I have been approached many times to explain the concept of “Knowledge Management” in the course of my work as a trainer and consultant. As a trainer, I am inclined to just define it as indicated in the literature but in all honesty, I do not believe that knowledge, which is a fluid mix of experience, insights, values, beliefs and contextualized information, can be managed. Hence the term knowledge management is a misnomer, to begin with.

In reality, at a very practical level, “knowledge management” is really an attempt to acquire, organize and apply cumulative knowledge, either individually, as a team or an organization as a whole to achieve the desired purpose. Once that purpose is achieved, more knowledge is acquired, organized and applied to achieve a higher purpose. Diagrammatically, this may be shown as indicated below

 
For example, a start-up company may set a goal of producing one thousand products per month initially as its purpose. It acquires and organizes knowledge on how to produce these products and applies this knowledge in terms of achieving the target set. Once that purpose is achieved, it sets a new purpose of increasing the sales of products produced and hence acquires and organizes knowledge around how to apply knowledge acquired on customer requirements to meet the sales target.

Almost all companies do this all the time. They may not call it “knowledge management” but they are managing their knowledge base as this a fundamental requirement to remain and excel in business. So why all the fuss now about “knowledge management?”

The reason is the level of knowledge management maturity that exists does not match the degree of increasing volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity that has been encroaching into the business environment. With the explosive technological breakthroughs aided by extremely high connectivity and unbelievable availability of information, we live in a different world. A world that thrives on chaos and uncertainty, rewards increasing complexity and encourages ambiguity.

There are three levels of maturity of knowledge management. The first level is called theoretical knowledge management, the second is called practical knowledge management and the third is purposeful knowledge management. Organizations have to develop an increasing level of knowledge management maturity in order to survive in an increasingly complex and uncertain business environment.