DaChispa

I’ve always known that geography played an important part in effective knowledge management - working for global organisations usually means that location, culture and language all created additional barriers to good knowledge sharing - sometimes simply because you just didn’t realise that you needed to ask the right question.

On a smaller scale, I have just moved desk. It has totally altered the dynamic of my working day. It means that I am suddenly plugged into a whole other set of opportunities and way of working. I haven’t changed my job - I’ve just got a new perspective on it by relating to different people. I used to regularly walk around this area to ensure that I got to know people and they got to know me - but it is not the same as being co-located.

It strikes me that regularly rotating where you sit to encounter different teams is a good way not only to find out what is going on, but also encourages creativity. A form of ’static’ hot desking - where there is enough time to develop relationships with people, but not so much time that you fall into a rut, might be a way of looking at this.

A final confession - I really didn’t want to move as the new desk is not as spacious or as quiet as my previous location - now I find the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks. It is relatively easy to manage space and noise, evolving a network is far more difficult

I am an optimist…most of the time. I learnt a long time ago that it is easier in the long run to challenge or cut off the pessimists and cynics of this world rather than to join them in making their miserable expectations a reality. If you expect the best, you usually get it - if you expect the worst it will happen. I know which I prefer. Now research shows that friends and your social network really do have a profound effect on your happiness (see http://www.stoweboyd.com/message/2009/01/nature-or-nurtu.html for more information).

Cutting out negative people from your life is a drastic action to take - and I would suggest that you do need some challenge to a determinedly rosy view of life - however I would concur that you should do your utmost to not be sucked into that way of thinking. I like the fact that this research also takes into account the positive effect we can have on our friends and colleagues. Negative doesn’t always win - your personal optimism and happiness can change minds and moods too!

I think I am finally beginning to get the benefits of data tagging from a personal viewpoint. I’ve just started using www.last.fm as my music centre on the PC. I’ve done a couple of searches on artists I like and have been interested to see the ’similar artists’ list that comes up (based on tags). The facility that I particularly like is that you can play the ‘artist name radio’ (eg Oasis radio) which just plays, uninterrupted, a selection of similar music to that which you have searched on (eg Oasis in this example). What this has done for me is almost to recreate my musical history online. I put in an artist from my schooldays and suddenly every tune I remember for that time is playing and I have an (albeit aural) Proustian experience. It has also led me to discover artists that I previously didn’t know about and concerts for some that I didn’t know were playing. A real bonus!

In conjunction with this, Amazon has just introduced its MP3 store so if I find a song I like, I can easily purchase and download it (you can do this at last.fm as well, I just like the Nectar points from Amazon!). Again, I have finally realised that I don’t need to purchase CDs for the one or two good songs - I can just take the ones I want. Once I have a good in car i-pod player, my life will be complete! Slightly behind the rest of the world, but it just wasn’t something that was relevant to me before now.

I guess the lesson I have re-learned this week is that technology is only as useful as the need you have for it. Until now, managing my music wasn’t something that was of particular interest to me - but now I can build memories and easily follow undiscovered paths - and it has changed the way I interact online.

I liked this post from Rosabeth Moss Kanter: http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/kanter/2008/11/instant-success-takes-time.html
where she talks about the fact that new ideas/products that burst suddenly on the scene are seldom without preparation. It’s like those ‘before they were famous’ TV programmes where you suddenly realise that the overnight success of an actor actually actually started 20 years earlier. I wonder whether that is what the difference is between one hit wonders and those who have a longer shelf life - preparation and application!

I envy inventors, those who seem to have the great ideas, but I have come to realise that there are all sort of creativity and that most of it comes from sheer hard graft and being open to opportunity. Plugging away at the boring lays the groundwork for inspiration and ensures that your are equipped to take the opportunity when it arises.

Listening to a conversation between some Catholic relatives, the significance of what impact really means became clear. They were talking about the current pope and commenting on how little he seemed to be doing, there was even a temporary halt over his name. It struck me that he might very well be doing a lot, but because he is not visible, he is not seen as effective. Pope John Paul, on the other hand, was talked about in tones of affection and felt to be a very good pope - partly because he travelled a lot and they heard about what he said and did.

Lesson for the success of KM - you have to be seen to be doing something - on the radar. It is no good achieving things if no-one knows about them. That is almost the same as not doing them at all! Obvious, but not always acted on….

I have just realised that I am a stealth KMer because most of my working life I have worked for hierarchical, command and control organisations where anything that breaks down the hierarchy can be perceived as a threat. As knowledge management initiatives often target knowledge silos, that means hitting this type of change head on can be more difficult than going at it sideways. Working in a more networked/flexible organisation ought to mean that you don’t have to be so subtle. If you maintain the stealth approach, it may actually be counter productive as people already ‘get’ km and may feel that you are pussyfooting around and not making real, visible change.

Time to investigate more direct and different approaches for these more adult organisations - trust the organisation - scary but maybe the way to go.

KM lessons from hairdressing - a bit of a stretch? Maybe not. I’ve changed hairdressers recently and I was nervous, because a bad haircut can take a while to recover from. Fortunately I have struck gold and ended up with the best haircut I have had for years. What was interesting was the process I went through in the course of the appointment. I started out by giving quite specific instructions as to what I wanted done. The hairdresser made some sensible suggestions and then went to work. As time went on, I realised that she was doing a really good job and I stopped giving direction and told her to do what she thought was best. I went home very happy. How does this relate to KM? Well, I think it has to do with demonstrating expertise in order to build trust. If we can make expertise explicit in the way a hairdresser does - a good haircut is highly visible - we can more easily build a trust relationship with our experts. Trust is at the root of a lot of KM success - the building of successful communities of practice is based on it. There, the equivalent of the successful hairstyle is a good piece of advice or a strong paper.

Trust is also important in preventing re-inventing the wheel because you think you can do better, or not looking elsewhere because you think you know best. If I had kept on with the previous hairdresser, or forced the new one to do exactly the same thing as before - I would not have ended up with something so much better. If we could persuade people to ‘change hairdressers’ once in a while, maybe they too would get a different result.

I’ve just finished putting together the figures for my tax return and it seemed a lot easier this year. This is due to a combination of things:
-I kept all the relevant papers filed in a tax folder as I went through the year so it didn’t take long to get them together
-I had a template spreadsheet from the last year which I was just able to plug figures straight in to
-The Inland Revenue have actually simplified the form in a way that works! Incidentally, their guidance is a lot clearer too - although that may just be me getting used to it.

We are always being asked why knowledge management is important - and I think my tax return is a case in point. By re-using past experience both HMRC and I improved our processes. I know it has saved me a lot of time and I suspect it they will find the same when they get the returns this time round. Interestingly, they are also rewarding good behaviour by giving those who file on line a much longer timescale than those who are filing on paper. Maybe we could adapt this to encourage better knowledge sharing (share a piece of knowledge, get a juicy project?).

I have just seen a link on MSN with the title above which collates new things that we didn’t know 7 days ago http://news.uk.msn.com/what-we-learned-this-week.aspx . This is such a simple idea and really highlights how much our store of knowledge is growing. It is also a great way of reflecting on what we have learnt as individuals over the last 7 days.

So, what have I learned this week?

- however technically knowledgeable you are, it is still intimidating to put up your first entries on a new wiki with strangers
- you can offer people too many options, sometimes it is better to limit the choice
- it’s better to put minutes first on the agenda of a meeting (I’m still not sure about this one - it can derail a meeting sometimes, but apparently that’s meeting good practice)
- you can create new calendars within Outlook 2000 for things such as personal diaries - but group calendars don’t exist in that version
- Gordon Brown twitters! http://twitter.com/DowningStreet
- When presenting, you should always establish your credentials up front (or get someone to do it for you) so that people are more inclined to listen and take you seriously
- Carey can be a girl’s name as well as a boy’s name (this mistake caused a lot of embarassment!)
- a new way of doing stomach exercises with legs in a frog position that really protects my back
- there is something called ’sentiment analysis technology’ which can track opinions in key areas http://www.jodange.com/

I think it would be fun to do this with a group of colleagues and see what our collective knowledge looks like. I strongly suspect that we would all learn something new.

Finally go round to upgrading the software for my blog. It seems to have worked, although I ended up having to do a lot of it manually due to limitations of upload time. I can understand that they don’t want to overload servers, but the result was that I spent all afternoon doing something that probably should only have taken half an hour max. Anyway, I think it’s worked and am just posting this placeholder to test it all out.

I notice that there is now the facility in the latest version of the software to upload media as well. I can feel a podcast coming on. I bought a really neat recorder for my i-pod that makes it a doddle to create podcasts. Just plug it in and off you go. I’ve also been made aware of a free media editing piece of software (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) which will make it even easier to play with this. Just need to find something worthwhile to say now.