KM is essentially about getting the right knowledge to the right people in the right place at the right time.
Unfortunately, organizations frequently launch KM initiatives because 'if we build it, they will come.' Successful initiatives, however, embed knowledge-sharing directly into their processes and culture; they do not rely simply on repositories of information. One of the best KM success stories took place at British Petroleum where critical technical knowledge was quickly accessed by remote teams to rapidly resolve costly problems. BP invested heavily in changing their processes, people's behavior and technologies to ensure that the right knowledge could get to these teams in remote locations when they needed it. Without any of these elements, they would not have achieved the same tremendous performance and cost improvements.
In education, KM addresses the same challenge of getting the right knowledge to the right people in the right place at the right time. However, the rewards of success are far more compelling. Imagine how many children would be positively impacted by a new teacher receiving the critical knowledge to help him overcome a specific classroom problem. Consider how many kids would benefit from a school or district better managing its finances, so its administrators and educators can focus less on dollars and jobs and more on the quality of instruction. The responsibility of KM practitioners in education is not about simply building repositories of best practices, but to work with educators and schools to identify where and when they need critical knowledge and how best to get that knowledge to them in the easiest, fastest, and probably cheapest way possible.
Comments