Last week I had the honor of making a presentation on Knowledge Management Leadership at the Boston Knowledge Management Forum, held at Bentley College. The event was entitled "Leadership - Why It's Critical to KM Success." I was joined by professor Susan Adams, who gave a very good primer on leadership skills in general; Patti Anklam who introduced her new book, Net Work, and spoke of the value of networking to the knowledge practice leader; and a panel of 4 knowledge practice leaders from Mitre, Genzyme, Alcatel-Lucent and MSA, who shared insights on their experiences as leaders of knowledge management within their organizations.
My presentation was entitled, putting a Face on Knowledge Leadership. I started my presentation by telling of an experience I had at a similar KM event several years ago. I was part of a panel, who was asked by someone in the audience that day to describe the characteristics of an effective knowledge leader. Somewhere in the course of our description, someone in the audience blurted out "Hey, you just described my mother." So, last week, the face I put on knowledge leadership was that of the quintessential mother, someone who builds a healthy and nurturing community (household), views their job as a lifestyle (not a job or project), is humble and shares success with the members of the community (the knowledge owners and users), a martyr who accepts all the blame when things go wrong, nurtures and rewards members of the community and acts as a communication hub for the community, often "over communicating". I have told this story before. But, in preparing my presentation last week I was struck by something I never realized before. In the presentation I gave case studies of 4 of the knowledge leaders I have worked with over the past 10 years. I chose the four from among scores. The four were the first that came to my mind when I recalled successful projects I have worked on. In compiling statistics as a wrap up to my presentation (i.e. what did these 4 have in common, how were they different), I realized that 3 out of the 4 were woman. Perhaps there is something to the feminine side of knowledge leadership. Are woman more inclined to possess the skills and talents to lead knowledge practices? I asked the audience that day – which interestingly enough was about 80% women. We came to no conclusion, one was not really necessary, but it was excellent food for thought.
KM – Its About People – NOT technology
On a related note – the primarily female audience that day was a group of 30. The month before, the topic du jour was Search Technology. I did not attend, but was told that the audience that day was over 70 people, with a more balanced mix of men and woman. It would seem that despite the many years of many pundits espousing the facts that KM is more about people and community than technology, it is the technology topics that nonetheless capture the attention. Yikes. So, let me once again state – Knowledge Management is not a technology, and successful knowledge practices may certainly leverage technology, but if not used within the context of a well managed community with a planned strategy, the technology "solution" is doomed to fail.
