All Life Is Problem Solving

Dave Snowden, whose views I blog about from time-to-time, yesterday offered “a certification rant,” in which he said:

“Just to make it clear, I have no objection to people selling training courses in KM. I have no objection to people developing specific approaches and certifying or accrediting people to practice those techniques, that’s something we do in CE. However we never claim to offer certificates in the field of complexity or narrative. Offering to certify an entire field is a nonsense and awarding pretentious appendages to participants names is compounding arrogance with ostentation.”

This is not the first time Dave has stated this view, and this blog is also not the first time that I’ve stated my agreement with it. My organization, KMCI, in an earlier incarnation, which no longer exists, was one of the first to offer Certification Workshops in KM. Now, we offer Certificates of completion of our CKIM Workshop offering instruction in The New Knowledge Management Approach, and implementing the K-STREAM Methodology for KM programs and projects. For many reasons, stated in detail here, we make no additional claims about the competence of attendees in the general field of KM. In 2003, when KMCI announced its shift from a Certification to a Certificate, the decision to make this change was a hard one for us. We knew that many who were interested in KM, were as or more interested in “a ticket” than they were in “KM”, and we suspected that our decision to change to a Certificate program would cost us training business. I have no way of knowing whether it has or not. But I know the decision to change was the right one, because today, nearly six years later, KM is still a field which lacks consensus on fundamentals, approaches, normative visions, standards, techniques, and tools.