You Can Leave KM, but KM Does Not Leave You You can quit the label, not the practice

Every so often, someone unsubscribes from my Knowledge Letter with a polite note: “I’m no longer involved in Knowledge Management.” Fair enough, I unsubscribe them, no questions asked. But I always smile.

How can any of us not be involved in Knowledge Management?

Whether we are at work, in our communities, or just trying to get through the day, we are constantly making sense of what is going on around us. We try to understand what things mean, what we believe, what matters, and what to do next. We make decisions. We act. We behave, sometimes wisely, sometimes less so.

This is Knowledge Management. It has little to do with databases, taxonomies, portals, or platforms. Those are tools, sometimes useful, often oversold. The real work is human. It is about sense-making, meaning-making, judgment, and learning in action.

So when someone says, “I’m no longer involved in Knowledge Management,” what they are really saying is, “I’m no longer interested in how I understand the world, how I think, or how I decide.” And I have yet to meet anyone who truly means that.

You can leave the KM job title and databases behind. But as long as you are trying to live, work, and choose well in a complex world, you are still very much in the business of Knowledge Management.