KM Singapore 2011 was a great conference. As is often the way for community-run events, it was underpinned by a depth of knowledge about the subject, and a passion for delivering a great event for participants.

One of the unusual aspects of the conference was the Twitter wall. Unlike other events I’ve been to, it wasn’t to one side, or in the public area. As the photos above show, it was front-and-centre, directly behind the speaker, with the slides shown on screens to one side.

As the opening keynote, I was a little apprehensive. What would the audience say? Would it all go wrong, like some notable incidents of the past?. As the speaker, it wasn’t possible to see the Twitter wall, so I’d have to wait until the end of my talk to see if I was liked.

In the end, it was a huge success for the event. The Twitter wall software, developed by local Singaporean agency JamiQ.com, was interesting but non-intrusive.

It was great to see how the Twitter wall was incorporated into the conversations during the conference. It was like a real-time chat space for participants, posting a mix of speakers’ comments, photos, commentary and social chit-chat. Very different from the “back channel” role that Twitter normally plays at an event.

Much of the success was probably due to the topic of the conference (knowledge sharing!) and the sense of community amongst the participants. Nonetheless, it would be great to see similar approached tried at other events.

So congratulations to iKMS for a bold approach, and a great success.

It was my great pleasure today to be the opening keynote at the KM Singapore conference organised by iKMS on 1 September 2011.

My key points:

• Intranets need to move beyond being merely “useful” to becoming “essential”.
• In the KM space, technology has had a poor track record.
• Technology has changed (for the better), and we’ve now got the wisdom to do great things.
• Intranets can support KM, for both explicit and tacit knowledge.
• Intranets of the future are smart.
• Intranets of the future join the dots.
• Intranets of the future understand people.

And a “blip video” recorded straight after the session, touching on some of the more controversial points…

When I was in London late last year, I was pleased to have an opportunity to record a video interview with Faith Wainwright of Arup. Gold winners of the 2010 Intranet Innovation Awards, their skills networks are powerful and global communities of practice. Of great interest to intranet teams and knowledge managers alike.

In this 8 minute video, we cover:

• Challenges for a global consultancy?
• What are skills networks?
• Evolution of the networks?
• Business benefits?
• Lessons learnt?
• Tips for others?

Understand the call centre environment

The best way to understand the call centre work environment is spend a day there. Sit with the staff as they take customer inquiries and evaluate how easy it is for them to delight the customer. (A technique covered in the previous article Conducting intranet needs analysis).

These workers have different needs from the corporate colleagues because they are:

• furthest from corporate information sources, but responsible for its dissemination
• in constant and direct contact with customers, who invariably have a problem or information need to be solved immediately
• measured by the time taken to resolve customer issues
• and simultaneously navigating multiple enterprise systems and related applications

[February article by Stephen Byrne, read the full article]

This leads me to the changing role of intranets in knowledge-intensive businesses. These intranets need to provide flexible access to both information and people by employing pull models for serving as many knowledge worker information needs as possible, including unanticipated information needs. Information supply needs to be maximized by supporting the creation and access to user-generated content as well as by allowing for easy integration of external information sources. The intranet needs to be turned into an “information broker platform” where information is freely and easily created, aggregated, shared, found and discovered at minimal effort. Such an intranet gives everybody access to all information which is available and make room for virtually infinite amounts of information.

While waiting for the project to start, he spent time researching KM practices and methodologies, reading KM books and following the mailing lists. And this is where the problems started.

According to the KM literature, knowledge managers have the task of transforming their organisations, establishing new cultures and working practices. In this organisation, this potentially included:

• conducting a comprehensive knowledge audit
• redesigning the intranet
• implementing a document management system
• establishing a process for records management
• creating an enterprise-wide taxonomy and metadata standard
• deploying a CRM for service staff
• redeveloping the website
• creating a formal KM strategy and governance model
• supporting knowledge sharing initiatives

This is a huge list, and it leaves knowledge managers stuck in the shadow of immortal figures. In the world of KM literature, knowledge managers stride god-like through their organisations, radically transforming how staff and business units operate. They reshape firms into “knowledge-centric businesses”, overcome organisational silos, and prevent reinvention of the wheel.

This is, of course, crazy. Not even the CEO can single-handedly transform an organisation. As mere mortals, knowledge managers are set up for failure with they measure their projects against these grand objectives.

At the end of the day, if a knowledge manager delivers more value in a year than their salary and (meagre) budget, they’re ahead. If they solve one small but important issue, they’re doing their job. To achieve this, they need to escape these immortal visions, and focus on the work that can be done by mortals.

In this specific situation, we had a useful day. We explored hands-on ways of understanding staff and business needs, determined a practical approach to choosing activities, and highlighted a few areas to focus on. Now the real work of KM can start in earnest…

What are your thoughts on this? Do we need to escape the impossible expectations created for KM roles?

I have been interested in the field of expertise location for over a decade, from back when knowledge managers were building ‘corporate yellow pages’ and other tools to find the best expertise in the organization.

Unless a large organization can bring the most relevant expertise within the firm to bear on the problems and issues at hand, it really has no reason to exist. A smaller more nimble organization could do as good a job with lower costs.

In this post I will attempt to outline a metholodolgy for carrying out an organization wide knowledge initiative based on an approach that I have found to work very well in the past – the Quality Circle. The approach is fairly non-prescriptive and should be scalable for organizations of different sizes and with varying resources.

It is my belief that intranet and internal communications workers should be contributing to the knowledge debate, especially when it comes to knowledge in the workplace, if only to ensure that a simple, practical approach is arrived at that can be of value in the enterprise. In this post I will try to outline such an approach in the hope that knowledge issues in the workplace might start to get attention I think they deserve.

The software selected provided a vehicle for JetBlue faculty to talk to one another, not just about process improvements in learning & development, but also to share photos from family vacations, weddings and birthdays. The thinking behind this choice was that as the faculty got to know one another better as individuals, they would more easily share lessons and best practices as professionals.

(I love the use of video to share details of these types of case studies, definitely makes them much more engaging.)

So here’s an introduction to some of our most important lessons learned over the years in how to approach a KM strategy exercise with some chance of it moving off the page of the consultant’s report and into some form of reality. Enjoy!

Here’s another in our series of video tutorials to different practical knowledge management techniques. It’s taken from a workshop we conducted last week on knowledge audits and knowledge mapping. For ease of use it’s split into three short parts.

The earlier article Conducting intranet needs analysis outlined a structured approach to conducting user research to improve intranets.

A range of approaches can be used, but the core research technique is one-on-one staff interviews. These quickly provide a huge body of knowledge on day-to-day issues, roadblocks, needs and opportunities.

These interviews must be run well, however, if they are to deliver the greatest depth of information.

The fundamentals of interviewing

To be effective, follow some basic guidelines on interview technique:

• Find a quiet place. Interviews should be conducted in a quiet, private location free of distractions or interruptions. (The alternative is to conduct interviews at people’s desks, which can provide other advantages.)

[CM Briefing 2009-05, read the full article]

Feeling part of a team

It is difficult to replicate ‘water-cooler’ chat with remote staff but it is becoming easier. A number of tools are now available to support individuals working in remote teams. In order for these tools to work, there must be a ‘connection’ established first. If two colleagues don’t communicate beforehand, providing access to instant messaging tools is not going to make them talk.

Commitment to communicate

Keeping the connection with staff can be difficult. It is easy to fall into the trap of ‘out of sight, out of mind’. All members of a team are responsible for keeping in touch with colleagues.

A variety of tools can be used to help remote staff feel connected, but there needs to be a commitment to ‘keeping in touch’ for this to work. No technology can replace those personal interactions.

Making an effort to call, message or email on a regular basis can help manage the sense of isolation often felt by teams working remotely from each other.

Head office or branch staff need to make an effort to find out more about remote staff, their interests, goals and location.

[CMb 2009-02 by Rebecca Rodgers, read the full article]

Once again, I find myself in need of explaining CoPs (communities of practice) to people I’m working with. I’ve been working with CoPs since 2002 in the same organisation. There’s been the usual ups and downs – a couple of CoPs bit the dust (really because they’d reached the limits of their purpose); senior management have tried to get their claws into the CoPs or grilled me over ROI on the CoPs; and the CoPs have survived a recent restructure.