Today the current vernacular is Content Curation. Back in the day – and not that long ago – it was Knowledge Management Systems – or KMS. What happened to KMS?

Probably the same thing as TQM – Total Quality Management – and some would say with Six Sigma recently – and now Lean most recently.

Some might say it was overkill in their use. Some might say it was inappropriate applications that just didn’t generate the results promised – and so it/they fell out of favor – having been dis-proven. Failing in the field. Failing the acid test.

Click on the above graphic to get the 2001 presentation – delivered at ISPI – back in the day.

KMS and Robustness

I’ve long thought that KMS was falling out of favor with many – due to it’s bulkiness and irrelevance. It became cumbersome. Loaded to the gills with Content – that might easily go out of date. Would most likely not include up-to-date content. Was too hard to search.

It probably wasn’t resourced by management for upkeep – management who saw this as another silver bullet in their arsenal that once fired – wouldn’t get reloaded/restocked.

To me they most often started out by not organizing themselves to specifically support/enable their own Processes – Processes sitting in some architecture – that was subject to evolve at the detailed/micro level – as well as at the macro level.

They didn’t organize and build the systems for storage and maintenance that would be robust to those anticipated/anticipate-able changes.

For me – a KMS captures the curated Data/Information required to enable the Processes – see the above graphic. It itself is a Tool/Equipment – again, see the above graphic.

Here is another graphic – can you place the location of the master warehouse of a KMS – in this graphic?

Some of you may be tired of hearing me say this/reading this:

Focus on Performance – and Enable That!

Learning – Training – KMS – Content Curators – Performance Appraisals – Management by Objectives – Metrics – all of it.

Focus on Performance. Figure out your Enterprises’ Process Architecture – and align your systems and products to enable them – and be robust to the inevitable changes. Changes there in the Processes – and changes in the tools and devices that you will use to enable.

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