What KM Books Are You Re-Reading?

VMaryAbraham

Davenport and Prusak Working Knowledge coverWhat KM books are you re-reading? No, this is not a trick question. You are, of course, keeping up with your professional reading, aren’t you?

If you are, please let us know via the comments below what is on your KM reading list.

If you are not, we need to talk.

When I first began to work in knowledge management, I eagerly sought out as many KM books as I could find and then dutifully read them. They were awful. It’s not that the authors did not have something useful to say. The issue was that I was not ready to listen to them.  In part this was because I did not have the vocabulary to understand what they were saying. However, the bigger problem was that I lacked sufficient experience in KM to appreciate the lessons those authors were trying to teach me. So I slammed those books shut, put them on the shelf to gather dust, and set about to be a knowledge manager.

After a few years of KM work, I noticed an interesting pattern. When I found myself dealing with one challenge or another, I would say to myself, “Surely someone else has encountered this issue and solved it already.” After this happened a few times, it occurred to me that those dusty KM books might contain some insights. So I pulled them down from the bookshelf, blew off the dust, opened the books, started reading, and discovered…answers! Not just answers, but amazingly useful answers.

What changed? I finally had both the vocabulary to understand what the authors were saying AND the experience to appreciate what they were saying.

So now I find myself reading and re-reading KM books, and find the time well-spent.

If you would like to replicate this experience, let me recommend Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know by Thomas H. Davenport and Laurence Prusak (affiliate link). Written by two of the early thinkers in KM, this book provides a great introduction to the discipline, as well some useful warnings about the mistakes we make when we do not learn from the experience of others. With the benefit of some KM victories and challenges under my belt, I now find that parts of their book that could have been written for me or for the organizations I have worked with. Here’s an example:

Too often, knowledge transfer has been confined to such concepts as improved access, electronic communication, document repositories, and so forth. We believe it is time for firms to shift their attention to the more human aspects — from access to attention, from velocity to viscosity, from documents to discussions. Obviously, firms need to exploit both the hard and soft aspects of knowledge transfer, but in the Western business culture there are usually too few advocates of the soft stuff. [p. 106]

It took me several months of working in KM to figure this out for myself, yet unbeknownst to me Davenport & Prusak had written about it a couple years before my own epiphany. Think of the pain I could have spared myself if I had only read their book earlier. For this reason, I go back and re-read their book regularly. And I find new gems hidden there every time.

So what KM book or books are you reading? Please share your recommendations in the comments section. You might inspire a colleague and save them a boatload of pain.

[This blog post was inspired by a discussion on the Leonard Lopate show (January 28, 2016) during which Jane Smiley, Philip Lopate, Leonard Lopate and several listeners talked about the books they re-read and the value they obtain from reading those books over and over again. If you are looking for some non-KM reading, I recommend that episode of the show to you.)

 

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Thanks for a great 2015

VMaryAbraham

reflections-1402132Every year bring opportunities and challenges. And, if we are willing, along with those opportunities and challenges comes learning.

So what have I learned in 2015?

  • Reflection is critical for improvement. As I wrote earlier this year, studies show that regular, intentional reflection leads to improvements in productivity. So in 2015 I set about to build more time for reflection into my life. When I did it, I almost always was able to identify ways in which I could tighten my work processes or change my approach to improve my results. Without the reflection, I found myself repeating mistakes unnecessarily. Even still, I found it was a challenge to make and keep an appointment with myself for reflection on a daily basis — even when I knew it was for my own good.
  • Reflection requires discipline. Why do we need discipline for reflection? Because doing it right requires consistent and concentrated effort. If you have ever tried to stick to a diet or build a new habit, you understand the challenges of discipline. As a knowledge management professional, I have preached the value of reflection to myself and my colleagues for years. However, even if you believe in it and see the results, you still need to set aside time regularly to actually do it. That’s the hard part. That’s the necessary part. That’s where discipline comes into play.
  • Cognitive dissonance will bite you in unpleasant places. When things don’t add up, we often brush them off as aberrational. However, an after action review often reveals that the outlier data we ignored earlier were actually warning signals of an impeding disaster. So what’s the best way to address this? If you can do it, stop for a moment and ask yourself, if these data are not outliers but, in fact, warning signals, what are they likely to mean? Even if you cannot accurately predict the exact nature of the potential failure, this brief exercise will make you alert to other data that seem to be outliers, but that taken in the aggregate create an unwelcome pattern.
  • Show up. As a consultant, each year is only as good as the clients and assignments I’ve won. Thankfully, 2015 has been a very good year indeed. I’ve had the pleasure of repeat business with some of my favorite clients and I’ve also been privileged to work with some new clients. Interestingly, some of my  key projects this year have not come from specific marketing efforts, but rather from simply showing up. For me this has meant being present for face-to-face encounters and also being present online. It especially means staying in touch with people over the course of the year. As I have discovered this year, when you are top of mind, you are recommended when projects and opportunities arise.

Let me close this final blog post of 2015 by conveying my gratitude to my readers who ask the questions and provide the comments that keep me stretching, learning and growing. I look forward to continuing the journey with you in 2016.

[Photo Credit: Barry Vaughn]

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The Knowledge Supply Chain #KMWorld

VMaryAbraham

KMWlogo_Stacked_Session Description: The business value of knowledge is to enable the knowledge worker, and support them in making the most effective and efficient decisions. Knowledge is as much a raw material for the knowledge worker as parts and tools are for the manual worker. We can therefore think of KM as being the supply chain for knowledge, providing just-in-time knowledge to support  the front-line knowledge worker. This allows us to take models and insights from other supply chains in order to improve how KM works, including the “elimination of 7 wastes” from Lean Supply Chain theory, and the clear focus on the knowledge user.  Hear about the supply-chain view of KM, its implications, and ways to develop and/or improve a KM Framework.

Speaker: Nick Milton, Director & Founder, Knoco Ltd

[These are my notes from the KMWorld 2015 Conference. I’m publishing them as soon as possible after the end of a session, so they may contain the occasional typographical or grammatical error. Please excuse those. To the extent I’ve made any editorial comments, I’ve shown those in brackets.]

NOTES:

  • Slide Deck
  • Peter Drucker.  The biggest management challenge of the 20th century was to increase by fifty times the productivity of manual workers in manufacturing. The biggest management challenge for the 21st century is to increase by fifty times the productivity of knowledge work and knowledge workers.
  • Manual Work Productivity.
    • The manual worker. Nick’s grandfather was a blacksmith, a manual worker, a craftsman.  When he made something, he made every part of it. His workmanship was superb.
    • The manufacturing worker. Management achieved a productivity increase in manual work by moving from the solitary manual worker to the manufacturing worker who made only one part of a finished product. By dividing labor, factories could make products significantly faster.
    • Other causes of increased productivity in manual work:
      • mechanization
      • a ready and available supply of the materials needed to create the product
  • Knowledge Work Productivity.
    • The knowledge craftsman is the expert who knows it all
    • The knowledge worker.  Today, however, the knowledge worker no longer needs to know it all. Knowledge is held collectively by the community and the network. In fact, an expert is almost always outperformed by a network. This is the knowledge work equivalent of improved productivity through the division of labor. However, in this case, it is a division of knowledge.
      • this requires a cultural shift = a fundamental change from knowledge as personal property to knowledge as collective property
        • this is challenging to some people because they believe that knowledge gives them worth and security
    • Automation: The knowledge equivalent of mechanization is automation.
    • Knowledge supply change — if you no longer own/have all the knowledge you need, then you need a reliable supply chain that gives you the knowledge you need when you need it.
  • Lord Browne of Madingly: 
    • Lord Browne was a former CEO of British Petroleum.
    • In Unleashing the Power of Learning (an interview published in the Harvard Business Review), he stated that if a company wants to gain and keep a competitive edge it must learn better than its competitors and then must apply that knowledge faster and more widely than its competitors do.
    • In the same interview he also stated that anyone who is not directly involved in profit-making activities should be fully occupied in creating and sharing knowledge that the company can use to make a profit.

Knowledge Supply Chain.

A supply chain is “a sequence of processes involved in the production and distribution of a commodity.” A knowledge supply chain is a sequence of processes involved in the production and distribution of knowledge. In other words, a knowledge supply chain provides “the right knowledge at the right time to the right people, so they can make the right decisions.”

To have an effective knowledge supply chain, we need the following:

  • We need a set of knowledge processes:
    • Knowledge creation
    • Knowledge capture
    • Knowledge synthesis
    • Knowledge seeking
    • Knowledge application
  • We need the related knowledge roles.
    • Knowledge managers
    • Knowledge engineers
    • Practice owners
    • Knowledge workers
  • We need the supporting technology .
    • Lessons learned management systems
    • Community portals
    • Discussion
    • Knowledge bases
    • Search engine
  • We need Knowledge Management Policy = Governance for this set of processes, roles and technologies.
  • Attributes of good supply chains:
    • They are user-focused (focused on the profit-maker)
    • Everyone in the organization is committed to this system
    • The supply chain must be reliable — when someone seeks knowledge, it should be there
    • The supply of knowledge should be high quality
    • Efficient
    • Pull-driven
    • Lean
  • Lean = a systematic method for the elimination of waste within a manufacturing system, and a focus on value add
    • Waste #1 = overproduction:
      • Info overload
      • Technology complexity overload
      • Producing more than and /or ahead of demand = a massive oversupply of knowledge
      • Davenport & Prusak, Working Knowledge: “Volume is the friend of data and the enemy of knowledge.”
    • Waste #2 = waiting = clock speed = the speed of learning
      • Waste = knowledge that is waiting to be used
      • Huawei has the Rule of 3 Ones:
        • you should be able to find something in one minute
        • you should get an answer to a question in one day
        • you should circulate new project knowledge within one month of the close of the project
      • Read Atul Gawande’s Checklist Manifesto
        • they use checklists to speed learning
    • Waste #3 = unnecessary transport = unnecessary steps or handoffs
      • This usually is the result of too much bureaucracy/hierarchy
      • You can eliminate this by allowing people to connect directly/horizontally with each other
    • Waste #4 = inappropriate processing = doing more work than is necessary
      • When knowledge is in a jumble, everyone who needs that knowledge will need to sift it and sort it every single time. The way to eliminate this form of waste is to sift and sort the content once on behalf of everyone.
    • Waste #5 = unnecessary motion = going to multiple places to get your knowledge
      • Some organizations have too many collaboration tools (e.g., yammer, jive, slack, etc.) — this is waste
      • In some organizations, every division has its own lessons management system
      • Schlumberger has provided only one tool for each knowledge function. They built a successful expertise locator. Later, when they deployed SharePoint, they turned off MySite because they believed it would function as a duplicate expertise locator.
    • Waste #6 = excess inventory
      • A lessons management system is helpful provided it has just enough lessons to cover the work being done. One lesson on an issue is good. Ten lessons may be better. However, 100 or 1000 lessons constitute an oversupply. A knowledge worker will never be able to read and apply all of them.
      • Don’t give users too much — give them just enough. Overproduction constitutes waste.
    • Waste #7 = defects = the cost of wrong knowledge
      • this arises when you fail to clear out of your knowledge systems old or outdated materials
  • Best approach to lessons learned
    • Complete the project or activity
    • Identify, document, store the new lessons learned, best practice, cases
    • Review, validate, take action >> update the practices and training
    • Access the database and apply lessons learned
  • The Knowledge Supply Chain
    • Raw materials = experience
    • Supplier = team members
    • Manufacturing = creation of lessons
    • Distribution = lessons management
    • Assembly plant = improved process
    • Consumer = knowledge re-use and application
  • How to incentivize knowledge seeking and re-use?
    • Make it easy
    • Promote success stories
  •  Questions:
    • If you view your own KM system as a supply chain, where is the waste?
    • How will you eliminate the waste?
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Transferring Critical Knowledge When Speed Matters #KMWorld

VMaryAbraham

KMWlogo_Stacked_Session Description: This session looks at the rate of knowledge (i.e., expertise) transfer as a critical KM issue and shares research which looks at expertise transfer through the lens of personas. The creation and perspective of knowledge worker personas provides a breakthrough in the identification, construction, and delivery framework for expertise transfer. Well-established methods of knowledge sharing and transfer, such as communities of practice, provide the capability for expertise transfer, but they do not always address the concept of speed in their structure. Similar approaches, such as the transfer of best practices, or self-service models, also do not take into consideration the need for speed based upon a specific situation, a specific knowledge need, nor a specific role. The persona lens on expertise transfer ensures that all three perspectives are taken into account when designing a knowledge management framework and methodology. Speakers describe the thinking behind the persona perspective, and give attendees an opportunity to test their expertise transfer needs through hands-on experience.

Speakers:

Darcy Lemons, Senior Advisor, Advisory Services, APQC
Jim Lee, Senior Advisor & KM Practice Area Lead, APQC

[These are my notes from the KMWorld 2015 Conference. I’m publishing them as soon as possible after the end of a session, so they may contain the occasional typographical or grammatical error. Please excuse those. To the extent I’ve made any editorial comments, I’ve shown those in brackets.]

NOTES:

  • Slide Deck
  • Sustained focus on knowledge transfer. 
    • Their 2015 KM Priorities Survey results show that
      • knowledge capture/transfer is among the top 3 KM approaches to implement in 2015, with 37% of survey participants saying their organizations plan to create new processes to capture and transfer critical knowledge over the coming year.
      • approximately 48% already have knowledge capture/transfer processes
  • Known approaches to knowledge transfer.
    • knowledge capture/transfer approaches can range from systematic (formal, structured) to organic (informal, unstructured)
      • Formal KM approaches
        • knowledge elicitation interviews
        • knowledge mapping
        • retiree knowledge ransfer
        • knowledge continuity processes
        • after-action reviews
      • Learning & Development approaches:
        • lunch-and-learn
        • webinars
      • Content repositories:
        • content portals
        • wikis
        • blogs
        • Internal videos
        • lessons learned databases
      • Network-based approaches:
        • communities of practice
      • Person-to-Person approaches
        • forums
        • meetings
        • conversations at the watercolor
    • 3 key questions
      • Explicitness: How easily can the knowledge be captured?
      • Audience: Is the knowledge recipient known?
      • Stability: How fast is the knowledge evolving?
  • Techniques to support knowledge transfer.
    • APQC’s 8th KM Advanced Working Group
      • this group addresses new issues for which there are no established best practices
      • the group is made up of organizations and top KM experts
      • member organizations
        • ConocoPhillips
        • Phillips66
        • EY
        • Praxair
        • Intel
        • NASA
      • These organizations want to know about speed — how to transfer knowledge quickly
      • Setting the Scope
        • Who: when needs the knowledge? what role do they perform? What do they do?
        • What: what knowledge do they need? How complex is it?
        • How:
        • When: when do they need it?
    • They recommend a knowledge mapping approach
      • start with a known/agreed process
      • follow with a knowledge map (a simple spreadsheet)
      • They started with a process-centric knowledge map: 1st column is process steps, 2nd column is activity, 3rd column = what knowledge is needed, 4th column = who has the knowledge, 5th column = is it tacit or explicit…
        • chart the knowledge that is needed for each step of the process
          • what knowledge is needed?
          • who has it?
          • when is it needed?
      • Then they developed a role-centric knowledge map — defining the following items by Who  (person, group, team) and What (type of knowledge). Here are the column headings:
        • type of knowledge needed
        • rate of speed
        • created by whom
        • identified by whom
        • collected by whom
        • reviewed by whom
        • shared with whom
        • accessed how
        • used by whom
  • Determining HOW to transfer knowledge.
    • If you need it immediately
      • Methods: Yammer, Communities of Practice, videos, discussion groups
    • If you need it in the mid-term
      • Methods: Wiki, SharePoint library, webinars, lunch-in-learns, search and find
    • If you need it in the long-term
      • Methods: formal training, conferences, knowledge elicitation interviews
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Insights and Innovation: The Light Bulb Moment #KMWorld

VMaryAbraham

 

KMWlogo_Stacked_Session Description: As a researcher, writer and practitioner, our speaker discusses five ideas for increasing discoveries, describes the insight stance-a mental set we adopt for encountering new ideas and events, and looks at how it might help organizations improve their level of innovation.

Speaker: Dr Gary Klein, Senior Scientist, MacroCognition LLC

[These are my notes from the KMWorld 2015 Conference. I’m publishing them as soon as possible after the end of a session, so they may contain the occasional typographical or grammatical error. Please excuse those. To the extent I’ve made any editorial comments, I’ve shown those in brackets.]

NOTES:

  • How to improve performance?
    • The initial impulse is to simply reduce errors. However, you also need to increase insights.
      • reducing errors = playing not to loose
      • increasing insights = playing to win
  • Where do insights come from?
    • Insights = unexpected discoveries about how things work. Typically, they come without warning.
    • His methodology: he created a set of articles, interviews and other
    • He found three common themes:
      • Creative Desperation: insights we get when we are stuck and trying hard to find a solution
        • finding the solution is tough because we often are hampered by our unconscious assumptions that narrow our thinking improperly
      • Connections: these insights arise when we put different things together.
        • for example, Charles Darwin put his empirical information together with Malthus’ theory on population growth and then realized that competition for resources drove the patterns he was observing in nature.
        • this is more than “just connecting the dots.” It is not as simple as it sounds.
        • this about realizing pieces fit together
      • Contradictions: these insights arise from observing something that does not make sense.
        • these pieces do not fit together
        • you notice them because they do not fit the pattern you expected
  • How can we get more insights? The ShadowBox Approach.
    • this is a scenario-based approach that helps the trainee see through the eyes of the expert
    • in the middle of the scenario, pause: say that this is a decision point, so please identify the possible responses and rationale
      • rank-order your possible responses and see how they stack up against experts
      • compare your rationale against those of the experts and learn what the experts saw that you did not see
  • Why do some get insights and others don’t?
    • the person who had the insight had an active, curious mind — they loved to puzzle about things, play with things
    • the person who did not have the insight had their head down, trying to get the work done
  • How to increase the chance of getting insight? Develop an insight mindset.
    • Make insights a habit
      • celebrate your insights
      • create the expectation that you are capable of insight
      • observe what works or doesn’t works and then try to figure out why in hindsight
    • Use your curiosity
      • explore anything that strikes you as interesting
      • be curious about problems
      • be curious about coincidences
      • be curious about anomalies and contradictions
    • Encourage others
      • ask others if anything has surprised them since the last time you spoke with them about a common project
    • Take advantage of confusion and conflicts
      • when things don’t go as planned, ask what the other person thought they were supposed to do
  • Over-emphasis on reducing mistakes can interfere with insights
    • Distraction : the effort at reducing mistakes (document and tracking) gets in the way of seeing new patterns.
    • Passivity: critical thinking may lead people to view their jobs as not making mistakes
    • Why do organizations continue to overemphasize the reducing error?
  • Why do organizations fear insights?
    • Insights are disorganizing — they disturb things, they create bumps
    • Distrust of creativity
      • Mueller says: “The settlers get the land, the pioneers get the arrows.”
    • Predictability allows effective management
    • Perfection enables effective management
      • managers prefer error reduction to making discoveries
    • Effort — insights often cause extra work
    • Loss aversion
      • we feel twice as much pain about we are giving up than pleasure about what we are gaining
    • Goal fixation
  • How can we help organizations ward off insights and innovations?
    • Make sure your organization has a clear chain of command in order to reduce confusion and ambiguity.
      • this will block out unusual or disturbing ideas
    • Gather all the relevant data before making decisions so as to reduce uncertainty.
    • Before starting, conduct a thorough review to reduce the chance of error.
      • if you insist on perfect methodology, you will not have innovation
    • Establish a firm project goal and schedule.
      • this is a great way to reduce insights and innovation that are yet to be discovered
    • Ensure you a harmonious team
      • Rely on consensus decision making (i.e., each person on the team has a veto).
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Learn It! Do It! Share It! #KMWorld

VMaryAbraham

KMWlogo_Stacked_Session Description: Knowledge management is in the business of helping organizations learn, use, and remember-the antidote to corporate amnesia. O’Dell shares APQC research aimed at helping organizations get smarter. She talks about the need for speed and ways of accelerating learning-not only for individuals and groups but for organizations themselves. Get KM best practices you can use to nudge people in your organization. Grab O’Dell’s nuggets of information for those who are at the beginning of their KM journey, those who are in the messy middle of their efforts, and those who are operating in mature KM marketplaces. Good tips for all!

Speaker: Dr. Carla O’Dell, CEO, APQC Author, The New Edge in Knowledge

[These are my notes from the KMWorld 2015 Conference. I’m publishing them as soon as possible after the end of a session, so they may contain the occasional typographical or grammatical error. Please excuse those. To the extent I’ve made any editorial comments, I’ve shown those in brackets.]

NOTES:

  • The Velocity Challenge.  Speed of execution has increased, but so has speed of learning.  There are three different speed challenges:
    • getting new employees up to speed quickly
    • helping “Nextperts” learn more rapidly
    • absorbing knowledge, which is growing faster and faster
  • What is driving the need for speed in your organization?
  • People and organizations learn differently.
    • Start by reading How We Learn by Benedict Carey.
    • We can said to have learned something if we can recall it at the appropriate time and put to use.
    • Focus attention and reading does not enhance learning.
    • Space and recall enhances learning. Walk away from the reading and ask yourself what you learned. Then go back and fill in the blanks.
  • People learn better when they realize that something is missing. They learn better when they are trying to solve a problem.  This is when they are most motivated to learn. It is a key teachable moment. That is why Googling at the moment of need is so important. It is a valuable mode of informal learning.
  • Forgetting is the Brain’s Spam Filter.
  • Primacy and Recency Effect. People remember the first thing you tell them and the last thing you tell them. That is why onboarding is so important.
  • People remember how you make them feel more than what you say. Therefore you need to create a rich tapestry of emotion.
  • KM is how organizations learn. Just because I know it doesn’t mean we know it. Therefore, KM is critical to help overcome organizational amnesia.
    • KM can alert people when something has changed in business rules and practices.
  • Avoid dead ends, empty shelves and desert islands. There must be a human being watching to make sure that people get the answers and resources they need. Otherwise, they will never come back.
    • Desert Islands = expertise location. People don’t want to be alone, they want an expert to help them.
  • What does it mean to say that the group has learned something?
    • The power of a group is the power of the collective. As long as there is trust in the group, members are assured that if one person knows it, everyone knows (or can know) it.
  • Communities are KM’s killer app. My allegiance to this voluntary group makes me willing to contribute and learn. According to MIT, the most productive and creative groups do two things:
    • the members of the group seek new ideas outside the group and bring them in
    • inside the group, they vet the new ideas and use them to improve their own ideas and work
  • What is the best way to learn?
    • The people approaches to learning make the system approaches work. In-person or virtual training, mentoring/apprenticeship are far more effective than remote efforts such as content management and document repositories.
    • The technology matters, but what matters more is the change management processes we use to help with technology adoption.
  • Making the Business Case for KM
    • see www.apqc.org for information on their maturity model
    • There is a correlation between KM maturity and financial performance. As KM maturity increase, the financial performance increases (in terms of sales and assets).
    • When making a KM business case, it is important to explain clearly what the payoff for the organization will be. You will be 3 times more likely to get a KM budget and 5 times more likely to expand it.
  • Why conduct financial analysis and documentation of benefit to show the value of KM investments? It secures and expands the budget, you get senior leadership support, it gives you traction to grown the KM program.
  • Cognitive computing and machine learning are on the horizon for KM.  What will this look like for us in the near future?
    • We are on the Gartner hype curve, so expect lots of expensive failures until we learn how to use these tools.
    • We will be able to give better and more customized search results.
    • With narrative tools, machines will be able to write up our lessons learned. (See NarrativeSciences.)
  • If we in KM do not get ahead of the cognitive computing curve, things could end badly for KMers. (Spoiler alert: the computer almost never loses.)
    • “Not since ‘2001 : A space odyssey’ have things ended badly for the computer.”
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Stan Garfield: 16 KM Myths Debunked #KMWorld

VMaryAbraham

KMWlogo_Stacked_Session Description: Join our breakfast tutorial led by longtime KM practitioner Stan Garfield, who discusses 16 views of KM that are widely held but not necessarily supported by practice. He debunks these myths and shares research to support the misconceptions.

Speaker: Stan Garfield, Community Evangelist, Global Knowledge Services, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited; Author, Implementing a Successful KM Programme; Founder, SIKM Leaders Community

[These are my notes from the KMWorld 2015 Conference. I’m publishing them as soon as possible after the end of a session, so they may contain the occasional typographical or grammatical error. Please excuse those. To the extent I’ve made any editorial comments, I’ve shown those in brackets.]

NOTES:

  • Download Stan Garfield’s Slides
  • Push.  Believers in Push say if only we publicize it, promote it, shove it into someone’s email inbox, they will participate in and use KM. The problem is that we all have learned to ignore this noise. It is far better to create Pull — demand — for the things you are offering. Make it appealing, make it easy to consume.
  • Someone else will do it.
    • This occurs when leaders initiate a KM project and then leave.  You also see this when leaders delegate participation in KM to someone else — asking someone else to fill in their profiles, write their blog posts, etc.
    • When KM professionals do not use their tools themselves.
    • When organizations benchmark their competitors in order to determine their own KM priorities and actions.
    • The misplaced belief that the KM systems will work perfectly without my contribution or my leadership. If you won’t supply the necessary content, how can you expect someone else to?
  • KM is Dead. Or it’s on life support. Or it’s irrelevant.
    • Even Tom Davenport wrote a recent article on this — proclaiming the death of the child he helped create.
    • Whether we call what we do KM, the need for what we do will never go away.
    • What is dead? Focusing on collections and document repositories, tracking intranet activity metrics.
    • The name, knowledge management, is often derided. Worrying about whether it’s a good name or not is a waste of time — it’s better to learn how to do the work better.
  • Incentives don’t work. Stan believes that well-designed incentives do work. While people will always be tempted to game the system, relatively few actually do.
    • The key thing is to signal the importance of the effort.
    • Incentives work well at IBM and Accenture.
  • Roll it out and drive adoption.
    • This approach focuses too much on a tool or function. “Rolling out” SharePoint doesn’t explain why or what it is for. Telling people to collaborate more is an equally open-ended and vague direction. People cannot act on this.
  • Social is frivolous.
    • People do not often use social tools to post nonsense (e.g., what I ate for breakfast).
    • If employees are being criticized for “wasting time” on social tools, you need to educate everyone regarding why these tools make sense and how they benefit the organization.
  • Don’t Control.
    • There are a variety of views on whether it is wise to control communities online.
    • In Stan’s experience, it is better to limit the number of communities. This makes it easier for the user to find their group. It also increases the chance of building critical mass.
    • This is not about top-down control, it’s about respecting your user and their time.
  • Eliminate Risk. This arises in security-conscious organizations. It is often expressed in the form of shutting down internal social tools or blocking access to external social tools.
    • It’s actually better to enable sharing in a common place where inappropriate sharing can be observed and corrected.
    • If the sharing is happening outside a common shared space, the organization will never know about inappropriate until it is too late.
    • Focus on educating people on appropriate sharing.
    • Hire well and then trust your colleagues more.
  • Be like Google and Amazon.
    • Google and Amazon functionality work best at scale. Most organizations do not have that scale.
    • Asking people to rate content is challenging. It is better to ask simpler questions.
      • Did you find this content helpful?
      • Are you likely to recommend this content?
      • Do you like this content?
  • We need our own. Often people ask for their own online community for comfort or convenience reasons. However, often they do not really need their own and would derive greater benefits from joining a larger group. Encourage them to join the larger group (perhaps as co-leaders) and bring their energy  into that larger group.
    • Beware of the narrow niche — where people are asking for a community/tool for a very narrow need. It is better to work in a larger space with a larger group.
    • If you do not achieve critical mass in a community, it is unlikely to be active.
    • According to Lee Romero’s research, an online community needs at least 200 members before it will be truly active.
  • I don’t have time. This implies that learning is not as important as more mundane tasks.
  • We should work ourselves out of a job. After all, knowledge management is everyone’s job so we should not need a separate KM department. What about finance? Is that everyone’s job? It is naive to believe that people will be able to lead and shepherd KM — this requires specialists.
    • Stan suggests a KM team that includes, at a minimum, someone to focus on people, someone to focus on process and someone to focus on technology.
  • Bigger is Better.
    • The larger the team, the greater the time required for administration and management.
    • More is not better. Google proved that simpler was better.
    • The exception to this rule is: the more active members of a community the better.
  • Make People Do It. It is better to work with volunteers rather than conscripts. If we make people do it,  the will comply — but only to the minimum extent possible.
  • Everything is a community. For Stan, a community is a volunteer group you choose to join because you  want to get something done. It is not an assignment based on a common trait — e.g., gender, ethnicity, etc.
  • Our IP will be stolen. Some companies say that specific content must be locked down or else another part of the company might use that content in the wrong way. Sometimes this is driven by risk concerns. Sometimes this is driven by a fear of internal competition.
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Learning from Federal CKOs #KMWorld

VMaryAbraham

KMWlogo_Stacked_Session Description: A panel of chief knowledge officers from federal agencies discuss key aspects of KM in the federal space. Topics include starting a KM program; quick wins; institutionalizing and sustaining KM; skills needed in the central KM organization; effective KM, HR, and IT partnerships; and KM as a driver of employee engagement.

Speakers:

Turo Dexter, Knowledge Management Officer, US DOT / Federal Transit Administration
Dr. Susan Camarena, Chief Knowledge and Learning Officer, Federal Transit Administration
David Oberhettinger, Chief Knowledge Officer, NASA/Caltech Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
William Balko, Chief Knowledge Officer, Defense Information Systems Agency

[These are my notes from the KMWorld 2015 Conference. I’m publishing them as soon as possible after the end of a session, so they may contain the occasional typographical or grammatical error. Please excuse those. To the extent I’ve made any editorial comments, I’ve shown those in brackets.]

NOTES:

  • Related Slide Decks:
  • How to begin a KM program.
    • You need an effective executive champion
    • Know your message — be able to explain succinctly what you are doing
    • Be a people connector
    • Start by finding ways to share critical information — a good place to begin is capturing and sharing lessons learned
  • Institutionalizing and Sustaining KM. 
    • house the KM function in the frontline operation, not IT
      • this gives the KM function credibility and access to frontline information/people
    • recognize pre-existing KM-ish activities — [if possible, build on them]
    • publicize success stories
    • track agreed measures of KM program maturity
  • Success relies on.
    • strategic alignment
    • user involvement and acceptance
    • improved effectiveness
    • information sharing and visibility
    • active and effective sales effort to market the KM effort
  • How to expedite learning?
    • have people shadow each other — this gives them a new perspective on the people and their work
    • create collaborate work spaces where people with different expertise work together for a time
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Pinterest for the Enterprise? #KMWorld

VMaryAbraham

KMWlogo_Stacked_Session Description: Thousands of search results—page after page of ugly SharePoint link farms … Enterprise workers still face the persistent problem of finding what they need in the “fire hose” of content. People are asking less for “the kitchen sink” and more for the very best, hand-picked (curated) content, but that takes work, and traditional content management approaches don’t seem to be enough. Social bookmarking has failed to take hold in the enterprise. But can we learn from newer iterations like Pinterest? Can a consumer technology designed for things like food or photography translate to the enterprise? Can we tap into the crowd to collectively curate the best content? Hsu focuses on a next generation capability, called “collections,” inspired by Pinterest and Flipboard but tailored for the enterprise, that is changing the way people capture and share great content at Accenture. The goal is to make it easy for anyone to collect and present content in a manner that’s as engaging as Pinterest. Content management has never been so exciting!

Speakers:

Thomas Hsu, Social Collaboration Strategist, Accenture
Steve Berzins, Social Learning Infrastructure Lead, Accenture

[These are my notes from the KMWorld 2015 Conference. I’m publishing them as soon as possible after the end of a session, so they may contain the occasional typographical or grammatical error. Please excuse those. To the extent I’ve made any editorial comments, I’ve shown those in brackets.]

NOTES:

  • What problem were they trying to solve?
    • People spend a lot of time on the internet bookmarking interesting content — but how to share this?
    • Good content is very hard to find
    • Good content hides in a variety of places: in heads, in repositories, on the web
  • How does Collections help?.
    • crowdsourced curation
    • easy administration
    • easy on the eyes
  • How does it work?
    • it is attractive and highly visual
    • it can be privately curated or officially sanctioned
    • you can follow a collection and see who else is following it
    • once you follow, you’ll get an alert when something new is added or when someone else comments on it
    • you can comment on the stream or on individual items
    • it is mobile optimized (responsive design)
    • it is indexed to provide collections at the top of the search results
    • they made it easy to embed a collection in another site — for example, in a practice group’s SharePoint site
    • they provide online social support for the collections tool
    • when you update the collection, every instance of the collection is updated — no matter where it is embedded
  • How to create a collection.
    • go to the Collections home page to download the bookmarklet (similar to Delicious, Evernote, etc.)
    • when you see good content online, click on the bookmarklet to import the content
    • the bookmarklet dialog box enables user tagging
  • Administration Tools
    • a spreadsheet-like web form that will allow the admin to batch import content by adding urls to the form.
      • this automatically generates the thumbnails for this content
    • Now, instead of editing the SharePoint site, they can edit in Collections and be assured that the updates will flow through to every place where the collection is embedded in SharePoint.
    • You can mass edit to the content — change titles, tags, etc.
    • You can reorder items through drag and drop
    • They share content as a whole collection or as a filtered sub-collection
    • Permissions are active directory based — the content can be kept private, made available to active directory groups, provided on an editable or read-only basis. Permissions respect internal security.
    • They are about to release a dashboard with Tableau-like, highly visual view of the metrics they track.
  • Governance
    • If a collection is empty for a period of time, they make it private
    • If a collection contains problematic content, the owner of the collection is asked to take it down
  • Next Steps.
    • They would like to provide recommendations based on user behavior.
    • They will upgrade from importing only one image from the site to importing all available images so the user can choose.
  • Use Cases.
    • The Essentials
      • sales and/or delivery essentials
      • on boarding — key resources for new people
      • useful content for personal or professional use
    • The List
      • a list of people
      • a list of clients
      • a list of vendors or technologies
    • The Newsletter
      • the best new content
      • external news articles
      • repository of past communications
    • The Event
      • key materials from a conference, workshop, webinar
  • Usage. The net promoter score of Collections is 67. The net promoter score of the iPhone is 63.
    • 95% of respondents said that Collections added good or excellent value
    • it is highly used by Accenture executives
  • See the presenters’ own explanation of Collections.
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Measuring the Value of Social Tech #KMWorld

VMaryAbraham

KMWlogo_Stacked_Session Description: When it comes to enterprise social, it’s all about the business case. Whether your initiative is just getting started or relatively mature, sustained adoption and ongoing support depend on demonstrating clear business value. This session showcases an approach and practical examples you can use to model your business case and ensure that your investment in enterprise social creates an open, agile, and networked organization. Take away ideas you can apply immediately in any social technology platform.

Speaker: Euan Semple, Director, Euan Semple Ltd

[These are my notes from the KMWorld 2015 Conference. I’m publishing them as soon as possible after the end of a session, so they may contain the occasional typographical or grammatical error. Please excuse those. To the extent I’ve made any editorial comments, I’ve shown those in brackets.]

NOTES:

  • Slide Deck
  • Numbers.  How do you establish the value or ROI of social tools? The numbers may be interesting, but they do not always tell the full story. Unfortunately, numbers  are relatively easy to gather and are, therefore, sometimes all organizations track.
  • Monitoring. The better approach is to actually get into the social activity streams yourself and then monitor them. What’s happening? What patterns emerge? What does this tell you about the impact of the social tools? Euan actually subscribed to every community/activity stream in his enterprise social network (ESN). Over time he became more proficient and efficient at following the conversations. This helped him understand what was really going on in a way the numbers simply could not reveal.
  • What to report?  At the beginning, don’t set up the wrong expectations based on the numbers you offer to report. Remember that you are interpreting and communicating the data to people who do not always understand the tools, the context, and the nature of the activity that happens on the social platform. Even if you grasp the data, you won’t really be able to do anything with it unless you are truly a part of that activity.
  • “If you can measure it, it is probably not worth managing.”  Too often people/organizations get obsessed with their numbers and then allow those numbers to distort their behavior:
    • “Everyone from BuzzFeed to the Washington Post seems to be chasing after viral content because of the traffic it brings — but all this does is reinforce how doomed the page-view model really is.”
  • What should you monitor?  Treat your ESN as an ecology rather than a mechanical system. As you monitor activity, track where the energy is. Then deploy tools that help you follow and amplify that energy. What should you look for?
    • Who is using the ESN?
    • What are they doing with it?
    • Where are they using it from?
    • How often are they using it?
    • What are the reactions?
  • Thanks. The most important metric is the extent to which the system is actually helping people. To show this, Euan did a monthly search for the word “thanks.” Next he dug deeper to identify what help was provided and how that help made a difference. Then he told stories that explained the impact. A member of the audience reported that they have introduced simple hashtagging so contributors can tag success stories as #forthewin. Then the KM group can track that hashtag to collect the success stories.
  • How to report the ESN activities? While there may be pressure to report numbers, try to keep the focus on stories that matter in the context of the person enquiring about value.
  • The biggest value of an ESN? Often the biggest value of an ESN to an organization is that is shows what actually is happening inside the organization. Admittedly, sometimes uncovering this pushes the organization to a dark place. However, it is necessary if we want to manage and improve the organization’s performance.
  • Senior Sponsorship? Euan was lucky that he had sufficient network clout to move (several times) to a new sponsor who could provide the support necessary for the ESN initiative. His advice is to find a new boss and move if you need something your current boss cannot provide.
  • Reverse ROI. Euan pushes back on ROI inquiries. In his view, the social business activity is happening, so we should go with the flow rather than using ROI inquiries as a means of stopping the activity. He asks the inquirer to provide the cost of ignoring or disallowing ESN activity.
  • Fix Problems. Makes things concrete, not abstract. Find ways to fix problems for real people.
  • Work Horizontally. If you cannot go upwards, go horizontally. If you cannot get support from above, pull in people at your own level across the organization who can become involved, become persuaded, and then become part of the success story of the ESN.
  • Use the tools to manage and report on the tools. Try working out loud to surface things that may be challenges in the network. If you see tension or problems, work out loud by asking the network what is going on and what to do about it.
  • Good networks self-heal. It’s important to revert back to the network any issues, queries or concerns. Then let the network address it. This is important for its health and growth.
  • Get used to being misunderstood and under-appreciated.
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