I take this blog entry to retrieve the answers to three questions I posed Edgar Cateriano to participate as an expert in one article on Knowledge Management in the journal that published Cladea. The participation was very low end, and I think are worth sharing the thoughts that arose from these questions:
What achievements would like denote, are most relevant to your professional work, and which has been used and / or promoted Knowledge Management?
My professional work has always been closely tied to the areas of Database and Business Intelligence, and is in this last area where I could further promote knowledge management. Business Intelligence projects already includes the consolidation and organization of information, and provide operational tools that allow users 'browsing information' under different perspectives and, ultimately, analytical tasks, coupled with the experience , can finally obtain knowledge.
Some projects are also used data mining tools, which go a step further, and try to extract the knowledge hidden in data in an automated way, something that sounds good, but in practice requires a great job modeling prior performed by an expert in this field and very knowledgeable of the business objectives.
Note also that the draft Business Intelligence, at least in larger, typically also include an initial stage of creation or unification of a Dictionary of Business, which also tends to be implicit in many knowledge management projects.
Anyway, where I had more opportunity to promote this discipline is through the creation of Dataprix, a portal aimed precisely that, to Manage Knowledge on technologies to help end gaining knowledge of our data. It sounds a bit recursive, but is it the mission of the portal is closely related to the content.
Within the categories that can be subdivided in Knowledge Management, Dataprix fits in Content Management, Experience Management, and also in the Collaborative Portal.
The aim is that users can share their knowledge both personal and corporate level, and to become a Knowledge Center and Meeting Point for professionals interested in getting your data further, and there is still a long way go, but one of the objectives have been fulfilled.
What are the main barriers you have encountered, and have been able to compromise your objectives for knowledge management?
From my point of view, this discipline is more important is the attitude of people, and the main barrier to the lack of motivation to share. Knowledge is personal and, although we can get to gain knowledge of data, people are even more knowledge we accumulate, and share it only if we are sufficiently motivated. By this I mean we can not blame the failure of a Knowledge Management project to people who do not want to share it. We all have our interests and our occupations, and before starting the project need to ask how we can get users to become involved and contribute their knowledge willingly.
In a corporate environment it has the advantage of employee involvement with the company, to define guidelines regarding the use of tools, and the proximity of the user.
In an open Web environment is much more complicated. First you must get the user reaches the site, and then participate. The first point is relatively easy if you have good content, search engines help a lot, and own participation in other sites and social networks as well. The involvement of third parties that provide further knowledge is another story. My experience tells me that it is important that the person perceives that take time to share a resource, an opinion or content going to report some type of benefit, no one has the feeling of 'wasting time'.
For Dataprix all content is open, and I try to be well organized and that participation should be simple, in the forum, blogs and other sections you can comment and get answers without registration. The registered user can also interact with other users and provide more specialized content with his signature, thereby obtaining a visibility that will serve to enhance their professional profile or, in the case of companies, their corporate image and its presentation to potential customers.
Sounds easy, but it costs a lot, and in my case I can say that to get started to participate in the portal the first users who did not know me has required several years of development work and overall content creation that were only visited for consultation is in part the philosophy of first plant to pick up later.
What do you think is the perspective of knowledge management for the future of organizations, in particular, Latin America and Spain?
In this respect I am quite optimistic, and I believe that knowledge management in organizations is changing from a fringe activity to begin being a part of the strategic plans of many companies.
I think the mindset is changing from a philosophy of collecting information as an element of power which, of course, was not shared with anyone, to a more collaborative in which it is assumed that organize information in a common repository of collective knowledge generated from individual contributions allows companies to go much further, collecting the experience of its employees, share business information and minimize excessive dependence of certain people. No longer the triumph of teamwork rather than individualism.
I also think that this change comes from the hand of the evolution of the web, providing an environment that anyone can access regardless of hardware or software you use, and that business has shown how far the collective knowledge with projects like Wikipedia, and the strength of collaborative environments and Web 2.0 social networks like Facebook, Linkedin or Twitter.
We also have realized that things happen as curious as it is often easier to use rather than the proper tools to Internet search engines or portals, networks and external blogs for information that should be or even already contained in the company's internal systems, but not easy or immediate access to it and use it. And talk about external data sources and there is no point of comparison, the Internet search engine almost always wins.
In my opinion this easy comparison favors the appearance by the direction of the companions of requests for tools and initiatives to enhance corporate knowledge management.
On the situation in Latin America and Spain say that, although all advance in knowledge management, I think the ways are different. My feeling about the attitude, based mostly on experience with my website, is that in Latin America there is a greater willingness to participate, but it is also true that participation in Spanish is usually more elaborate. I really get the feeling that the Spanish user is generally more shameful and thoughtful, and Latin America's most brash and direct, but left open this discussion because I think it might be a good subject for study and debate.
