I started writing a Radical KM blog on Simpler Media’s ReWorked website in the spring of 2023. You can find my articles here: https://www.reworked.co/author/stephanie-barnes/.
It’s an occasional series. I hope you enjoy them.
The realisation of potential
I started writing a Radical KM blog on Simpler Media’s ReWorked website in the spring of 2023. You can find my articles here: https://www.reworked.co/author/stephanie-barnes/.
It’s an occasional series. I hope you enjoy them.
This is all just an fyi…
I’ve started a regular column on KM/Radical KM at ReWorked, my first article is here https://www.reworked.co/knowledge-findability/its-time-for-radical-knowledge-management/
Also, the GfWM published another article of mine on Radical KM, it can be accessed here https://www.gfwm.de/dossier-kmessentials-radicalkm/
And I’ve been on a couple of podcasts in the last few months:
Thriving on Overload: https://thrivingonoverload.com/stephanie-barnes-radical-knowledge-management-power-art-tapping-intuition-building-curiosity-ep49/
WB-40 Podcast https://wb40podcast.com/2023/04/03/259-radical-km/
I have started writing a regular column on ReWorked, my goal is to write 10 columns per year.
The first one was posted on April 5th and you can find it here: https://www.reworked.co/knowledge-findability/its-time-for-radical-knowledge-management/.
This first one is an introduction to Radical KM, and I will be sharing my thoughts on a variety of Radical Knowledge Management and Knowledge Management related topics over the coming months.
I hope you’ll subscribe and follow along on the journey.
With so much talk of AI and how it’s going to change KM, some articles even speculate it’s the end of KM or at least the end of knowledge/help desks, I thought I would take an opposing view, well, not so much opposing, as completely different.
Knowledge is human, it has always been human, and will always be human. Computers don’t think, or create new knowledge, they copy and replicate what’s been done before, what they’re programmed to do. They can store explicit knowledge, the stuff that can be written down or somehow captured, but they don’t deal with tacit knowledge at all, and most knowledge is tacit.
Radical KM is about helping the humans, and all of their knowledge, be better.
Radical KM is about relearning our creativity, about being playful, and helping us learn and adapt to an ever changing world. It’s about tapping into our stories and emotions and building trust so that we can share them and make better organisations, purpose driven organisations.
It’s about helping the humans be better humans before it’s too late.
Radical KM: why your organisation needs it now
Meet Sam, Chief Knowledge Officer at Widget Inc. she’s been working in knowledge management for more than 20 years, she’s passionate and knowledgeable and knows what it takes to be successful with knowledge management
Sam knows that there are lots of reasons to do knowledge management, but she also knows that her CEO’s favourite reasons are that knowledge is the only asset that grows when it’s shared—if she shares how to make a cake with you, you both now know how to make a cake, she doesn’t lose the ability to make a cake because she’s shared it with you. Tangible assets, like buildings and roads decrease in value because of wear and tear and will need to be maintained or replaced.
The second reason, and her CEOs favourite, is that knowledge management has been shown to have a positive impact on the stock market performance of an organisation. That is, the better an organisation does with its knowledge management activities, the better it performs on the stock markets.
With all the changes that have taken place in the last 20 years, plus the confusion and complexity introduced with the pandemic, Sam has been wondering how to adapt her KM activities to meet the needs of these changes. She hears about VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity) everywhere, and certainly her organisation is not immune to VUCA.
Sam also hears a lot about how people need to be creative, and she’s noticed that creativity underlies a lot of other in-demand skills. She knows that creativity is what differentiates humans from technology and that creative practices and attitudes support both creative and sustainable leadership behaviours.
Sam knows that creativity is something that’s been educated out of us (certainly hers was in her quest to get good marks and a good job) and yet our organisations are in dire need of it because it fuels innovation and growth. On a personal level creativity also improves resiliency and helps cope with stress, something everyone could use in the current state of the world.
Knowing all these things has resulting in Sam’s being stuck, she doesn’t know what to do; she’s trying to figure out how to support the organisation through the current upheaval caused by the pandemic and other global events but there is so much noise, and so many people trying to “get back” to how things are, but Sam knows there’s no going back, that the organisation and the world need to adapt and move forward to a new normal.
One day, Sam was scrolling through the knowledge management tag on LinkedIn and came across a post about something called Radical KM and got very curious; she read a couple of articles and watched a recording of a webinar.
She discovered that Radical knowledge management takes people, process, and technology as they have always existed in knowledge management and adds creativity, and that creativity is a multiplier. It can be included anywhere there are knowledge management activities that involve people, which is most of them.
She learned about an organisation that had implemented the ideas encapsulated in Radical KM. The organisation had improved collaboration and trust, and they had been able to solve what had seemed to be intractable problems.
Radical KM focuses on the people component of KM. The creative activities it advocates for can help build relationships and help people get out of their boxes and look at a situation differently, coming up with new connections and ideas.
The MBA in her thought that adding creativity seemed counterintuitive. After all, western society been focused on being analytical and rational for hundreds (if not thousands of years). However, being analytical and logical is what got the world into the unsustainable situation that we find ourselves in. So, while it may not be analytical and logical and it may seem counterintuitive, it also seemed to be exactly what is needed.
Sam recognised that we need space for creativity in our organisations and our lives if we are going to be balanced and sustainable. Knowledge and continuous learning needs space for reflection so that people can make different connections and come up with new, innovative ways of resolving this the unsustainable situation.
Sam recalled Einstein’s words about ‘the thinking that got us into this situation is not the thinking that will get us out’ and realised that Radical KM and creativity might just be the shift in thinking that will get us out of this mess.
Sam decided to start piloting Radical KM and gather data and success stories so that when she spoke with the CEO, at the next quarterly meeting she would have the beginnings of a great story to tell.
Be like Sam, start your Radical KM pilot now.
(A story about Radical KM)
Meet Sam, Chief Knowledge Officer at Widget Inc. she’s been working in knowledge management for more than 20 years, she’s passionate and knowledgeable and knows what it takes to be successful with knowledge management
Sam knows that there are lots of reasons to do knowledge management, but she also knows that her CEO’s favourite reasons are that knowledge is the only asset that grows when it’s shared—if she shares how to make a cake with you, you both now know how to make a cake, she doesn’t lose the ability to make a cake because she’s shared it with you. Tangible assets, like buildings and roads decrease in value because of wear and tear and will need to be maintained or replaced.
The second reason, and her CEOs favourite, is that knowledge management has been shown to have a positive impact on the stock market performance of an organisation. That is, the better an organisation does with its knowledge management activities, the better it performs on the stock markets.
With all the changes that have taken place in the last 20 years, plus the confusion and complexity introduced with the pandemic, Sam has been wondering how to adapt her KM activities to meet the needs of these changes. She hears about VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity) everywhere, and certainly her organisation is not immune to VUCA.
Sam also hears a lot about how people need to be creative, and she’s noticed that creativity underlies a lot of other in-demand skills. She knows that creativity is what differentiates humans from technology and that creative practices and attitudes support both creative and sustainable leadership behaviours.
Sam knows that creativity is something that’s been educated out of us (certainly hers was in her quest to get good marks and a good job) and yet our organisations are in dire need of it because it fuels innovation and growth. On a personal level creativity also improves resiliency and helps cope with stress, something everyone could use in the current state of the world.
Knowing all these things has resulting in Sam’s being stuck, she doesn’t know what to do; she’s trying to figure out how to support the organisation through the current upheaval caused by the pandemic and other global events but there is so much noise, and so many people trying to “get back” to how things are, but Sam knows there’s no going back, that the organisation and the world need to adapt and move forward to a new normal.
One day, Sam was scrolling through the knowledge management tag on LinkedIn and came across a post about something called Radical KM and got very curious; she read a couple of articles and watched a recording of a webinar.
She discovered that Radical knowledge management takes people, process, and technology as they have always existed in knowledge management and adds creativity, and that creativity is a multiplier. It can be included anywhere there are knowledge management activities that involve people, which is most of them.
She learned about an organisation that had implemented the ideas encapsulated in Radical KM. The organisation had improved collaboration and trust, and they had been able to solve what had seemed to be intractable problems.
Radical KM focuses on the people component of KM. The creative activities it advocates for can help build relationships and help people get out of their boxes and look at a situation differently, coming up with new connections and ideas.
The MBA in her thought that adding creativity seemed counterintuitive. After all, western society been focused on being analytical and rational for hundreds (if not thousands of years). However, being analytical and logical is what got the world into the unsustainable situation that we find ourselves in. So, while it may not be analytical and logical and it may seem counterintuitive, it also seemed to be exactly what is needed.
Sam recognised that we need space for creativity in our organisations and our lives if we are going to be balanced and sustainable. Knowledge and continuous learning needs space for reflection so that people can make different connections and come up with new, innovative ways of resolving this the unsustainable situation.
Sam recalled Einstein’s words about ‘the thinking that got us into this situation is not the thinking that will get us out’ and realised that Radical KM and creativity might just be the shift in thinking that will get us out of this mess.
Sam decided to start piloting Radical KM and gather data and success stories so that when she spoke with the CEO, at the next quarterly meeting she would have the beginnings of a great story to tell.
Be like Sam, start your Radical KM pilot now.
On April 24th (2022) I had my third paper on Radical KM published.
The paper is called, “How radical KM is knowledge management: Referencing ISO knowledge management systems—requirements standard 30401” and you can find it here: https://doi.org/10.1177/02663821221097875
The abstract for the paper is:
Creativity has an important role to play in knowledge management in the 21st century, and helping organisations and people cope with the VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) world we live in, Radical Knowledge Management (Radical KM) meets that need. This article uses the ISO Knowledge Management Systems—Requirements Standard 30401 (2018) as a framework for explaining how Radical KM and creativity are already a part of knowledge management, but has been unacknowledged until now. Additionally, the paper provides a process for determining when, in a KM process or activity, creativity can be applied and provides factors used in determining what the creative intervention looks like.
It’s behind a paywall, so if you’d like a copy feel free to get in touch and I will send you the PDF.
My second paper on Radical KM was published on February 27, 2022. It talks in more detail about how to implement Radical KM and the connection to the sustainability mindset principles.
Abstract:
This paper introduces the concept of Radical Knowledge Management (Radical KM) and explains why taking this approach to knowledge within our organisations is necessary. Radical Knowledge Management helps us adapt to constant change and the chaos of the world we live and work in by making us as individuals and our organisations more sustainable. The paper also outlines a case study of an organisation that implemented these ideas and provides an approach for how an organisation can implement it for themselves.
You can find it here: https://doi.org/10.1177%2F02663821221075535, and if you don’t have access because it’s behind a paywall, feel free to reach out to me and I will send you a copy.
APQC’s knowledge management podcast featured Stephanie Barnes talking about the future of knowledge management, and it’s radical!
Check out the podcast here: https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-5ex4h-11134a5
First, a bit of context. I have spent the summer (July and August 2021) listening to audiobooks and reading a few that weren’t available as audiobooks. Adding to my thinking on Radical KM and filling in some gaps that I have recognised in talking to people over the last year, since I came up with the name. I’ll put a book list at the bottom of this blog post.
The bits and pieces have been interesting and provided new insights and “ah-ha” moments, but I have struggled to make sense of how they fit together, even though it was clear to me on an intuitive basis that they did. Then this morning, upon waking, I had the insight I had been waiting for.
What Radical KM is, is a model for an integrated whole.
Western thought and philosophy divided things up, separated mind and body, the analytical and creative, science and the arts. It was efficient and effective, it was rational to do it that way. Emotions, and intuition didn’t get “in the way”, we could focus on the really concrete things, the things we had data and logic to support. It separated us from nature and has lead to the environmental and climate catastrophe that we are now facing.
In separating these activities and putting them in their own box, we have lost a lot of behaviours:
Sustainable mindset
Systems Thinking
Relationship building
These are all behaviours that ideas and models like Agile, Design Thinking, “The New Work”, bringing your whole self to work, and authenticity, seek to re-ignite and bring into the workplace. They are what gets lost when we separate whole into the parts, they are the magic that happen in the space in-between the boxes.
As the world become more VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) these are the skills we need more of.
These are the skills we learn by tapping into our inner artist, whether that art is painting, or cooking, drawing or gardening, theatre or jogging. Art helps improve our attitudes around being curious, what we are passionate about, our confidence, and our resilience. By having an artistic practice our abilities to perceive, reflect, play, and perform are all improved.
Radical KM is about tapping into our inner artist to re-ignite these skills and abilities that have been ignored in favour of focusing on the concrete and rational. It’s about making us, our organisations, and ultimately our Western society whole again. It’s about making an integrated whole.