THE END IS NEAR

Put a fork in me, I'm done! It's been a great journey but I have to admit that I'm looking forward to getting more then two hours of sleep each night. Between taking my final three courses, raising a three year old boy and a four year old girl, and getting abused at work, I have to say this is one hell of a way to exit my graduate journey. My KM proposal is submitted and I have just answered the Elevator Questions.


Elevator Questions

1. "I see from your transcripts that you took a course in KM. What is KM?"
· Knowledge Management is the process in which an organization can identify, capture, and disseminate information or knowledge in order to gain a competitive advantage.

2. "Tell me how you would apply KM in my organization."
· Knowledge Management can be used to close the gaps between IT and the business.

3. "What KM technologies would you recommend here?"
· Knowledge Management consists of many toolsets and methodologies that can help your organization gain a competitive advantage. To start off I would consider a good portal solution that contains out of the box solutions such as collaboration and search tools. By building a taxonomy that works for your organization you can shorten the communication gap between your technical groups and your business teams.

4. "KM sounds great, but how do I justify KM here?"
· Every organization is unique in the fact that they all have their unique problems and issues. Where KM can be justified is in how it will reduce the organizations knowledge gaps. Performance improvements will come about by use of lessons learned and procedural documents that are now more easily available to the organizations employees.

5. "KM sounds great, but what KM metrics do you recommend?"
· Metrics I recommend for a Knowledge Management solution are ease of use and user acceptance. You don’t want to implement a complicated toolset that will never be used by anybody in your organization.

6. "Tell me the main barriers to adopting KM I can anticipate. How would you overcome them?"
· You will always run into the users that don’t accept change very well. Focus on the early adopters and the rest will eventually follow.

7. "Summarize for me what you learned in that KM class."
· I learned that KM is a lot more than just a portal. It is more than just a collaborative tool set. It is a combination of technology and methodology that when put together correctly for your specific organization, can close the knowledge gaps and improve collaboration and understanding among the different units within the organization.