first, thank you so much to the VPECT community for starting up this
dialog so quickly - that alone says alot to me. Second, as I respond
here, let me be the first to admit that I have zero experience in
VPECT so I am coming from the enterprise KM perspective here (and i
hope thats helpful). i'm picking up on the notion that VPECT seems to
be a method of framing 'problems' to better prepare 'solutions'... it
sounds like it will have a lot in common with km itself as well as
enterprise architecture and systems thinking/engineering...one might
even find similarities with applied strategic thinking... so, i
understand that i could walk through VPEC-T to frame the enterprise KM
problem, but honestly, i feel like we have a number of ways to
brainstorm and frame the km problem (knowledge audits, basic
situational analysis/awareness, etc.)...
like richard mentioned above, i think some kmers are interested in
'oiling the whels' as opposed to the content itself - which is what we
tend to call 'optimizing the flow of knowledge'.
so, allow me to take my first stab at walking through vpec-t with
regard to enterprise km
v - as with all of these elements, the value of km depends on the
situation of the organization. typically, i think you'll hear that km
is part of 'optimizing business performance' - i'm sure you've heard
this quote, but we reference it quite a bit in km, peter senge said
'the only sustainable competitive advantage is an organizations
ability to learn faster than its competition'. km and learning
(formal and especially informal) tend to work hand in hand to support
the vision/growth/success of the business
p - this is a very interesting element to me. i agree w seabird here,
i haven't seen a lot of km-related policies. the closest policies
tend to be IT Use agreements or communications policies, but they
aren't that close... i wonder if policy can (or needs to) be written
around how people create, transfer and retain their knowledge?
e - i think this is where all of the fun takes place. the obvious
events in enterprise km are mentoring, process mapping/improvement,
etc... when we say 'events' are we also allowed to consider
organizational events (such as new leadership or acquisitions) or
'outside' events (such as new legislation or industry changes)?
c - i happen to come from a web development background where we always
heard 'content is king', so this is another interesting element to
me. from my perspective, 'content' would be the knowledge itself and
this is an area that tends to cause a lot of confusion. this is
probably the most helpful quote i know in this area 'we know more than
we say, and we say more than we write/type'. so i guess content (i.e.
knowledge itself) is king here too :) the question for me at this
point here is 'what is the optimal balance (and amount of structure)
for connecting the right/best knowledge to the right/critical need(s)
at the right/optimal time'
t - well, trust is the magic sauce as we say, right? in km we talk
about trust all the time because it plays into enterprise communities
of practice, organizational network analysis, organizational
storytelling, social media, frankly, just about everything we try to
do. there are so many great books/posts/etc on 'trust' out there, so
i'm not exactly sure where to start the 'trust and km' conversation in
this post...
i feel like i have a lot more to add here, but i also feel like i've
gone past a reasonable post length :) i like the concept of applying
vpec-t to enterprise km and i'd love to see a list of other ways to
think through the 'problem definition' pieces of km. does vpec-t (or
any other method) intend to result in a pragmatic way to execute
continuous improvement? (which then reminds me of the quote 'if i had
60 minutes to solve a problem, i'd define the problem for 59 minutes
and execute for 1' that was einstein, right?)
so thats my first complete newbie attempt, please help me learn :)