KM Singapore 2012

One of the most interesting presentation in the first day at KM Singapore was given by Patrick Lambe from Straits Knowledge.

Patrick started from the failure of the transit system in Singapore in December 2011 to illustrate very important failure points in other kinds of organizations. One of the lesson from this case was that the traditional model of controlling organizations and information flows does not work well when a crisis is large scale, complex and fast moving.

What does this mean for knowledge management?

According to Patrick, the first important lesson to reflect on is the increasing important role of social media: especially in crisis situation, information is picked up and shared much faster through uncontrolled, social media channels rather then the formal crisis management mechanisms that are now in place. Secondly, the role of knowledge management in these situations seems to focus much more on knowledge sharing capacities rather then traditional information management functions.

As a consequence of these lessons, senior management in organizations needs to understand how important the capacities of knowledge sharing processes are, as well as the competence to be able to deal with the external social environment.

Download Patrick Lambe’s presentation.

Janus Boye lives in Denmark and works mostly on “fixing large, global, complex and often failed intranet projects.”At the 2012 KM  Singapore conference Janus presented a new perspective on intranets, where “sharing is caring.”

Sharing is caring – a new intranet perspective from Janus Boye

After his talk, we caught up with him to record the short video interview below. In the video, Janus explains why ‘sharing is caring’. According to Janus, this notion fits well with the idea of openness and transparency that organizations are striving for – and it is possible to use the intranet much more than in the past to ‘live’ those values by sharing more and effectively using the intranet to support top tasks that staff has to perform. As a consequence, staff will care much more about the intranet. In this sense, for Janus staff will go to the intranet and make use of it if it will help them in get their work done – so to say, if it will support the different smaller or bigger work processed they need to get done on a daily basis.


Nevertheless, top tasks are not the only things to address to have an intranet which is used by staff. Indeed, there should also be space for users engagement, for building connections, foster loyalties and sharing good stories. Communications and HR staff should keep this in mind.