In Reply to Patrick Lambe

It seems I caused a stir with my comments on knowledge management a few days ago. Patrick Lambe, who featured on the second YouTube video in my post, took exception to my position in general and use of ’snake-oil’ to describe his field in particular. Patrick’s response is over at Green Chameleon, and raises a number of issues beyond the scope of my initial concern, but equally valid.

I’m republishing my counter-comments here largely verbatim, with a few links added, so the debate can be taken to as wide an audience as possible.

Still questions to answer

Patrick, let me begin by saying that I very much appreciate you taking the time to respond in detail to my post on your own blog. But before I reply in kind I just want to clarify one small matter – there was no ire to be raised in my post. Not everyone needs an agenda to be critical.

In framing my initial comments on knowledge management under the snake-oil rubric I merely meant to challenge what I see as a poorly defined field, to highlight one important challenge to it, and to say something about photocopier salesmen posing as anything but just that. I notice that you barely touch upon this final point, although I am glad to see that you acknowledge the charlatans on the edges of your field. Given my comments to come, you’ll have to forgive me for continuing to think that they are in the public eye far more than you might imagine.

In any case, therein lies the reasoning that you failed to detect in my post: knowledge management is not a field that shouldn’t have questions asked of it by outsiders.

Interestingly enough, your response passes over the variety of knowledge management definitions Ray Sims mentioned without giving any proof that they are “not as varied as the sheer number” suggests. Why not? How many definitions would you support?

I acknowledge that your field could well be grappling with problems of classification – many are – but failing to recognise a lack of clarity as a significant problem seems to me short sighted.

You claim that ambiguity is significant because it allows you to identify the scope of the problems within organisations, to find the “bigger, more significant and productive patterns, understandings and techniques that we need to evolve.” This is a common defence of complex processes, and not one for which I am without sympathy. But let me ask you this – why do think that organisations, or ‘social bodies’ as you call them, are necessarily dysfunctional?

To put that another way, are complex systems always somehow broken?

There is an entire literature in economics which suggests that many social bodies or systems are self-organising. One such system is the market in which operate most organisations that employ knowledge managers. Something you fail to address is the extent to which these lesser ‘social bodies’ are capable of self-organisation. You make them sound chaotic.

Firms already have one level of functional management. Do they need another level that claims to be correcting ill-defined dysfunction?

The other main point I want to make here is that you seem to take the definition of knowledge and re-make it as you wish. Even though you expend a good deal of effort on explaining what ‘knowledge’ as you see it does, and in outlining its social context, you don’t define what it is.

In presenting a discourse instead of a definition, you also brush aside my comments – via T.D. Wilson (and initially Michael Polanyi) – on knowledge as a tacit, internal process of understanding and information as external communication, without defending your own concept of “social knowledge”, which in any case would be better described as socialised knowledge.

How can an entire field barricade itself behind a definition that no-one else uses? Well, it clearly happens from my point of view, but what is your justification?

As I mentioned initially, I am (and obviously so) an outsider to your field. I have no hidden agenda when approaching this issue – just an interest in clarity where possible, and explanation where not. I did not intend to cast aspersions on how hard you work – I work very hard and for long hours in the largely thankless field of editing, so I appreciate your concern. But reading back over my comments just now, it seems that there are still many questions to be answered.

Afterthoughts

Patrick offered a very well-considered defence of his field, but as my tone should suggest, I’m still not convinced that ambiguity at any level is power. Anyone who would like to comment on this – for, against or otherwise – please do.

We need much more debate on matters of definition and interpretation in this puzzling world.

The Knowledge Management Scam

It’s been a busy week for the information overlords. No, I don’t mean Bill Gates or whoever it is keeping the Internet’s main servers chugging along, although they’ve probably been busy too. Who I actually mean are the snake-oil salesmen of the Cyber Age – those who utter the term ‘knowledge management’ with illogical conviction.

Here in Hong Kong we’ve just had the local Knowledge Management Society’s forum, desperately attempting to ride in the ill-defined wake of Web 2.0. And one of the local newspapers ‘featured’ a thinly disguised advertisement for associated services this week. Not a good start, but let’s broaden our consideration for a while. One question is just begging to be asked: what the heck is knowledge management?

Over the last 20 years we’ve had tortured managerialisms like 360-degree assessment, Six-Sigma (though still with many defenders), business process re-engineering (from the ashes of methods and procedures analysis) and downsizing – that earnest attempt to re-focus business that became a vicious excuse to sack people. Downsizing is still alive and well, with major banks like HSBC excelling at it even though they’re earning record profits, despite claims of hard times after the sub-prime mortgage fiasco. The other methods are faltering, and will eventually fall behind newer fads, one of which is already fading. That’s knowledge management. But it’s not going down without a fight.

So much for the background – what does ‘knowledge management’ actually mean? Ray Sims recently posted an answer in cyberspace. Well, many possible answers really. Fifty-three all told. These aren’t similar, hairsplitting overviews, but “substantially different. There are only five attributes that are seen in 30% or more of the definitions”. At the Information Research blog, Tom Wilson commented that “in spite of all this he still calls ‘knowledge management’ a discipline!” Indeed.

Somewhere buried in this confusion it’s fair enough to claim that knowledge management is about the control and use of ‘knowledge’, broadly defined, in an organisation – be it a business, a government, or even a large club. And as organisations are essentially groups of people doing the same or similar things, this has a social element to it. David Gurteen, a self-described “independent knowledge consultant” puts it this way.

Fair enough, but other practitioners push back the boundaries, claiming that information is now out of control and organisations can’t handle or absorb it properly. But, wait . . . did you notice I skipped from discussing knowledge and its management to information control? Knowledge managers do the same, but they don’t seem to notice the difference.

T.D. Wilson wrote about this sort of oversight five years ago in an issue of the Information Research e-journal. There’s a fairly simple distinction between knowledge and information: knowledge is internal and information is external. In other words, knowledge is the sum total of how we make sense of the world without being aware of it and information is how we broadcast that knowledge. It might seem like a fine distinction, but to claim that knowledge, which is tacit or indefinable, can somehow be managed is just plain silly. Not that knowledge management professionals haven’t seen the lighter side of it, as this performance by Professor Gervaise Germaine, a.k.a Patrick Lambe, attests.

So why do the knowledge management fraternity persist, even though they know the limitations of their calling? Let’s get back to the knowledge management forum that wrapped up in Hong Kong yesterday. Much of the focus was on how knowledge managers could benefit from or bring benefit to online social networking, via MySpace, Facebook and the like, and even blogs. You might think that the use of these new networks is running along fine, thank you very much, without interference from managers. And you’d be correct. Did anyone think ‘self-organising system’?

But managers need something to, well, manage, which brings me back to the sneaky advertorial in the South China Morning Post this week. The main article, republished online by Lexis-Nexis, highlighted the activities of IRM Strategies, which claims on its website to make “intangibles visible”. Defying logic it can promote knowledge management, which it did by participating in the Hong Kong forum. But the article focused on something more logically tangible. It seems that most of what the company does is organise documents, working with other organisations that can’t do so themselves, given volume and other constraints.

Not surprisingly, the print edition of the article appeared in a document management ‘special report’. Other articles on the page profiled executives from Ricoh and Fuji Xerox, peddling ‘solutions’ for ‘multifunction devices’. That’s execuspeak for ‘photocopier upgrades’.

It’s curious that anyone would believe this convoluted, euphemistically delivered idea to be worthy of consideration. But, then again, the six-sigma number crunchers hand out ‘belts’ as though they’ve devised a martial art. There must be a bit of a thrill in that. And Myers-Briggs personality testing combines bastardised Jungian psychology with a hefty fee to identify where staff members should be heading. That seems fairly popular.

It’s a puzzling world.