I have just read an article
Social Media versus Knowledge Management on the HBR Blog Network
where the authors Anthony Bradley and MarMcDonald say the following.
- Knowledge management is what company management tells me I need to know, based on what they think is important.
- Social media is how my peers show me what they think is important, based on their experience and in a way that I can judge for myself.
I rarely post comments against articles but in this case I simply had to reply:
Funny, this is not the KM that I observe.
KM has rarely been "what company management tells me I need to know, based on what they think is important"
and has always been at its best about "how my peers show me what they think is important, based on their experience and in a way that I can judge for myself".
Peer assists, after action reviews, retrospects, open space, knowledge cafes .... the core face to face conversational processes of KM are naturally peer to peer
and people within organisations use social media as KM tools to have electronically mediated conversations, to share and to collaborate!
KM is fundamentally social in its nature.
In the article, there are some excellent points made about the use social media in an organisation but to my mind the comparison with KM is a false dichotomy and pure fiction.
Some other thoughts of mine on KM and social media:
It still surprises me how many people do not understand the nature of KM.
