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…

It was a great pleasure to present at KM Australia today in Sydney. My talk took a pragmatic look at how changing technologies can support knowledge management. Key points:

• There are two extremes in KM: it’s all about the people and not about the technology; or roll out disruptive new technologies and sit back to watch the transformation.
• Both extremes are wrong. To quote Andrew McAffee “it’s not not about the technology”, but you can’t magically solve problems with technology.
• Don’t “pilot” new technologies without a clear objective and strategy.
• Target business needs, rather than starting with the tools.
• There are many great examples of how technology can help KM, including plenty from the Intranet Innovation Awards.
• You can’t change culture with technology, but technology can help!

(PS. thanks to David Gurteen for applying a “conversational format” to the conference, rather than the usual sit-still-and-listen format.)

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?

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.

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.

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.

Some people are referring to technology when they talk about collaboration, others are looking at the “collaborative culture” within organisations, while still others consider collaboration from an individual’s perspective. All are valid topics, but the breadth of collaboration can lead to crossed lines when we try to bring them all together.

Within an organisation, it’s easy to get caught up in just a few aspects of collaboration, leaving big holes that impact on short and long-term success. How do we ensure we’re looking at all the necessary elements of collaboration?

While sitting in an airport on the way back to Australia, a overall model for collaboration coalesced in my mind, bringing together all the different aspects of collaboration. This is still in its infancy, but I thought it would be useful to share it, and to get some feedback.

A model: three tiers of collaboration

Each tier builds on the one below, starting with capacity (pre-requisites for collaboration), through capability (strength of collaborative activities and approaches) to strategy (overall focus on collaboration).

A brief outline of each item, starting from the bottom up:

Capacity

• Culture of collaboration – integration of collaborative practices into “the way we work” throughout the organisation.
• Individual readiness – the skills, background, practices and personality of individuals for collaboration.
• Social networks – the breadth and strength of social and interpersonal relationships within the organisation.
• Business opportunity – the time and opportunity for collaboration within daily work practices and overall business model.

Capability

• Collaboration tools – designing and deploying effective collaboration tools.
• Collaboration model – overall model for collaboration, in the context of information management strategy.
• Support for the individual – providing individuals with personal tools and support for collaboration.
• Fostering connections – skills and support for fostering interaction and relationships between people.

Strategy

• Governance – ownership, resourcing and decision making processes for collaboration.
• Roadmap – overall strategy and roadmap for the adoption and growth of collaboration within the organisation.
• Business value – demonstrated business or organisational value of collaboration, and alignment with core business goals.
• Strategic focus – organisation recognises collaboration as a ‘top line’ element of overall success and strategy.

Using the model

This is a descriptive model, that oulines all the elements of collaboration, and it can be used in a variety of ways:

• as the basis for a self-assessment of where collaboration activities are currently focused in the organisation
• to identify areas of strength and weakness in collaboration strategies
• as the basis for research and learning about collaborative approaches
• as a way of structuring a collection of collaboration techniques and approaches
• as a shared model to build understanding between practitioners of collaboration

As previously indicated, this is an early version of the model, very much a work-in-progress. Your questions, suggestions or improvements? ]]> http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/three-tiers-of-collaboration/feed/ 12 http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/km-approaches-and-tools-a-guidebook/ http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/km-approaches-and-tools-a-guidebook/#comments Thu, 06 Nov 2008 22:30:19 +0000 James Robertson http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/?p=3087 A little while back, Straits Knowledge published their KM Method Cards. These provide a handy at-a-glance resource for knowledge managers and business people, and they can be used in many different ways (see my earlier review for more).

Patrick Lambe and Edgar Tan have now built on this foundation, releasing a new resource: KM Approaches and Tools – A Guidebook. This 134-page volume provides a how-to guide on 24 of the key knowledge management techniques, including:

• after action review
• decision games
• most significant change
• peer assist
• pre-mortem
• world cafe

(Just a few of the techniques covered.)

For each technique, practical step-by-step information is provided, explaining how the techniques works, when to use it, and what benefits will be gained. Templates and further resources are provided to further support the practitioner.

The value of this guidebook cannot be overstated. Too often, the potential benefits of knowledge management are lost under a sea of theory and jargon, making it hard for business people to put the techniques into practice. In their typical style, the Straits Knowledge team cut through all this, providing a no-nonsence description of KM techniques that is perhaps the clearest ever published.

If you have an interest in knowledge management, this is a great place to start, and a wonderful jumping off point for further learning. Highly recommended.

Just as brief overview, Social Network Analysis (SNA) is a tool that provides a technique for analysing informal networks. SNA is an interesting Knowledge Management (KM) “technology” since it provides one of the few methods for making knowledge activities in an organisation visible through the analysis of relationships between people.

If you are running a knowledge management programme then you know that you do good work. Whether it is involves communities of practice, learning from projects and operational activities, or documenting organisation knowledge in a myriad of ways (from traditional databases to blogs and wikis), you know what you do is important for your organisation.
However simply knowing this is not enough. At some point, you will have to justify what you do to those above you. If you don’t, you may not get to do it any longer. Often these justifications have to take a financial form.