Networks, Complexity, and Relatedness

Networks, Complexity, and Relatedness
Inquiry and learning into social networks, organizational network analysis, and the relationships among people and systems in complex organizations and networks.

Saturday, September 23, 2006

KM Meets OD at the DIA

I had a note from co-author Zeke Wolfberg this morning, with a link to an article that he's just published with GovExec.com , "A Formula for Success." Its a good summary of his mission at the DIA, which is to change the culture of the agency toward learning-based behaviors. Zeke and I wrote about how the Knowledge Lab in our article, which focused on how Zeke created a network of change agents who shared his passion for the mission of the DIA and a commitment to change. Through a series of focused pilot efforts built on a set of strategic principles, the Knowledge Lab (with the support of the DIA's new director) is providing a model for other government and military agencies. Kudos to Zeke.

Reading the article reminded me of the talk that Bruce Hoppe and I gave at the Boston OD Learning Group last week, "KM meets OD" (or was it "OD meets KM"?) My part was to position knowledge management as a collection of disciplines -- many of which overlap organizational development practices -- that support business and organizational improvement by focusing on the intellectual capital of people, processes, and relationships. (I actually didn't go into this intellectual capital part but wished I had; it turns out to be a driving theme of Net Work, the book, which may actually be finished week after next, with an April publication date.) I summarized the next challenges for KM as a holistic set of disciplines that have much in common with OD:

Change management
Talent management
Learning organization
Collaboration

Zeke and his "revolutionaries" in the Knowledge Lab at the DIA are accomplishing some major organizational change using some good, basic, network techniques:

A bottom-up change network
Mission-focused pilots
Adopting methods that have been proven elsewhere
Working with a long-term strategy

The Knowledge Lab's mission now has a five-year strategy. The "lab" by the way, has no physical space and only one funded staff person (Zeke).

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patti anklam. How to make networks work.

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