Monday, March 23, 2009

why having too much money can be bad

In response to a post by John "Desert Storm" Maloney on the Value Networks email list, the thought came to me that the KM scene in Australia is much healthier than in the US (feel free to disagree) and that's largely because we have less money. We can't afford a heavily customised technology solution or heaps of FTE staff. So the focus becomes finding the few things that make the most difference and then doing those.

This isn't unique to Australia. Stan Garfield did great things at HP with only 4 people.

A friend of mine at Microsoft said: "We have too much money. We never have to make tough decisions or focus on one thing".

If you want to reinvigorate your KM programme, maybe you need to cut its budget. Mary Abraham's suggestion of a KM Dept of One is good - but you'd need a KMer outside your organisation you can trust & talk to for that to work.

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