^The APQC Blog

It's been rodeo time here in Houston, TX and with that comes the enormous carnival that stays open late offering inspired fried foods, bumper cars, and all sorts of games. What does this have to do with organizational maturity and governance, you ask?

Well, the old carnival strength game provides a great visual for talking about where your organization lands on the scale of governance strength and what that might mean for the organization’s maturity.

Bob Buckman has been leading the charge to share knowledge since he was CEO of Buckman Laboratories. When I interviewed him recently for my Big Thinkers, Big Ideas series, I noticed that the reason executives want knowledge sharing to work hasn’t changed much with time: the need for rapid response in the face of changing markets and customer expectations. What has changed is the speed and cadence with which our organizations have to learn and share knowledge.

APQC recently spoke to Jyoti Patel, knowledge management strategist at Boeing, about how Boeing merged two organizations and developed common processes, knowledge management capabilities, and data system architectures while also designing a knowledge management strategy that emphasizes behaviors over tools.

This Sunday is National Read a Roadmap Day in the United States—an unofficial holiday that encourages people to pull out an old-school paper map, plot a route, and go on a little adventure. Applying this idea to a business context, I thought it would be a good moment to share APQC’s Interactive Knowledge Management Framework, which provides a roadmap for anyone looking to start, improve, or sustain a KM effort in their organization.

In this interview APQC talks to Peter Keukelaar, Quality Management Expert, from Royal Philips about the drivers behind its use of the PCF in its business transformation and process improvement efforts in IT.  Peter also discusses Royal Philips’ top-down, bottom-up implementation to drive buy-in for process improvement across the organization and the biggest challenge it faced during implementation.

Game of Thrones, season 5. Who’s excited?

This girl. Cue the Game of Thrones theme song.

APQC recently talked to Adil Ahmed, Director, Information Architecture and Knowledge Systems at the Bristow Group, about the KM program the Bristow Group launched in 2012 to improve team collaboration, expertise location, content management, and employee engagement.

Adil will be leading a breakout session Taking Flight: Evolution of Knowledge Systems at Bristow Group during the 2015 APQC Knowledge Management Conference April 30 —May 1.

Virtually every cocktail conversation with KMers, or anyone with teenagers, eventually leads to the topic of Millennials—their love for all things digital and how their learning styles differ from their parents.  Maybe… but I have a hunch that we are confusing two things: generation and stage of life.  Yes, the Millennial generation and all “digital natives” do have a stronger comfort level and preference for asking and trusting their search engine and their social network for advice than (maybe) do Baby Boomers.  Don’t confuse that with being young and being more interested

APQC has just released a report containing new research on financial planning and analysis (FP&A). Data shows that while some organizations have stellar FP&A processes, we should expect to see CFOs building more effective FP&A capabilities that include advanced analytical techniques; new approaches to target setting; and fresh looks at FP&A design, tools, and talent.

In an earlier blog post, Ed Perkins, the developer of the Certified Enterprise Risk Manager® - Cyber Security™ certificate, described the current cybersecurity landscape for industry and provided an overview of the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework.