new economy mindset

The theme “resetting the enterprise” is an appropriate one for 2009, a year in which our entire economy is being reset, and upset. The knowledge economy is ending almost before it began, and we’re moving to the next economy: the steady-state economy, one without booms and busts, without waste and the squandering of precious resources, without contributing to climate change. In short, it is a sustainable economy, where companies grow better, not bigger. Almost assuredly, most will fail to make the transition, following the auto, mass manufacturing, financial and war industries into oblivion.

It’s time we reset KM, and our minds as well, to address the issues and challenges of a sustainable, steady-state economy, instead of the issues of the bankrupt and unsustainable industrial economy. This will require some completely new thinking, working with enterprise partners, customers and community members. It will require us to educate business leaders that the strategies that they have pursued for the last two centuries are now obsolete and dysfunctional, and about how to think strategically about a future of staggering uncertainty, volatility and complexity. We will have to become organizational thought leaders, not just back-office workers. We will have to champion and lead organizational transformation, not just provide content and infrastructure to support yesterday’s processes, yesterday’s objectives, yesterday’s strategies.

Are we, humble KM ‘information professionals’, up for this job? My answer is that we have to be: there is a terrible leadership void, imaginative poverty and intransigence to be overcome. This is our opportunity, our moment, our chance to be true change agents. This is Do or Die time for KM practitioners.

More soon.