--- title: "Summary of Bill Ives’ KM Storytelling Posts" date: 2004-11-17 author: "Richard MacManus" categories: - name: "ReadWriteWeb" url: "/category/readwriteweb.md" tags: - name: "2004" url: "/tag/2004.md" --- # Summary of Bill Ives’ KM Storytelling Posts I recently did a dump of content from my PDA to [my linkblog](https://web.archive.org/web/20050206183453/http://ideas.readwriteweb.com/) – things I’d been reading offline and not yet recorded in my ‘Ideas Database’ (aka my linkblog). One batch of links is from a single person, [Bill Ives](https://web.archive.org/web/20050206183453/http://billives.typepad.com/). So I thought I’d dump them into one R/WW post – more for my benefit than anything else. All these links are from his [Trends: KM/Portals](https://web.archive.org/web/20050206183453/http://billives.typepad.com/portals_and_km/trends_kmportals/index.html) category, which I read specifically for the posts on KM storytelling: a) From [Stories and Organizational Learning](https://web.archive.org/web/20050206183453/http://billives.typepad.com/portals_and_km/2004/05/stories_and_org.html): (quoting [Steve Denning](https://web.archive.org/web/20050206183453/http://www.stevedenning.com/)) “Storytelling doesn’t replace analytical thinking. It supplements it by enabling us to imagine new perspectives and new worlds, and is ideally suited to communicating change and stimulating innovation.” b) [On KM success](https://web.archive.org/web/20050206183453/http://billives.typepad.com/portals_and_km/2004/06/emerging_form_t.html): “I have found the key differentiator in KM success to be the quality of leadership and not the quality of KM solution design or technology. I have seen implementations with acceptable designs flourish under the right leadership and brilliant “next generation” KM designs flounder under poor leadership.” c) From [History of KM Part 6: Digital Age Offers Scalability with New Possibilities for Dialogue](https://web.archive.org/web/20050206183453/http://billives.typepad.com/portals_and_km/2004/07/with_the_contin.html). Bill finishes his excellent “History of KM” series (which I thoroughly enjoyed reading) with this sentence: “Now blogs have entered the picture to make content more personal.” What an excellent way to conclude a history of KM – it’s saying that we’re in the middle of making history right now, with blogging. d) Another series of posts I enjoyed was “Storytelling and Knowledge Management” – another 6-parter. In Part 4, [Documenting and Sharing Organizational Knowledge](https://web.archive.org/web/20050206183453/http://billives.typepad.com/portals_and_km/2004/08/storytelling_an_3.html), Bill says: “To make knowledge collection and knowledge sharing more effective, one must go beyond simply abstracting documents from explicit knowledge sources. It is necessary to provide a story of the document.” Which again, is where blogs come in according to Bill. e) In Part 5, [Enhancing Learning](https://web.archive.org/web/20050206183453/http://billives.typepad.com/portals_and_km/2004/08/storytelling_an_4.html), Bill explains the benefits of stories as a learning device: “The story contains much more than a series of basic procedural steps. It can contain the rationale, the strategy and the cultural values implicit within the actions taken by the story teller.” f) In a later series called “KM Stories”, Bill writes about specific case studies. In [Part Two](https://web.archive.org/web/20050206183453/http://billives.typepad.com/portals_and_km/2004/08/km_stories_part.html) he says: “For knowledge management to be successful, IT, HR, and the business units need to work together to achieve success.” g) In his [postscript](https://web.archive.org/web/20050206183453/http://billives.typepad.com/portals_and_km/2004/09/post_script_sum.html) to that series, Bill lists the factors for successful KM projects. I won’t re-list them all here, but suffice to say (for me) that the first two are people-related factors: “Gain and Enlist Top Down Support to Overcome Turf Issues Provide Strong Leadership for the Knowledge Function” I suspect that’s why KM projects are so wont to fail. When you require the support of lots of different people and a strong leader, well that’s Politics – not technology. And we all know how contentious politics can be! Thanks to Bill Ives for writing so much valuable content on the subject of KM and storytelling. I hope to read more soon. *Originally published on ReadWriteWeb ([archived copy](https://web.archive.org/web/20020204040018/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/002451.php))*