Knowledge Matters

Understanding knowledge relationships

knowledge management

Knowledge management is a disciplined, deliberate, purposeful, and conscious method to manufacture knowledge from data, information and experience.

Discipline and Knowledge Management

Fri, 15/01/2010 - 13:59

disciplineI think that a missing component in the corporate literature on knowledge management, and for that matter the management literature, is discipline. It seems that as a society we are afraid of discipline because it conjures up images of corporal punishment. Yet I would say to you that ‘discipline is not a dirty word’! Indeed, in 1918 one of Australia’s most famous generals and citizens – Lieutenant General Sir John Monash - captured the meaning of discipline very well. He said:


“Discipline is, after all, only a means to an end, and that end is the power to secure coordinated action among a large number of individuals for the achievement of a definite purpose”.


A subtle tweak provides a pretty good working description of the intent of knowledge management –


“Knowledge management is, after all, only a means to an end, and that end is the means to secure coordinated action among a large number of individuals for the achievement of a definite purpose”.

88 Years of Bureaucratic Inertia!

Wed, 13/01/2010 - 12:00

To do!On the 1st of March 1971 a significant government department report, which took two years to develop, was submitted to the Minister of the day. I've just found a copy and read it from cover to cover. By today's standards it probably wouldn't pass muster - its only 74 pages and it just doesn't look pretty. It is devoid of colour, pictures, and diagrams, but it does have tables and numbers, and more importantly the principle recommendation is in the first paragraph clearly flagged in bold type. The other recommendations are easy to find and follow.


The report is remarkable for its clarity and succinctness. Its also remarkable for its predictions and its recommendations, some of which were enacted just last year, but quite independently of this report! I doubt today's policy and decision makers even know of its existence, yet it could easily have been rebadged and resubmitted. Even more astounding is the report references recommendations made and approved in 1922, but never enacted. Similar recommendations were again made in 1955 and were not enacted. And of course the 1971 report was referenced in 1997, and you guessed it the recommendations were not enacted (I've also found and read the 1997 report). A new report was commissioned in January 2008 and its recommendations approved in July 2008. The recommendations in the 2008 report could have been plagiarised from the 1971 report, and presumably the 1955 and 1922 reports, yet they were arrived at independently and in ignorance of the existence of the other reports.

The Essential Components of a Knowledge Management System

Tue, 12/01/2010 - 12:00

system planYesterday I was asked – “What are the essential components of a knowledge management system?” Now this is no easy question because it is laden with assumptions, most often that we can actually build a knowledge management system from the ground up! The assumption being that a knowledge management system is a hard system, which it isn’t. Here’s my answer.


A knowledge management system is a soft system of systems with open boundaries. It is made up of components from the mnemonic PISHI (1), which stands for people, infrastructure, software, hardware, and information. This classification represents real things in the real world, and each of these things is linked together by processes so that an output is realised to meet an objective – in this case knowledge. In the modern business world, all components are essential.

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