Please stop using DIKW - here's why I'm asking and here's what to use instead.

Data, Information, Knowledge, Wisdom is a model that we have all used at some point to help an audience usefully distinguish between different aspects of what we do.

It's not a bad model.

It has explanatory power.

The reason that I'm asking is that I think it works counter to what we want - which is to have us and our profession associated with results (as opposed to wisdom which no one can understand without four hours of explaining).

There is a natural tendency with a model like this to view it as a progression, or a hierarchy with the goal, or the most useful and advanced things to be further on in the model.

The challenge is, that if the point of data, information and knowledge management is the achievement of wisdom, we fall victim to the "so what" effect because the reason wisdom is interesting is never for itself. Wisdom is only interesting when explained (at length) in terms of something else that it can lead us to achieving.

This means that once you've explained DIKW, you then need to spend four hours explaining and convincing people that Wisdom leads to some kind of result that's meaningful to them - rather than just using a model that they can understand and relate to their own professional practice.

Think about your own organisation.

Whose KPI is the achievement of Wisdom?

Has it ever been one of yours?

How do you set a SMART goal based on wisdom? (SMART = Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevent and Time Bound).

The answers are -

- No one has wisdom as a KPI.

- It's not one of yours and is extremely unlikely to be.

- You can't set a SMART goal to achieve wisdom, it's too big and nebulous.

We set SMART goals based on results we want. KPIs when they're any good are based on some kind of result, a lead indicator of a result, or some subjective measure that we call a result.

When we work with good managers, they will always work with us to help us understand the actions we should be taking to achieve those results.

Often if we aren't effective in taking those actions, they'll help us work out whether we have the right skills and capabilities - what we might describe as aspects of knowledge - and whether our skills and capabilities are being fed with the right information.

The general point of this, is that we need models that connect what we do, to actions we can take, and to results.

So I'd like to suggest we should be using the DIKAR model in place of DIKW.

You've probably guessed it already. DIKAR replaces "Wisdom" with "Actions" and "Results."

This is important, because Actions and Results pass the "so what" test.

"Yes Mr/Ms CEO, the results you are looking for are connected to your information in tangible ways that I can articulate through a model"

You simply will not find a manager or executive who will tell you that Wisdom is more important than results. In a two horse race, 999/1000 chief executives choose results over wisdom, and the last chief executive gets fired once their public, minister or shareholders hear that they're more concerned about achieving wisdom as opposed to achieving results.

The other simple and very important truth is that Information and Records management isn't struggling because of a lack of wisdom - we have that in spades.

IRM is struggling because managers and executives won't fund us because they don't understand how we help them get better results.

And they should.

DIKAR will help us, help them.

Three final notes -

- If you disagree with this - please do it publicly so we can all learn.

- Full acknowledgement must go to Ken Mould for introducing me to DIKAR - with my eternal thanks for the wisdom shared.

- The origins of the model are quite obscure. The best I've been able to do is find an attribution to N Venkatraman who first presented it an MIT management summit in the mid 90's.