I Am Certified!!!
by Paul McVinney
Partner at Knowledge Management Partners, LLC
I recently completed the Knowledge Management Institute (KMI) Certified Knowledge Manager (CKM) course, a week-long training course covering a world of KM topics. The wide range of topics gave me a great appreciation for the complexity of the situations a knowledge manager would encounter and the various tools available to cope with them.
Why all the tools? To add to the bottom line. From a managers perspective, the company (or nonprofit or government agency) paid to get that knowledge into someone’s head. How should that cost be treated? There are only two choices, as an expense or as an investment. If it’s treated as an expense, then there’s no need for knowledge management. If it’s treated as an investment, then it demands some kind of management to ensure the company profits from it. For nonprofits and government agencies, it’s about mission accomplishment. That’s why many large business have chief knowledge officers. Their role is to ensure that personal knowledge is shared and capitalized on.
From a worker’s perspective, our careers are staked on bringing value to a company’s bottom line. “Personal knowledge management” means keeping ourselves current and ready for advancement in the knowledge economy. The more techniques we have in our mental toolkit, the more value we can bring to our own jobs, to our coworkers, and to our organization’s bottom line.
We learned about many small, no/low cost techniques for getting started with KM, and a number of large scale, proven programs for KM across large organizations. The students were professionals across many industries, like insurance, consulting, and telecom. Students also came from university faculty, public schools, federal government, and included two from the government of Indonesia. There was a great exchange all week between the students and the instructors. The couple of guest speakers that came in toward the end of the week had an incredible depth of experience in large organizations and great advice for everyone, especially in the more relaxed setting over a working lunch.
Of course a one week class won’t make me an expert in all topics, but now I have a much better frame of reference and online resources to tap into no matter the organizational situation I encounter. CKM was just what I needed to keep me moving ahead professionally.
Contact:
Paul McVinney
KMPartners.net
301-257-5186
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