Local Knowledge Management Communities for Face-to-Face Sharing

By Jim Lee on May 23, 2013
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Smoke signals, carrier pigeons, Dilbert-style meetings, web meetings, virtual worlds, mobile, face-to-face meetings. It would seem that what once was old is new again. More precisely, I should say that the desire to connect with kindred spirits seems never to have waned. What do I base this upon? Recently, a few clients of mine expressed a desire to meet with others interested in KM, from other organizations, in their geographic area. So in other words, in this always-on always-connected world, they still want to sit and chat with others in person—go figure!

Knowledge Management Tools for Expertise Location

By Lauren Trees on May 07, 2013
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As many of you know, APQC held its 18th (!!) Annual Knowledge Management Conference in Houston last week. This is my sixth conference, and it’s always one of my favorite weeks of the year—getting to hear what’s going on in people’s KM programs, what challenges they’re facing, and all the success they’ve achieved.

Got SharePoint? Got Troubles…

By Jim Lee on Apr 23, 2013
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One of the things I like to mention to those trying to make SharePoint work for them is to understand this: A powerful feature of SharePoint is its flexibility; the biggest drawback of SharePoint is its flexibility. So it’s no wonder that so many people have found the ubiquity of SharePoint in their organizations to resemble the map location marked, “Hic sunt dracones.” Actually, depending upon an organization’s resources, SharePoint can be Jekyll or Hyde. Those with skilled developers can make rather elegant SharePoint implementations.

Change Management for Knowledge Management

By Lauren Trees on Apr 10, 2013
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When I talk to our members about their knowledge management challenges, change management is always near the top of the list. It’s one thing to create a KM strategy and select knowledge-sharing and collaboration approaches you want to implement, but it’s another to actually roll out the new processes and get employees to embrace them.

Decentralized Knowledge Management Strategy Offers Success at Grant Thornton

By Lauren Trees on Mar 25, 2013
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APQC loves to look at thriving knowledge management programs and analyze the secrets behind their success. I recently had the pleasure of doing this at audit, tax, and advisory services firm Grant Thornton LLP. Grant Thornton formalized its KM function in 2007 as part of an effort to improve firm-wide access to knowledge and enhance sharing across geographical locations. Despite the global economic downturn that ensued, the organization was able to grow its capabilities quickly and embed knowledge sharing and reuse in key business processes.

Social Media’s Role in Knowledge Management

By Lauren Trees on Mar 11, 2013
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Is your organization using social media to enhance internal knowledge sharing and collaboration? Here at APQC, we’re engaged in new research to understand how firms get value from blogs, wikis, microblogging, social tagging, and other similar tools. If you have a social media success story (or some useful lessons learned), please email me so I can feature you in our upcoming report.

Identifying Experts and Expertise for Knowledge Management

By Lauren Trees on Feb 26, 2013
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Last month, we asked our knowledge management community call audience about the techniques their organizations use to connect employees with experts and tacit knowledge. The results show that most firms rely on at least two expertise location approaches, including communities of practice, discussion forums, collaboration sites, employee profiles, and social networking/microblogging.

Gamification in Knowledge Management

By Lauren Trees on Feb 12, 2013
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APQC is hosting a Gamification in Knowledge Management virtual roundtable later this month. If your organization is using game elements in its KM program (or seriously considering it), email me to find out more about this cool knowledge-sharing opportunity. (It’s complimentary and involves no prep on your part—just a chance to share insights and experiences with peers.) However, if you’re not sure what “gamification” even is, keep reading.

Knowledge Management Maturity, Knowledge Transfer, and SharePoint Top List of 2012 Trends

By Lauren Trees on Jan 31, 2013
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What knowledge management trends did we see develop last year, and what predictions can we make for the future? Yesterday morning, Carla O’Dell and I hosted APQC’s January KM community call to share our thoughts and find out about your top priorities for 2013.

As part of prepping for the call, I did some analysis of the top-downloaded content from 2012. Some of the content is member-only, but starred items are available to everyone.

Top 10 Knowledge Management Articles, Case Studies, and Presentations

Knowledge Management Evaluations in 2013

By Lauren Trees on Jan 14, 2013
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According to the feedback I get, improving how knowledge management initiatives are measured is a popular resolution for 2013. After all, effective tracking and assessment is the best way to show value, prove your business case, and hone your program over time.

If you’re reevaluating your approach, I recommend starting with these simple lessons learned from our resident KM gurus Carla O’Dell and Cindy Hubert: