Applied Knowledge Services: A New Approach to Management and Leadership

[Guy St. Clair: This post is co-authored with colleague Barrie Schessler Levy, with whom I wrote The Knowledge Services Handbook: A Guide for the Knowledge Strategist (a companion volume to Knowledge Services: A Strategic Framework for the 21st Century Organization). Both titles are published by De Gruyter in Munich and Berlin. This post was first published on September 22, 2020 in SMR’s Knowledge Services Blog.]

On Tuesday, September 15, 2020 Barrie Levy and I were the speakers for the 181st monthly call of the SIKM Leaders Community.

The group, founded by Stan Garfield in 2005, is a global community of knowledge management practitioners, open to everyone with a legitimate interest in the field. The group’s goal is to share experiences and insights on implementing knowledge management and related subjects (e.g., knowledge services).

For the call, our topic was Applied Knowledge Services: A New Approach for Management and Leadership in the 21st Century Organization.

In our talk we put forward what we think is a different framework for looking at how we – as knowledge strategists – lead and manage. First, we incorporated into our presentation comments about humanist/humanistic management (which Jake Gach and I had written about here on September 14). We then focused on the work of three experts whose advice is particularly valued by knowledge strategists thinking about planning for future management and leadership needs.

• On transformational leadership, we considered the work of Frances Hesselbein (often referred to as “the dean of leadership development), President, Frances Hesselbein Leadership Forum, University of Pittsburgh, 
• On “real” leadership vs. self-centered leadership, we looked at ideas associated with Kevin Manion, Senior Manager – Employee Services, Amazon, and 
• Then we talked about conversational leadership (also known as conversational communityship), probably the newest approach to managing and planning. For this, we gave attention to what we’ve heard from John Hovell, Managing Director & Co-Founder,  STRATactical International LLC. (GStC note: John Hovell’s book on this subject, Creating Conversational Leadership: Combining and Expanding Knowledge, Organizational Development, and Diversity & Inclusion, was published in November, 2022. It, too, is published by De Gruyter)

Go to https://sikm.groups.io/g/main/message/8110 for the summary of the call, with links to the slides and the recording of the voice-over and Q&A.