Overview:

In our study at Columbia University, we thought about basic management, leadership,

and knowledge strategy development principles. In particular, we emphasized how
these principles apply in what we call "the knowledge domain," those activities of the
organizational environment that result in the successful management of information
and knowledge and enable knowledge development, knowledge sharing, and
knowledge utilization in support of the successful achievement of the organizational
mission.

In learning the principles of management and leadership in this context, we gave

attention to the philosophy of information and knowledge services, specifically as this
background affects our future performances as knowledge strategists for our respective
organizations. And in looking to the future, we also gave attention to the promising
widespread applicability of knowledge services, not limiting its purpose to any single
field. In particular, we discussed how knowledge services contribute to knowledge
sharing in our larger society. With faculty and visiting industry experts as discussion
leaders, we focused on leadership skills, knowledge sharing, and the role of the
knowledge strategist in strengthening the corporate knowledge culture.

During the closing weeks of my study I was lucky enough to come upon a book by
Professor. Jeffrey Sachs called “Building the New American Economy”. It was here that I
was introduced to the Sustainable Development Goals and how important effective
KS/KD/KU is the formation of the path to achieving the aforementioned goals.

Proper knowledge management systems should focus on recognizing and publishing

success stories and best practices, as well as failures and the decisions that led up to
them. In larger organizations, it becomes increasingly important to allocate more
resources to achieve this to continue to be sustainable. It got me thinking more about all
the opportunities for local knowledge to help improve the condition of underprivileged
communities. Transparency, collaboration, and effective leadership are just a few of the
tools available to a knowledge strategist within his or her organization.
Challenges Faced:

Motivation and Organizational Inertia:

Overcoming organizational culture fostering a culture that promotes learning, sharing

information, and sustainability. A silo mentality is a common obstacle to lean knowledge
sharing across an organization. This way of thinking hinders the unity of a company and
can be detrimental to morale. One can combat this by aligning the teams’ goals more
strategically with those of the employees and the company as a whole (Autonomy with
alignment).
Based on areas of expertise, different departments within an organization usually have
established ways of recording and archiving information that may not be as easy to
understand or translate in another. This can also be due to human error arising from a
lack of structure pertaining to the aforementioned information.

Metrics and Accuracy of Information:

Knowledge is not something that can be easily quantified, and is somewhat unclear at
first because it is derived out of human experiences and perceptions. Emphasis should
be put on striving towards a common goal. Valuable data generated by groups within an
organization may also require vetting before being made available within the KM
network. Furthermore, information derived by various teams needs to be standardized
in order to make interpretation quicker. Maintaining the consistency of the data and
updating them as new relevant projects are closed must be done constantly. How
accurate is the data acquired by the user based on what they require? Does it have the
intuition that can generate meaningful and concise results while also eliminating
redundancies? All these are questions that a knowledge strategist has to grapple with
when conducting his or her assessment.