DaChispa

I had a very interesting conversation today with someone who had worked for Amazon, and was enlightening about the difference between the public image they project and the actuality of working there.  The image is of a dynamic IT company (even though we know it is a retail outlet – just that its shop is online) but in reality it is very white collar and somewhat conservative.  We talked about recognition and they do something eminently copyable in its very simplicity.  Everyone has an online presence and you are recognised for achievement using an icon (tailored to the specific type of achievement).  It becomes a matter of pride to get these icons and they are a highly visible measure of recognition.  I really like this idea and am wondering how I can adapt it for an organisation that doesn’t have such a high online presence.   A board of fame??? 

Over the past few days I have carried out a couple of activities that have made me realise how important writing style is – at least as important as the content which it surrounds.  I have been bringing together comments on a document to produce a final version.  What was quite interesting was that there was some disagreement, but when I started looking at it more closely, the comments were actually saying a similar thing.  The difference was largely in the language used.  This poses problems both of understanding, and of producing a coherent end product.  What I have ended up doing is actually concentrating on unifying the style and have found that the content falls out of it more naturally.  Not the way I would originally have thought of doing it.  The acid test is to see what the next round of reviews make of it…. they may find the style uncomfortable…..  There is a danger that if the style is unacceptable, the content is not even read.

I was also doing that most dreaded of jobs – housekeeping my e-mail!  This involves a certain amount of reading of existing content to make sure I don’t delete or misfile something crucial.  I grouped them by person as I find it easier to work out what can go – what I realised by doing this was interesting.  I unconsciously adapt my language to mirror what I think will make the recipent most likely to respond to what I have to say.  I know that I do this consciously for emails where I have to influence someone – and I try and use some of the NLP principles around language and thinking style – but it was a bit of an eye opener to see so clearly illustrated the impact of trust, hierarchy and gender on my written communication.  It seems obvious, but it was strange to see the way in which the development of an email relationship evolves in the language.  Also I can see dramatic proof of the importance of face to face meetings – in many cases, the quality of the email communication dramatically improves after I have met someone because the level of trust increases and we are perhaps not so guarded in our use of language.  People can tell you this in presentations, but actually seeing it in my own inbox was a very strong reinforcement.

Another good reason for providing free chapters of books online is to sell them as hard copies – or maybe to raise the profile of the author.  Here is an example The Social Life of Information where over half of the book is available online (although what looks like the most interesting chapter isn’t).  Amazon, of course, has used this to good effect with their ‘search inside’ feature.  It can put you off a book, but is more likely to encourage you to buy than not – and is quite effective in emulating the physical bookshelf browsing that makes book buying so satisfying. 

I have to thank the ACT-KM for taking me down the KM book route, they have a discussion going on at the moment about the top 10 KM books and it has been interesting to see that the same ones mostly come out – with a few honorable exceptions.  Here are some of the lists  http://stangarfield.googlepages.com/kmbooks & http://www.listible.com/list/best-ten-readings-in-knowledge-management 

My own reading list is here.  The first book that I read on KM, that made sense to me, was ‘The Knowledge Management Fieldbook’ by Wendy R. Bukowitz and Ruth L. Williams.  Up until then, I had been a bit concerned that KM was all theory and no action, but this book gave me a practical starting point to not only explain to sceptical colleagues what all this KM stuff was about, but to also give me a kick start on actually doing something.  I can’t say that about too many books that I have read.

I was reminded today about someone who, in his own words ‘practices what he preaches’ and has made his KM book available as a downloadable pdf and as a wiki.  The link to George Siemens’ book is here http://www.knowingknowledge.com/book.php from where you can get to the pdfs and the wiki.

This seems to be an increasing trend with publishing, particularly with KM.  Knowledgeboard produced a collaboratively created book http://www.knowledgeboard.com/knowledgebank/book.html  which is a collection of case studies.  They are also looking for contributions to a new book http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=2750

This opens up so many opportunities – it makes it easy for people to get a step on the ladder of writing as they can contribute either by commenting on an existing work, or they can create a chapter for a larger book.   No longer is there a tortuous publishing process followed by the feared literary review – now your reviews can be carried out as part of the publishing process and your audience can co-create.  Content can be kept current, which is always a bonus.  It is vanity publishing – but this new form of it is free of charge, and you are really putting yourself out to a massive audience to be commented on, so you have to be fairly confident of your content.

For me, the downside may well be the loss of the paper format.  I like the feel of a book and to be able to carry it with me on a train or to the beach.  This may no longer be an issue as portable electronic book readers become more of a reality, but reading on screen is still somehow less satisfying than holding paper in your hands.  Whatever the outcome on the physical format side, I can only be happy that more and more useful words are being made freely available to all online.

This is a topic that has come up a lot over the last weeks and what has become apparent is that the difficulty of measurement sometimes prevents KM initiatives even starting.  Perhaps this is because measurement is something that middle management understand and KM is less obvious to them – if you can’t talk to them about what you will be measuring, they are (quite rightly) not interested.  I think I get it - don’t tell people what you are going to do, tell them what you will be able to prove.  Some examples might be – this project will deliver:

-A reduction of barriers between departments so that projects are delivered faster and to better quality.  (measured by ona, qa process and progress against plans)

-Innovation (measured by number of patents,  new product lines, process improvement gains)

-Reduction in the number of errors (measured by call logs, outage times, shorter problem solution times)

It seems to me that the measurements are around what the deliverables give you – the difference in KM initiatives might be that you measure these deliverables using KM methods.  For example organisational network analysis is a KM tool that can help measure whether the barriers/silos have been reduced and you may use storytelling or wiki statistics to demonstrate sharing behaviours.  KM is not what is being measured, it is the business driver that produces the measurement.  KM is the process by which you deliver it.

I was at a KM networking meeting today and came away with a few really useful re-frames that could change the way we approach certain things.  The best one was one which made me think again about the ‘you must measure performance of your products every 90 days’ which is the sort of message we are getting about how we will go forward.  This is quite daunting as some products/initiatives are difficult to ‘measure’.  However, one of the colleagues today talked about ensuring ‘ a quick win every 90 days’.  Nothing unique about this in itself but it made me think that if we phrased it in this way, it is much more achievable and understandable for us. 

A second interesting re-frame came out of a discussion about losing knowledge from leavers and what a gap this can leave.  However, another perspective was given – there may be a gap, but it also means that new people generate new knowledge and might do things better because they aren’t constrained by old knowledge.  I hadn’t actually thought about this in this particular context before and it does throw a different light on leavers’ knowledge capture.

Finally, a spin on good/best practice.  How about ‘next practice’ which I think is brilliant in its simplicity.  It implies improvement/innovation while tapping into the well understood idea of sharing good practice.  I love it – just wish it had been my idea!

I was listening to someone talk about knowledge management yesterday and basically breaking it into three generations.  Largely they equated to: 

It isn’t a case of going from one generation to another, but rather of building on each to enable real learning and innovation.  What struck me was a potential comparision with the the cognitive/somatic/field mind that Robert Dilts talked about on the course he recently gave.  Cognitive could be equated to the explicit generation where it is very much what you can physically see/hear/touch.  The Somatic mind, which is more about the overall body and senses could be compared to the tacit knowledge – knowledge which you know, but it not easily transferrable to others.  It is ‘in the muscle’ for you, but how do you help someone else really understand your tacit knowledge.  Finally the field mind – which is to do with how your environment and others around you can produce a field where unexpected things happen – is very similar to the concept of emergent knowledge.  Here communities/social networks might work together to create new knowledge/innovation.  The example given with the field mind is how you might, in a meeting or training situation, come up with an answer or idea that seemingly comes from no-where, but actually arises from your interaction with other participants.

I’m not quite sure yet where this might lead, but I think it is defnitely worth thinking about in more depth and maybe seeing how NLP techniques can be embedded in knowledge and best practice transfer.