Tuesday, April 28, 2009

KM @ Government of Kingdom of Bahrain

The governement of the Kingdom of Bahrain created a new body called the "Bahrain Excellence Centre" with the core reponsibility of utilizing talents and competencies within a knowledge management environment. I had the opportunity to attended a two day workshop on 26-27 April 2009 that was conducted by the Bahrain Excellence Centre at the Diplomat Hotel - Bahrain. The attendies were middle managers from the government and semi-government bodies. To highlight the importance of the workshop, there was a short visit on the second of the workshop by the Prime Minister H.H.Sheikh Khalifa Bin Salman Al-Khalifa.

The conductor of the workshop, Mohammed Buhiji asked a question to the attendies. He said:

"Is knowledge power?"
Most of the attendies agreed.

But then he commented:

"Knowlege is not power, Knowledge management is power!"

Personally, I was not surprised. We've studied in our Mgmt 711, with Dr. Stefania, where we studied Knowledge Management and saw how important it is to organisations' development and change. But it was great to see things happening on the ground, in my beloved country, and I having the honour to be part of it.

Regards to you guys,

Yasser, the excellence guy (just for today)

3 comments:

  1. I agree, the way in how we manage our knowledge is the power. All top multinationals have knowledge sharing and managing systems in place, and that is what has given them their competitive edge.

    Its good to see Bahrain is finally realizing that, hopefully in the future we would see Bahraini multinational firms, that other companies would look at and learn from.

    Mohamed Ali

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  2. Yasser, yet again you shower us with sharing an important concept, one of many that I think we experience, realized and got nurtured from by taking MGMT 711.

    I think the very question goes back to the day when we had a ‘focus group’ class, in which similar notion came up…and here is what my take is…


    We are in an era of knowledge abundance, and when you say knowledge is power, if that were the case, academic institutions would rule the world right? Knowledge in itself is not power; rather the application of knowledge is where power lies and people can use it…

    But in the context of exercising it politically/militarily, I am all for knowledge is POWER. My personal experience goes back to when I used to go for boot camps (Boy Scouts in Canada) when they use to teach us “less is more” approach does not mean less choice or less knowledge. The key motto was: how do we use our knowledge more effectively to reproduce POWER…


    Great stuff man
    -Murtaza

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  3. Would like to add, the key to success in this evolving world is the knowledge power.
    Thnx Yaser.

    Ahmed Yusuf

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