I was reading over the latest post from Ben Young and he discusses the difference between “managing” vs. “creating” and how that causes either the frustration or excitement that comes with how you approach what we do. Ben states that we are generally dissatisfied when we find ourselves simply managing, maintaining, or reporting what we do instead of creating, curating, and connecting all of these things in order to actual make a difference.
As I was reading the (very short) post, the idea of how we approach Knowledge Management (KM) kept entering my head. When you think of those KM projects that are out there (completed, or in process), what are they actually doing? Are they simply siloing information in a way to retrieve bits and pieces? Or, are they creating interfaces that allows the customer (whether it is Attorneys, Marketing, Business Development, or Client Relations) to really create the information they want?
I would think that looking at how the customer uses existing resources should be telling as to whether they are simply maintaining data for retrieval, or if you are connecting the dots of the wealth of information and creating new ways to retrieve and interpret that information so that the end result is greater than the sum of its individual pieces of data. When you have something that does that, then you are actually making a difference. Granted, creating resources that generate ideas is not an easy task, but that’s part of the process that makes what you do exciting.