April 30, 2008

The Challenges of Fragmented Knowledge

In Dave Snowden's view, "everything is fragmented." And, he thinks this is a good thing. But it has some challenging implications for knowledge management generally and law firm knowledge management specifically.

Dave sets out his concept of fragmented knowledge in the May 2008 KM World Magazine in which he points to "the shift during the life span of knowledge management from the `chunked' material of case studies and best-practice documents to the unstructured, fragmented and finely granular material that pervades the blogosphere." He posits that the effort to structure, summarize, and corporatize information has in fact rooted the knowledge so deeply in specific circumstances that it limits the user's ability to apply that material to other contexts as things change.

So what are the advantages of the fragmented approach to knowledge? First, Dave suggests that most people would rather seek the advice of several trusted colleagues than hunt through the company KM system for an applicable best practices document. In other words, by embracing fragmented knowledge we are working with rather than against natural tendencies. Second, he reports that his work in homeland security has demonstrated that "raw field intelligence has more utility over longer periods of time than intelligence reports written at a a specific time and place." In fact, unfiltered narrative accounts tend to pick up more "weak signals (those things that after the event you wished you had paid attention to) than analytical structured thinking."

If Dave is right that people naturally tend to seek fragmented knowledge, what does that mean for traditional knowledge management? First, we have been focusing on the wrong things. We've been trying to heighten control over knowledge and remove ambiguity in world in which the exchange of knowledge is increasingly uncontrolled and ambiguous. Further, we've been engaged in a fool's errand: trying to anticipate all needs and then reflecting the applicable guidance in our KM content (which is a nearly impossible goal), rather than creating in our users "an attitude and capability of anticipatory awareness."




John Tropea said...

Hi Mary,

I'm really enjoying your blog lately, lots of good posts.

Have you listened to any of Dave Snowdens podcasts, listening to his philosophy has more impact on my understanding of his perspective.

I have pointed to a few of his podcasts in one of my posts that reviews his new KM

Mary Abraham said...

Thanks for your kind words, John. I haven't yet had a chance to hear Dave Snowden's podcasts, but I will check them out.