The difference between knowledge and information

Posted by  Mark Schenk —May 11, 2008
Filed in Anecdotes, Collaboration, Strategy

“Not that old chestnut” I hear you cry.

We have written a whitepaper on this subject and blogged on it a few times. It keeps the KM list serves across the planet pre-occupied for a few months each year.

I recently had coffee with a client to get an update on the implementation of the knowledge strategy we did for them a while back. The client described good progress in many areas but highlighted one of the things holding them back was the continuing confusion/uncertainty about the difference between information management and knowledge management. This was despite an extensive education campaign to get a consistent ‘language’ in place across the organisation on order to minimise the roadblocks to implementation.

This reinforced to me that we should just stop ‘pushing the proverbial up a hill’ on this one. My suggestion to the client was to stop talking about knowledge management. It is much easier to grasp concepts like ‘better information management’ on the one hand, and ‘improved collaboration and learning’ on the other. This conception makes it much clearer that there is a big ‘people’ and ‘process/practice’ component to the task.

Knowledge strategy = Information Management + [Collaboration and Learning]

Mark Schenk About  Mark Schenk

Mark works globally with senior leadership teams to improve their ability to communicate clearly and memorably. He has been a Director of Anecdote since 2004 and helped the company grow into one of the world’s leading business storytelling consultancies. Connect with Mark on:

Comments

  1. Steve Dale says:

    Mark,
    I share your frustration on this one. I came up with a very similar definition. See http://steve-dale.net/?p=186
    Steve

  2. Mark Schenk says:

    Hi Steve,
    This phenomenon is no surprise, which is why we wrote the whitepaper on ‘Our take on how to talk about KM’. It is simply a practical reality that we need to keep our language as simple and clear as possible to get the message across in managing knowledge. Even though I like your definitions they are still too complicated to generate the resolve for people to act.

Comments are closed.

Blog