What's the Environment for the Knowledge Culture?

The concepts relating to building and when built, to sustaining the corporate knowledge culture continue to intrigue.

Today I'm getting ready to start a new course in the subject - connecting the knowledge culture with leadership and the management of knowledge services - and as always, I'm curious about what drives us as we think about this critical subject.

[If anyone wants to sign up and start a little late, the course, which begins at 3:00 PM ET, is Click U's The Knowledge Culture: Leadership and Knowledge Services. The lectures - all online - are recorded and available for re-play if you don't participate in real time.]

My focus these days (in class and out) is on trying to figure out where the "push" comes from.

Knowledge is like the flag and mom and apple pie. No one is going to say that knowledge is a bad thing (well, except for Alexander Pope's comment about a little of it being dangerous, and he actually uses "learning" rather than "knowledge"). But to get people to actually give attention to how they collect, retain, use, and preserve knowledge assets is a challenge.

I've written about the knowledge culture (both in the last two chapters and the Epilogue of SLA's Centennial History and in the SMR Management Action Plan on Building the Knowledge Culture that Dale Stanley and I wrote) and I have some ideas, but I think other people have ideas, too. And probably different ideas. What are they?

Does the drive come from management? Don't think so. A knowledge culture cannot be imposed, and while management can enable a move toward a knowledge culture by supporting and recognizing successful change that comes about from good KD/KS practices, doesn't the true success of the knowledge culture come from all the other organizational stakeholders?

And if that's the case, how do people desire and commit to good KD/KS practices? It's not just professional development, training, and collegial conversation, is it? What makes the knowledge culture happen?