I read the preliminary results from KMO and this is how they conclude in the
end “The KMO survey reports that 65
percent of active knowledge managers do not hold a qualification related to KM.
Of that 65 percent, only 18 percent claimed to be working towards a KM-related
qualification. And of that 18 percent, 69 percent are working towards a
postgraduate academic qualification, and 17 percent are working towards a KM
accreditation certificate. These findings perhaps indicate continuing
immaturity in the KM field”.
While I am eager to read the complete report which they plan
to release in early 2012, I feel the immaturity of the KM field is not directly
related to ‘KM qualified’ of ‘KM Certified’ professionals. My hypotheses are as
follows:
KM by Choice or
Chance?
The parts of the preliminary results may be true but I think
the bigger problem is that KM practitioners today, in quite some cases, are
into KM not by choice but by chance. As this
aspect has a direct impact on any profession – if you have chosen a field of
interest or forced to choose an area – KM most likely is not where it should
have been today.
Evolutionary &
Voluntary Nature of KM Engagements
In addition, IMHO, the immaturity is also because of 2 other
dynamic factors in which KM is: (1) the evolutionary nature of the KM field (2)
the voluntary nature of KM engagements in most of the organizations. While both
are directly and primarily linked to ‘people’ this field continues to evolve
(& mature) with time at its own pace, as KM practitioners continue to
discover how people (or what makes them) innovate or what makes them share what
they know etc. And it is a proven fact that humans love to share not by force
but when they feel like sharing, when are motivated, when they are passionate
about something and when they have the sense of self-satisfaction to give that anything else in the world.
Lack of Executive
Buy-in
Next comes lack of buy-in from the executives, which is also
linked to maturity of KM. It is important to note that most of the KM
conferences today are still around theories of KM. There is very little talk
about ‘how’ they have applied KM philosophies & ‘what’ made the turn around
– improved productivity, greater quality, shorter learning curve etc. Aren’t
business leaders looking for such outcomes? Why should they adopt KM into their
strategic functions unless they have seen their KM function directly impacting
their bottom-line? If KM community doesn’t show the value who else will? And
how can the value be shown if we continue to talk largely about theories?
As for the caption, it is true that we have come far in
terms of what we know, similarly it
is also true that humans are still discovering and wondering how much they don’t know (about S&T) as they tread deeper. The
more they have explored science, no matter how much qualified they are (docs,
postdocs, noble laureates etc.); multiply by 100s of them, the more humans have
felt their ignorance towards how much is yet to be discovered – so can we call
other fields of study mature despite having qualified
professional in each field of study?