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.

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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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