This is the 65th article in the Profiles in Knowledge series featuring thought leaders in knowledge management. Kimiz Dalkir is an Associate Professor and Director of the School of Information Studies at McGill University with a Ph.D. in Educational Technology, and an MBA and B.Sc. in Human Genetics. She wrote Knowledge Management in Theory and Practice (MIT Press, 3rd edition published 2017), which has had an international impact on KM education and on KM practice. She has also published Intelligent Learner Modeling in Real-Time (LAP, 2014), co-edited (with S. McIntyre, P. Paul and C. Kitimbo) Utilizing Evidence-Based Lessons Learned for…

In this first post of a two-part series, I will explain curation as it relates to knowledge management, and describe what content to curate.

What is Curation

To curate is to collect, select, assemble, and present information or multimedia content such as photos, videos, or music for other people to use or enjoy, using professional, expert, or personal knowledge and passion. Knowledge managers need to curate a wide variety of content to make the most important and useful information easy to find and retrieve. It’s not enough to just collect content and make it available in a large repository. Selecting and highlighting the…

My previous post was about why people don’t share their knowledge. This post is about the benefits of sharing knowledge. Knowledge sharing provides numerous benefits to both individuals and organizations.

Personal benefits —Sharing your knowledge improves your personal effectiveness, skills, and well-being. Sharing what you know:

1. Helps you learn: by doing research, synthesizing multiple viewpoints, and crystallizing ideas
2. Improves your personal brand by showcasing your expertise
3. Creates demand for your expertise: increases opportunities for sales, revenue, appearances, publications, etc.
4. Encourages people to request that you apply the information you shared; knowledge is information in action, and this is what people…

To change an organization’s culture from one of knowledge hoarding to one of knowledge sharing, it’s important to understand why people may not be sharing their knowledge with one another.

In my career as a knowledge manager, I identified 16 common reasons why people don’t share what they know. Here they are, along with recommended solutions for each one.

1. They don’t have time. They think they have no time for knowledge sharing.

Solution: Embed knowledge-sharing into the basic work and processes of your organization so that it is not viewed as a separate task which can be avoided.

2…

Implementing knowledge management can be challenging. The previous post provided the first eight challenges. In this second post of a two-part series, I describe the remaining seven, with possible solutions for each.

9. Connecting people to each other so they can help each other at the time of need.

• Challenges: KM programs focus on getting people to submit forms, contribute documents, or update skills profiles. This proves difficult to accomplish.
• Solutions: Dave Snowden wrote, “If you ask someone, or a body for specific knowledge in the context of a real need it will never be refused. If you ask them…

Implementing knowledge management can be challenging. In this first post of a two-part series, I describe eight challenges with possible solutions for each.

1. Getting senior leaders to provide funding, demonstrate support, and lead by example.

• Challenges: Leaders give lip service to KM. For example, they may advocate usage of an enterprise social network, but then continue sending email. They say, “You should fill in your own profile,” but they have someone else fill in theirs. Instead using a KM tool, they delegate it to someone else. …

KM Hot Topics

1. Digital workplace — new platforms to help people work more effectively
2. Digital transformation — the change management required to get people to adopt digital workplace tools and use them routinely
3. Working Out Loud (WOL) — a growing movement that encourages employees to narrate their work and broadcast what they’re doing so others can interact, respond, learn, and apply that knowledge to their own work
4. Community management — an emerging formal discipline where community managers are formally trained, developed, and assigned to full-time roles to oversee both internal communities of practice and external brand and marketing-oriented communities
5. Cognitive computing and artificial…

This is the 64th article in the Profiles in Knowledge series featuring thought leaders in knowledge management. 25 years ago I started my first full-time job as a knowledge manager, and 15 years ago I started blogging. It’s a good time to feature Ikujiro Nonaka, one of the fathers of KM, and four of his co-authors of important knowledge management books: Hirotaka Takeuchi, Kazuo Ichijo, Toshihiro Nishiguchi, and Noboru Konno.

1. Ikujiro Nonaka