# Whatever happened to 'Business Knowledge Management'?

> Why isn't there a 'BKM' like there is 'PKM'?

There's this whole corner of the internet dedicated to [personal knowledge management](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_knowledge_management) ('PKM'). It's [massive](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=personal+knowledge+management).

People spend hours of their spare time on this. They [hang out in forums](https://forum.obsidian.md/search?q=pkm). They mail me and ask for guidance. They agonise over this stuff at home...

...and then they go to work and it's like it never happened.

## 'Knowledge management' doesn't go far enough

It's not like we haven't thought about this. There's [a whole job function dedicated to knowledge management](https://sfia-online.org/en/sfia-8/skills/knowledge-management).

But whenever I've seen anyone in this role their focus tends to be on the organisation's data*bases*. That SFIA description talks about your 'knowledge management database' but the word 'file' doesn't appear once.

Is it that the file system is just so unglamorous? It is, right, I know it is. (It's one of my fears in trying to [make this my job](/22.00.0003/): organising your files is, well ... _boring._)

But that's no excuse to neglect it. Your internal knowledge databases may be amazing but that's only part of the picture.[^1]

[^1]: Are they? I've yet to see this either, but that's a separate issue.

## Why is this okay?

The cost of being disorganised at home is negligible: you might be frustrated that you can't find your insurance documentation, but it's not costing literally hundreds of dollars an hour.

**This is the problem that I intend to solve.**