We recently asked KMI Instructor John Hovell why Knowledge Managers should practice Organization Development (OD) methods for a story we are doing, and he provided us with 
a new "Top 10" list...

FYI: John and Dr. Sharon Varney are teaching our next OD Certification class, Mar 18-20.  Details here...

10: Employee engagement continues to be a hot topic for KM. OD offers numerous tools and approaches to deeply understand what engaged individuals, groups and teams in your organization can look like.

9: KM and information management are so often blurred together and confused. OD brings techniques to “bracket” and “set boundaries” and increase clarity. 

8: Don’t do KM for the sake of doing KM, do KM to improve an organizational situation. OD does the deeper dive to understand what’s underneath the org situation. 

7: We talk about culture in KM quite a bit - in OD we often reframe "culture" as "group dynamic" and then work with the similarities and differences to shift the culture. 

6: KM often aims for organizational learning - OD looks at group dynamics that are enabling and disabling org learning. 

5: KM is interested in improving processes, OD deeply studies why the processes are the way they are.

4: It's often hard to get buy-in for KM.  OD offers tools to reframe buy-in and learn how to intervene with the resistance to move KM forward. 

3: KM desires improved collaboration - KM techniques can help - OD techniques can get underneath what's truly enabling or blocking collaboration.
 
2: KM is often about changing the organization, OD over-arches change management even more directly than km does.

1: You are the most untapped source of knowledge - OD will offer "use of self" also known as "self as an instrument."