{"id":68,"date":"2011-04-10T04:31:22","date_gmt":"2011-04-10T03:31:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/knowledgeetal.wordpress.com\/2012\/07\/30\/they-must-put-something-in-the-coffee-from-km"},"modified":"2023-07-01T13:36:15","modified_gmt":"2023-07-01T12:36:15","slug":"they-must-put-something-in-the-coffee-from-km","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.knowledgeetal.com\/?p=68","title":{"rendered":"‘…they must put something in the coffee…’ from KM Mid East"},"content":{"rendered":"
A quote in conversation with one of my fellow speakers at KM Mid East Abu Dhabi 2011.\u00a0 We were talking about why people like working in her organisation; she herself has been there many years and now has a Knowledge Management (KM) brief.<\/div>\n

That sense of pride was evident among many of the delegates I spoke to. It was borne out in the results of the Knowledge Survey<\/em><\/a> conducted by Sparknow in advance of the event wherein the majority of people said they\u2019d contribute for a sense of wider acheivement suggesting that monetary rewards are not motivators for knowledge sharing.<\/p>\n

If I\u2019m honest I was surprised by the number of people in the audience who put their hands up when I asked at the start of my address \u2018how many of you are in a KM role?\u2019 Over half of an audience of 120 plus drawn from across the region said they were.<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/p>\n

The event was a delightful mixture of formal and informal in a way the the Arab world excels at. Held in the splendour of the Intercontinental Hotel Abu Dhabi it brought together a mix of KM practitioners and wannabees.\u00a0 The organisors will be posting speeches, videos and photos here<\/a><\/em>; these are my observations on the people and customs and what might or might not work in KM.<\/p>\n

There is great respect for the views and opinions of others and people are listened to attentively; delegates were happy to contribute personal experiences for this is very much an oral culture.\u00a0 And we were reminded by one of the presenters that<\/p>\n

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the Koran pushes us for more knowledge<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

which would suggest KM is pushing against a door that is at least adjar.<\/p>\n

The event was a reminder to me of how there is no one size fits all for a KM initative (KM \u2018Project\u2019 was fiercely debated and dismissed by the delegates). It was vividly illustrated a day later in a conversation I had in the offices of a government agency when it emerged that it is not uncommon for an employee to be called half a dozen times a day by his or her boss.\u00a0 Contrast that to Western cultures where interactions usually take place via email or instant messaging. And the option of spending a day working at home to focus uninterrupted on a challenging issue is not one that seems to have permeated practices in the Gulf.<\/p>\n

These were my takeaways for those running KM initiatives in the region:<\/p>\n