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 Realities of KM In Action
This book bridges the `knowing and doing' gap of Knowledge Management (KM) with clarity, realism, and practical detail. The editor has done her research and documented the best practices of Knowledge Management. She has captured the stories and used words of the actual people engaged in the journey of this growing profession and emerging body of knowledge described in 17 cases. Now we have names of people and organizations that serve as benchmarks and sources of lessons learned. After all, isn't that what Knowledge Management it's about, learning from experience and sharing what we know across boundaries. The book walks its talk. The roles, responsibilities, and activities of those responsible for KM, Chief Knowledge Officers and/or Chief Learning Officers, are delineated and compared using all of the illustrative cases. This alone is worth the price of the book. Up until now no single book has described the realities of Knowledge Management with so many living examples. Each of them are contemporary, vivid, and representative of diverse industries. The facts and data presented in most of the cases clarify the bottom line consequences of knowledge management. This is a valuable resource book for executives, performance consultants, human resource staff, trainers, university faculty, and students of all ages. When someone refers to Knowledge Management as only an abstract concept that is too theoretical and too illusive to practice, give them this book. One of the criticisms of Learning Organization literature is there are no books like this. The layout of this book enables the reader to pick the cases which are of interest without having to read it from cover to cover. It is easy to pick up and read in short segments of twenty minutes or so and not lose continuity. I took the book with me on a trip and skipped around according to what interested me most. If you or people in your organization believe continuous learning, intellectual capital, and organizational knowledge is what distinguishes one organization from another in terms of staying competitively viable this book is a five star must read.
In Action: Leading Knowledge Management and Learning
Lord Bacon, perhaps borrowing from the Book of Proverbs, long ago reminded us that "Knowledge is power." Given today's sophisticated technology and the highly trained minds driving it, knowledge, as a fundamental precept and as a tool of business, has seen little over the course of history rivaling its present day importance and prevalence. Those of us in business are challenged daily to best utilize the knowledge brought to our respective workplaces by our employees, our clients, and ourselves. With the incredible, even overwhelming, amount of information available from a myriad of resources-both technical and human-the task of harnessing facts, ideas, and beliefs into a usable and manageable instrument of economic, social, and cultural betterment can be daunting. Until editor Dede Bonner gathered together some of the best minds in the still evolving area of knowledge management, business and its leadership had little in the way of formal and practical examples from which to draw and learn. The impressive and useful result is her recent book, In Action: Leading Knowledge Management and Learning. In it, Dr. Bonner presents a variety of workplace learning and performance professionals, who bring their own insights and experience to the complicated and oftentimes taxing realm of knowledge and how to best maximize its potential without succumbing to its pitfalls. Using actual examples from both the private and public sectors, contributors to this informative treatise offer the reader practical and tested methodologies focusing on the timely topic of knowledge and its immense influence on modern life and a modern workforce. Dr. Bonner's book helps fill a void created by the new and expanding realm of knowledge management. As such, it is good and necessary reading for business professionals at all levels.
 Practical cases about CLO's, CKO's-told as personal stories
This book is useful to anyone working with CKO's or CLO's as well as people aspiring to these positions. It is well written and provides the reader with explicit examples of how individual and organizational differences have led to mutiple effective ways of addressing knowledge management and learning. The book emphasizes the human performance aspects of knowledge management but is effective in integrating strategy, structure and technology as well. Each case presents the direct experience and actions of the CLO or CKO clearly from a personal perspective. I particularly liked the case selection across industries and the inclusion of early adopters and leaders, less well known companies, firms and government agencies. Kudo's to the authors and editors.
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(based on 3 reviews)
