Kudos to Dave Snowden for revisiting 1998’s KM Sins. It recalls the famous “Teenage Sex” CIO Quote from 2001 on KM.

“Knowledge management is like teenage sex,” he says. “Everyone is talking about it all the time, everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, almost no one is really doing it although everyone is bragging about it, and those who are doing it aren’t doing it very well.”

KM Sins circa 1998

1. Not developing a working definition of knowledge
2. Emphasizing knowledge stock to the detriment of knowledge flow
3. Viewing knowledge as existing predominantly outside the heads of individuals
4. Not understanding the purpose of managing knowledge is to create shared context
5. Paying little heed to the role and importance of tacit knowledge
6. Disentangling knowledge from its uses
7. Downplaying thinking and reasoning
8. Focusing on the past and the present and not on the future
9. Failing to recognize the importance of experimentation
10. Substituting technological contact for human interface
11. Seeking to develop direct measures of knowledge