Because You Need to Know®

What is the best way forward for people and organizations to build trust and knowledge asset building? Jim tells us what matters the most to a KM culture.

This was recorded 05 Mar 2019.

Edwin K. Morris is the president and founder of Pioneer Knowledge Services which produces this educational program, Because you Need to Know. It is part of the mission to educate and bring awareness around knowledge management. pioneer-ks.org/

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Jim Lee is the principal consultant of LCG Partners, an operations excellence consultancy specializing in the integration of knowledge management strategies and techniques with quality, project, and process improvement methodologies. With this focus, organizations are able to learn how to conduct and maintain their own capabilities long after engagements are completed.

Recently, he was the Sr. Vice-President and Knowledge Management Director at Fulton Financial Corporation, the holding company of a $20-billion bank system with more than 240 branch locations. At Fulton, Jim was responsible for the development of the organization’s knowledge management strategy and implementation. There, he led a team of IT developers, a user experience analyst, the change management office, and the records management function.

As practice leader of APQC’s knowledge management practice, he was responsible for leading projects from initial problem structuring through solution delivery, ensuring the quality of the deliverables and the transfer of best practices. At APQC, Jim was the subject matter expert in several best-practice studies, including social media, organizational learning, communities of practice, and project management.

Jim’s research interests include KM strategy and social media for knowledge sharing.

With over 40 years in the manufacturing, retail, and professional services industries, prior to joining APQC, Jim was a global knowledge manager at CapGemini Ernst & Young, where he led the development of an integrated knowledge management system after the merger of two global management consulting firms. Jim was also a senior member of the Ernst & Young Center for Business Knowledge, an internationally recognized leader in the application of knowledge management and process improvement.

This was recorded 23 Jan 2019.

Bart Verheijen MSc, the founder of GuruScan and lecturer on Knowledge Management topics at Radboud University Nijmegen, VU University Amsterdam, Tilburg University and the Amsterdam Business School. Bart has a technical and academic background with more than 10 years of experience in Knowledge Management research, consultancy and entrepreneurship. Bart really gets the GuruScan projects going and is great at connecting a long-term strategic vision to concrete and pragmatic actions.

Edwin K. Morris is the president and founder of Pioneer Knowledge Services which produces this educational program, Because you Need to Know. It is part of the mission to educate and bring awareness around knowledge management. https://pioneer-ks.org/

This was recorded 14 October 2017.

Edwin K. Morris is the president and founder of Pioneer Knowledge Services which produces this educational program, “Because you Need to Know," It is part of the mission to educate and bring awareness around knowledge management.

Sharon Myers is the content marketing manager at Cutco, located in Olean, NY. She is also the owner of SMA Consulting Services where she has worked with companies and non-profit institutions in the areas of marketing, communications, branding, public relations and fundraising. Sharon has served as the director of admissions communications for St. Bonaventure University, as the executive director of development and marketing at Archbishop Walsh Academy & Southern Tier Catholic School, as the executive director of marketing and communications at Houghton College and the director of communications at St. Joseph’s Collegiate Institute.

Prior to moving into the Olean area, she worked internationally as the academic director of the European School of Economics in Milan, Italy and as the direct marketing executive for the World Wide Fund for Nature in the United Kingdom. Sharon started her career in the arts at the Indianapolis Opera Company (IN), interned at the Guthrie Theatre (Minneapolis, MN), worked as the subscriptions manager at GeVa Theatre (Rochester, NY) and started the Downstairs Cabaret Theatre (Rochester, NY) with two colleagues. Sharon currently serves on the board of directors for the Cattaraugus Region Community Foundation and on the alumni board of trustees for Butler University. She is a member of the Public Relations Society of America, Leadership Cattaraugus class of 2013 and graduate of the Lasallian Leadership Institute. She received her bachelor’s degree in arts administration / voice principal from Butler University and her MBA in International Management from the University of London.

Edwin K. Morris President and founder of Pioneer Knowledge Services hosts this program, “Because you need to know," It is part of the mission to educate and bring awareness around knowledge management.

Stan Garfield is a knowledge management author, speaker, and community leader based in Northville, Michigan. He has worked in the field of knowledge management for over 20 years.

Stan spent 8 years at Deloitte leading communities and enterprise social networking. Prior to that, he spent 25 years at HP, Compaq, and Digital Equipment Corporation. Stan launched Digital's first knowledge management program in 1996, helped develop the corporate KM strategy for Compaq, and led the Worldwide Consulting & Integration Knowledge Management Program for HP. He also worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers, St. Louis University School of Medicine, and Washington University School of Medicine.

Stan holds a BS in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science from Washington University in St. Louis. He leads the SIKM Leaders Community with over 600 members globally, and is invited to present at numerous conferences, including KMWorld. Stan has published over 100 LinkedIn articles on leadership, innovation, knowledge management, communities of practice, enterprise social networks, and social media.

This was recorded 11 May 2016.

Edwin K. Morris President and founder of Pioneer Knowledge Services hosts this program, “Because you need to know," It is part of the mission to educate and bring awareness around knowledge management.

Lisa Tallman is a knowledge management strategist dedicated to social good. She is Sr. Director of Knowledge Management at YMCA of the USA, the national resource office for YMCA’s across the United States. She ensures YMCAs have access to knowledge, tools, and resources to collaborate to strengthen their local communities. Prior to joining the Y, Lisa worked for Grant Thornton, an accounting and advisory firm, where she was part of a team that instituted KM from scratch- developing processes, training team members to manage knowledge, and building a new technology platform.

She has spent almost 15 years defining and shaping knowledge management for both for-profit and non-profit organizations. Lisa earned an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a Master’s Degree in English focused on Technical Communication from Eastern Michigan University. At Chicago Booth, she was chair of a student group that provided consulting services for nonprofits. This experience coupled with her work at the Y has allowed her to see how knowledge management adds value to large and small non-profits alike.

Edwin K. Morris President and founder of Pioneer Knowledge Services hosts this program, “Because you need to know," It is part of the mission to educate and bring awareness around knowledge management.

David Gurteen is a keynote speaker and conversational facilitator.

He works in the fields of knowledge management, organizational learning and conversational leadership. He gives keynote talks, designs and facilitates Knowledge Cafés and runs workshops around the world.

He is best known as the creator of the Gurteen Knowledge Café – a conversational process to bring a group of people together to learn from each other and make better sense of a rapidly changing, complex world.

He is the founder of the Gurteen Knowledge Community – a global network of over 22,000 people in 160 countries.

This conversation was recorded on February 17th 2016.

Edwin K. Morris President and founder of Pioneer Knowledge Services hosts this program, “Because you need to know," It is part of the mission to educate and bring awareness around knowledge management.

David Gurteen is a keynote speaker and conversational facilitator.

He works in the fields of knowledge management, organizational learning and conversational leadership. He gives keynote talks, designs and facilitates Knowledge Cafés and runs workshops around the world.

He is best known as the creator of the Gurteen Knowledge Café – a conversational process to bring a group of people together to learn from each other and make better sense of a rapidly changing, complex world.

He is the founder of the Gurteen Knowledge Community – a global network of over 22,000 people in 160 countries.

This conversation was recorded on February 17th 2016.

by Edwin K. Morris

​In the world of nonprofits there is a little word that means a lot. It is philanthropy. The image above is the definition. It highlights the essence of why nonprofits even exist. Philanthropy can pack a whole lot of action in the meaning around an organization's mission. This requires great communication skills and understanding of the organizations mission along with the clients they serve. Once they understand that clear connection between all of these elements of the organization then identifying the giving audience is a crucial next step to provide funding and sustainment strategy and plan to the nonprofit operation.

To clarify consider that fund raising is not philanthropy. To aid in this differentiation between fundraising and philanthropy consider this:

Fund-raising is an activity undertaken with the goal of eliciting charitable or philanthropic giving. Fund-raising is related to philanthropy as preaching is to faith; that is, one is intended to inspire the other, with no guarantee of success because the response lies within the power of the respondent to determine. (Worth 2013)

So there may have been a misconception for some that between philanthropy and fundraising, but as highlighted in the box above nowhere does it state generation of funds or anything around money. Which then leads us down the trail of what is electronic philanthropy otherwise referred to as e-philanthropy. According to Ted Hart E-Philathropy is:

"the building and enhancing of relationships with volunteers and supporters of nonprofit organizations using the Internet. It includes the contribution of cash or real property or the purchase of products and services to benefit a non-profit organization, and the storage of and usage of electronic data and services to support relationship building and fundraising activities.

The key thing for me in philanthropy is we are talking about building relationships. Relationships that just so happen to coincide and support the mission of the nonprofit. Sorter similar terms to philanthropy?  Words that show up in the thesaurus for philanthropy are: charity, patronage, compassion, humanity, generosity and benevolence. To me these are words that scream out connection and relationship. So how does one build relationship, gain trust and fundraise?

I hear you saying it. You're saying okay what is it all mean? How do I get e-commerce or EPhilanthropy or whatever you call it connected, up and running?!? According to the National Philanthropic Trust (NPT) as of May 2015 there were approximately 1,521,052 charitable organizations in the US. That averages out to 30,421 per state. NPT also states that in 2013, 100 of the largest charities reported receiving 13% more in online donations, and 25 of these charities collected more than $10 million each in 2013 from online gifts.

Your first stop is going to be building a web site strategy. This is an extremely humongous scope is not only are you presenting your content consideration the graphic design and visual artistry must be represented properly. I would suggest having two primary operational components of your web presence. One being fundraising and other being brand building.

I will exampled how Pioneer Knowledge Services researched options for collecting electronic donations. Early 2015 leadership embarked with organization called the Network for Good. This provided a very easy interface with not only streamlining and adding credibility to online donations but provided a back of the house accounting and automated receipt generation all for a monthly fee. The system also generates a fair amount of analytics and reports to start understanding the donor base and how they donate. Network for Good also has additional add-on services that can scaffold with customer growth and be a plug an play type add on components as needed.

After working with Network for Good we decided to explore other avenues as this system was not matched well for our small...

CaseyAnn Salanova is a graduate student at Kent State University studying Knowledge Management and Library and Information Science. She currently heads the Interlibrary Loan department and serves as the Core Team Leader at Schmidt Library at York College of Pennsylvania.

Libraries, unfortunately, are all too often viewed as antiquated as your grandmother’s chintz curtains.

The public perception of the total value of a library is often veiled by their large budgets and seemingly little return. The reality is though, libraries have dealt with cuts for years now with budgets decreasing even as prices on databases, materials, and technology increase. Even within the library world, a common topic of conversation and conference theme is its own relevancy. Many graduate Library Science programs, like Kent State, ask applicants to write an essay on the relevancy of libraries. Such a requirement is already setting up a professional perception of its own irrelevancy.

​(Martin Prosperity Institute, Page 1, 2013)

But, libraries are in fact useful and economically advantageous. The Free Library of Philadelphia pinpointed four major economic areas that libraries contribute to: literacy, workforce development, business development, and increased home and neighborhood values (Fels Research & Consulting, Diamond, Gillen, Litman, & Thornburgh, 2010). The Toronto Public Library estimates it has created over $1 billion in total economic impact (Martin Prosperity Institute, 2013). The bottom line is they provide a low cost education and cultural platform for society (Z. Zhou, personal communication, November 10, 2015).

What is true though, libraries are at a crossroads and in need of a revolution—“one that remakes the institution’s technology, goals and training (Lozada, 2015).” Knowledge management can be a part of it, if not a catalyst. It is an approach to the management and effective use of intellectual capital.  ​

The key to knowledge management is approaching it with the creativity of design and the pragmatics of a business. There is not a one size fits all approach nor is there only one approach that leads to successful knowledge management (Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal, 2015). Really, it is holistic. But, not in the granola eating, tree hugging, meditating mentality (even though that is perfectly fine, too). Rather, knowledge management is an interconnected process that requires internal and external analysis, participation organization wide, a willingness to adapt, and a commitment to sustainability. So, why do it in a library?

Libraries are at a moment in time that is ripe for opportunity. They provide an ideal stomping ground for knowledge management through a collection of people from varied backgrounds which differs from the typical KM business case. Their commodity is that of knowledge and it is ever increasing in breadth, format, and structure. They already have a strong technical infrastructure, workflows system, and a long tradition of documentation and onsite training. And just as IKEA’s founder, Ingvar Kamprad changed his business practices to the Ikea we know and love today (Liedtka, 2011), libraries have been adapting for years from papyrus to calfskins, printed books, microforms, and electronic resources. It is just now, some consider Google as “America’s reference librarian and Starbucks its ISP (Internet Service Provider)” (Lozada, 2015). Technology is changing at a rapid pace and libraries need to adapt quicker.

Knowledge management can help change the internal and external perception of a library as well as provide the necessary knowledge to compete and thrive. Through the process of developing a strong KM Solution, hard questions will be asked including the contingency factors that affect the overall process (Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal, 2015). But, ultimately a better understanding of the context, innovation and knowledge sharing, succession management, employee orientation, learning, and development,

by  Edwin K. Morris on 12/7/2016 11:45 AM

Edwin K. Morris ​

Pioneer Knowledge Services

Knowledge management is a contemporary business practice and organizational capacity builder that is recognized and used by governments, military systems, industries, corporations, foundations, and academia.

The World Health Organization considers "KM to be the dual challenge of, first, managing information and processes and, second, managing people and their environment so that knowledge is created, shared and applied more systematically and effectively." (World Health Organization, 2005, p. 8)

Effective knowledge management economizes and creates opportunities for learning across at an enterprise level. This effort enables better and faster decision-making and reduces resource mismanagement by creating a learning and knowing culture. A culture that shares and provides the opportunity for reflection then learning becomes foundational in the organizational culture. The result is an organization that gains strength and agility as the system continually builds and leverages the deliberately designed institutional wisdom. T

As KM, has evolved so has the meaning and definition of knowledge management. To this end in 2015 Girard & Girard authored a research paper to distill and find the essence of the various definitions of knowledge management. From 100 definitions, they analyzed the words and distilled the essence of them to state KM is, "Knowledge Management is the process of creating, sharing, using and managing the knowledge and information of an organization." (Girard & Girard, 2015, p. 14) They concluded the following describing the trek of KM and its definition.

From a humble beginning about three decades ago, knowledge management has developed from a premature concept into a mainstream organizational necessity. Over the course of time the exact nature of the term has evolved. In the past decade the responsibility for establishing a precise applied meaning of the domain has passed from academics to practitioners. The latter have massaged the early academic definitions to meet the wants and needs of their particular constituents. This project is an early attempt to record the applied definitions that have progressed to ensure they are available to academics and practitioners alike. (Girard & Girard, 2015)

Just as knowledge management is used in business and industry as a key ingredient for innovation, sustainment, and growth, it can serve the same purpose for regions, communities and society.

For example, the World Bank produced a Knowledge Economy Index that represents a country's overall preparedness to compete in a knowledge economy. In a knowledge economy, "…knowledge assets are deliberately accorded more importance than capital and labor assets, and where the quantity and sophistication pervading economic and societal activities reaches very high levels." (Institute, 2007, p. 13) In the World Bank's 2012 index, the U.S. ranked in 12th place. This was a drop by 8 since the year 2000. Sweden is in first place and regarded as the most advanced knowledge economy. The relevance and importance of developing knowledge resources is highlighted further below:

…whatever their level of development, countries should consider embarking on a knowledge- and innovation-based development process. In these times of accelerated globalization, "grey matter" is a country's main durable resource. Its exploitation for economic and social well-being is increasingly at the center of development strategies. (Institute, 2007, p. xiii)While the vision promoted by The World Bank is much larger in scope and depth than what this pilot could possibly aim to accomplish, we can point to incremental steps under way in our state government that are necessary to enable the prioritization a...