What is “knowledge flow management?”

I’m a huge fan of the Kindle app on the iPad and iPhone. I love the highlighting and notes features. The killer feature for me though, is “Your Highlights,” a page on Amazon.com that aggregates all of your highlights and notes into one place, making it easy for you to tweet, e-mail, and well, blog them.

You’ll find a selection of my highlights from Mastering Organizational Knowledge Flow: How to Make Knowledge Sharing Work below.  Frank Lesitner, the author, is the Chief Knowledge Officer at SAS, one of the most interesting, successful, privately-held software companies in the world.

I really like what Frank Leistner has to say about knowledge management and flow. We’ve starting using his river metaphor with clients and have found it to be useful. You’ll get a taste for the book below, but I’d recommend reading the whole thing.

– Chris

“After a long time of playing with alternative terms, the one that actually fits best with my understanding is knowledge flow management, because the thing that you can manage is the flow of knowledge.”

“When I started playing with the notion of knowledge flow, the analogy of knowledge flowing through the organization like a river flowing through its bed seemed to fit for a number of reasons. Flows find their own way, but they can also be guided and stopped by barriers. You can have some individuals steering the direction of the flow on a daily level and others providing the main bed of the river by setting strategic goals for the longer run.”

“Products and solutions being offered by “KM vendors” can provide considerable value. But they are not managing knowledge. They are enablers to the knowledge flow. The information they process, store, and provide can be used to create new knowledge. Information stored in systems and repositories can be seen as representing “pointers to the one who knows.” If those using them do understand it in that way, they will be much more likely to actually go beyond the system and see the value of the knowledge that is behind that information, connected to the human who contributed the ‘pointer.’”

“I think it is very important to draw the line between knowledge and information. Knowledge is connected to all the prior experiences and exists only in the context of the mind. It cannot be managed. What can be managed are ways to enable the flow of that knowledge to others. What can be passed is information (data in context), not knowledge.”

– All quotes courtesy of Frank Leistner, Mastering Organizational Knowledge Flow: How to Make Knowledge Sharing Work