big commercial
player and they’re certifying people on their model. The problem is that it doesn’t make people broadly more able to manage change. I put together what I think are fundamentals to the profession but then again I’m building training. I don’t care about certifying
people because I want them to have the skills and I don’t think I could set the standard if I want to. Neither of the industry associations are doing an effective job at creating an entry level certification that indicates basic competence.
(Sidebar: Consider the fact that there’s very little difference between the skills necessary for change management and knowledge management. The core skills overlap is very large.)
Let me shift to project management where PMI has their PMP. Everyone thinks about this as the “gold standard.” It requires experience. It’s relatively difficult. The problem is that it’s too hard for the project coordinators that a
project or program manager needs to manage projects. The result, is that project coordinators (lower level staff) get certified with CompTIA’s Project+. It’s a step towards project management’s gold standard PMP certification but indicates baseline skills
and lexicon that a PMP certified project manager should expect. As a result, it’s successful. So while PMI is successful with their PMP program, it’s a bit in spite of themselves. Others in the market filled the gap.
However, PMI raises an interesting point… Do you have to have experience to get the certification? My answer is an emphatic no. However, as a certification provider you want the answer to be yes. Because you want to demonstrate that
your certification is higher value. However, I’ve met people with the same first year experience twenty times – and people that have crammed 20 years of experience into less than a year. So in my mind, experience means nothing. However, it guards the certification
provider against the claim that people don’t know the things that the certification is supposed to ensure. (Paper MCSEs was common for the Windows NT 4 days because people couldn’t do the work.) My answer to this is improve the relevance of your questions
to the real world skills that people are being asked to demonstrate.
Oh, and ACMP requires that you demonstrate 21 hours of training from one of their qualified training providers – or you come up with some way of them agreeing that you’ve done 21 hours of training. As most of you here know, I’ve read and
reviewed a book every single week for several years. I’ve got 270 book reviews on the confident change management site. However, it’s unclear if they’d count this as “training.” As a point of fact, I applied to become one of their qualified education providers
and my application was denied. The point of this – requiring training to get a certification is not a good idea for a certification. At the same time, I recognize and support the reason why training providers have to do this. The market demands it of them.
In the absence of a good certification, any certification will do.
In short, we need an entry level certification for KM that works from the mode of the things that everyone needs to know, that’s practical to the real work we all do (and the others on our team do).
Rob
-------------------
Robert L. Bogue
O: (317) 844-5310 M: (317) 506-4977 Blog:
http://www.thorprojects.com/blog
Want to be confident about your change management efforts?
https://ConfidentChangeManagement.com
Are you burned out?
https://ExtinguishBurnout.com can help you get out of it (for free)
I would argue that it is not the lack of a body of knowledge that makes certification difficult, it is the lack of standard outcomes
and how to achieve them that makes certification impossible as there is not a measuring stick to measure against, hence you can't certify anyone to a base level of performance......murray jennex
-----Original Message-----
From: bill@...
<bill@...>
To: main@sikm.groups.io
<main@sikm.groups.io>
Sent: Mon, Mar 22, 2021 12:42 am
Subject: Re: [SIKM] CILIP - Is anyone thinking about taking up the KM #chartership... and what about consultants?
All great points Patrick!
Bill
Thanks Bill. I especially like the way you advocate separation between certification
and training. However while the Body of Knowledge (BOK) approach does appear at first sight to hold value, some providers have merged their training content with “BOK” claims, thus blurring that separation. We still lack independent means of verifying a body
of knowledge around KM, and I think we are still a very long way off from having anything that is sufficiently diverse and deep to cover the diversity of work contexts we deal with.
What I like about the CILIP offering is that it is practical. It advances the experience-based evaluation of KM practices, using portfolio building, mentors and the
mechanism of peer review. That is a framework we have sadly lacked in the past.
There is no lack of training in KM, whether “certification”-oriented or otherwise and my instinct would be that (aside from foundational education programmes in KM),
there may be more value in seeking out specialised training in deep niches for the specialised aspects of KM we may be dealing with at any given time.
KM practices and needs (as you point out) are so diverse that I am not sure how valuable a generalised (context-free) certification course can be, aside from building
some foundational knowledge, which is useful for beginners but rapidly loses value when we get into more specialised areas of work. That is precisely the same problem that a BOK approach runs into.
On 22 Mar 2021, at 1:53 PM,
bill@... wrote:
This subject resurfaces regularly. I can share two Linked In articles I posted on certification in KM and why it cannot yet exist. The articles share many of your points.
Training organizations offer “certification” but in reality the “certification” is a certificate demonstrating completion of offered training. While there may be personal value in taking the training it is not
certification around a body of knowledge.
I'm very much looking forward to this session. BTW, I ended up re-reading a 2006
article of yours and think it is definitely worth considering to what extent CILIP is or is not a "certification" program, noting the the challenges and goals you outlined so nicely back then.
I have taken the liberty of lightly revising what you wrote to reflect my assessment of our present situation as per the below:
What would you expect to see in a professional KM certification programme?
A "strong" KM certification programme would need diverse instructional and testing in:
-
Knowledge: taught input and verbal testing (ie describe the difference between a knowledge strategy and a knowledge management strategy)
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Skills: demonstration, supervised practice and outcomes based testing (ie put together a project plan for a knowledge audit; conduct an after action review session for a project team)
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Attitudes and Values: cannot be taught or tested, can only be modelled and observed in an environment of continuing professional interaction and peer review
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Aptitudes: cannot be taught, can only be uncovered and fostered over time, most likely in a mentoring/coaching kind of partnership
And therefore a good KM certification programme would need to have:
-
taught and examined knowledge input
-
guided and assessed practice
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continuing professional interaction and peer review over time
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mentoring and coaching structures
Professional societies or networks are clearly the best candidates for providing this combination of features: as good as universities are, few of them are well
placed to develop and deliver the practice based skills and professional interaction areas. To avoid the inevitable distortions of commercial gain, certification and training courses in KM should be not-for-profit and non-commercial in nature.
A problem is that -- with the possible exception of the ISO 30401 KMS standard -- there is still no commonly accepted set of concepts, theories and practices that
embody KM. As such we must acknowledge that from the "knowledge" point of view (as distinct from skills, values and aptitudes), any certification is likely to only represent one perspective among many.
Based on what I know of the CILIP chartership, my assessment is that the focus is primarily on demonstrated skills. There is definitely some intent to test demonstrated
attitudes and values as well, but it appears to be neither designed or intended to address the knowledge or aptitude components of a hypothetical "certification".
Having this option still represents a significant leap
forward from the status quo of course! However, I am interested to unpack and discuss we can make progress as a community in the other areas as well.
====================================
Stephen Bounds
Executive, Information Management
Cordelta
E: stephen.bounds@...
M: 0401 829 096
====================================
On 22/03/2021 12:00 pm, Patrick Lambe wrote:
ISKO Singapore is holding a virtual panel with CILIP on the KM Chartership on 18 June (the panel will include a couple of chartership candidates, one of whom is a consultant). You (and other list members) are welcome
to register and participate in this event - there is no charge. Note the timing is 4pm Singapore time.
On 22 Mar 2021, at 6:17 AM, Aprill Allen <aprill@...> wrote:
As above...
Are any consultants here thinking about the CILIP chartership? Wondering what the value of joining will be when I can't get an employer to cover the cost.
--
Aprill Allen
Founder and Managing Director | Knowledge Bird
KM Consulting & KCS Training
M: +61 (0)400 101 961
knowledgebird.com
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Robert M. Taylor
It's the only one I'm a bit interested in because it isn't a taught, theory course but a review of practice. However, KM's an open profession where there's no recognised, required training* and also a very immature one where we don't really have much science. I prefer that we're having these conversations, where it's clear we have a range of different views and experiences across the subjects. It's not like learning law, or medicine or accountancy. We haven't figured it out yet.
* I don't believe most of the people in this line of work have any specific qualifications nor training - we're multidisciplinary and hooray for that.
April, did you come to any further conclusions? /R
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Ricardo Augusto da Silva Alfenas
Dear colleagues,
I joined this community not long ago and I am delighted with how enriching this networking is. Regarding qualifications in KM, my experience has convinced me that the union of academic and practical knowledge is a good way to go. Both worlds have been helping me a lot, at the moment I'm starting my doctorate in Business Administration in the Knowledge Management and Innovations research line, but I also participate in communities of practice and all the KM networking I can.
Best Regards,
Ricardo Alfenas KM Working Group Coordinator Poços de Caldas Laboratory / National Nuclear Energy Commission, Brazil.
Em sábado, 5 de fevereiro de 2022 20:31:52 BRT, Robert M. Taylor via groups.io <robertmartintaylor@...> escreveu:
It's the only one I'm a bit interested in because it isn't a taught, theory course but a review of practice. However, KM's an open profession where there's no recognised, required training* and also a very immature one where we don't really have much science. I prefer that we're having these conversations, where it's clear we have a range of different views and experiences across the subjects. It's not like learning law, or medicine or accountancy. We haven't figured it out yet.
* I don't believe most of the people in this line of work have any specific qualifications nor training - we're multidisciplinary and hooray for that.
April, did you come to any further conclusions? /R
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