We've all heard it - "I can't find...," and when you ask how they looked for it the answers are mindboggling. Your company has done everything right (proper information architecture, data governance plans, metadata, and taxonomy), and yet employees still cannot find the information they are looking for at work. Information literacy is becoming more and more important in the corporate setting. Understanding how, and where, employees are looking for information is important to creating proper training and documentation to guide and enhance findability. 

A typical KM team is responsible for managing a portfolio of common tools and approaches such as communities of practice or networks, search and discovery, virtual collaboration, expertise location, knowledge transfer, and lessons learned. How they achieve this can vary widely depending on where and how KM teams are aligned in the business and the roles, both formal and informal, that are in place.

In recent years, with the shifts to remote and hybrid work coupled with the latest trends in AI, more business leaders are likely to see the connection between KM and overall success for their organization. The success of KM teams and their ability to build a knowledge-driven culture to support business priorities rests on the experiences, skillsets and capabilities of both the core KM team members, the leaders sponsoring KM and the business roles supporting KM. In this highly interactive session, participants will gain insight into current best practices, leverage their own past lessons and delve into the future of KM roles together.

The work of Knowledge Managers requires merging the knowledge from various fields and different groups of people and turning this knowledge into action that leads to better results for the organization.  The Knowledge Manager is not the person that holds the knowledge nor the one to execute the strategic plan.  Their role is one of conversation and process facilitator.  In this role, they rely on operational division managers to share their points of view and guide the group towards the elaboration of a strategic plan.  The implementation of the strategic plan lies within the responsibility of the operational divisions managers and is outside the hierarchical responsibility or hierarchical influence of the Knowledge Managers.  

The ability of the Knowledge Managers to facilitate conversation is key to creating a space where knowledge is freely shared.  Commitment to action depends on the degree to which participants feel involved.  Success in the implementation of the strategic plan, however, requires members of the group to continuously be able to resolve disagreements that may surface as the plan implementation moves forward.   Here’s an article by Katrina Pugh and Nara Altmann that describes the conversation tool in depth: https://osf.io/preprints/osf/mn9ct 

As we enter the future state of KM, you’ll learn how to use critical change management skills to help you transform your KM programs. 

Our organization has been experiencing radical change. Looking to have a conversation around utilizing change management to navigate transformation. Topics discussed would be around leveraging our knowledge management resources to aid in transformational change and how we leverage change management to ensure a successful transformation. 

We will begin with a short overview of the Unified Theory of Knowledge Management.The basis for the Unified Theory of KM, the lines of investigation used to discover it, and its base in education will be mentioned as examples of its source. An example of Global vs. KM-centric will be displayed as the basis for the theory’s verification as differentiating KM from its supporting disciplines.

Participants will identify types of knowledge. The end result will be examples by Nichols, Edgar, Philosophy, Bratianu, Jakubik, Aristotle, and one based on Bloom.

We will conduct the IIKI adaptation with adding outcomes and participants will apply the theory to assess some KM solutions.