Can KM be as easy as 1, 2...311?

  Knowledge Management   Lessons Learned  

Remember the days before the Internet, before Portals and Intranets, before LANs and WANs, before GUIs (graphical user interfaces) and Windows, when, if you wanted information--especially at work--you picked up the phone and called someone?

And when you did talk with someone your conversation had the potential to go practically anywhere, in particular because you had two brains working instead of one brain and one relational database (proving, once again, that two heads are better than one). 

Are we making KM too complicated with the emphasis on "enabling" and "empowering" people to find whatever they want, whenever and wherever they want it, by giving them instant access--wired or wireless--to literally billions of pages of "content" (if, that is, whatever search engines you use have located and cataloged those pages)?

As I've argued in the past, though, for the most part when we go looking for information we're not looking for content, we're looking for answers. Perhaps we can take a lesson from The Big Apple--that's right, New York City--which of all places seems to have figured this out, and has invested about $25 million in its new 311 Hotline.

Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.