Apr 17
A Knowledge Management Call To Action
Take a look at this “Partnership Declaration”: it’s a call to action directed at organisations in general but those in the human development sector in particular, to get them to take partnering seriously. As I read it, I saw several resonances with knowledge management, in particular as an agenda or manifesto for the KM professional community to present to the organisations we serve. I’m currently serving as President of the Information and Knowledge Management Society, and we are thinking about the role such a society has to play in professional development and KM advocacy. Is anyone out there aware of anything similar in the KM space? I don’t mean a charter for a Society, but a call to action to organisations at large. All suggestions appreciated!
Apr 17
This is the Week of Incongruity
A couple of days ago I posted on an incongruous banner... then I came across this video via Gaping Void and Johnnie Moore... and honestly I have nothing to say… only questions…
Apr 13
The Real Test of Value
Here is a video on making a difference from the Simple Truths of Service series, courtesy of Paul McDowall (Canadian School of Public Service).
It reminds me of how back in the early KM days, there were two of us who used to churn out this monthly KM bulletin. We called them “KM Bullets” to impress on staff how short and quick reading them would be. The KM Bullets would have a KM quote of the week, a recommended book to take to bed and a review of a KM article. We would send them via email to all staff as at that time, hardly anyone visited the Intranet.
We began to wonder if staff actually read these bulletins. When we asked around, it seemed like no one seemed particularly interested in them and so, we stopped them after almost a year. Much to our surprise, we got emails from some of our colleagues based at our various client sites asking why we had stopped issuing them. It turned out they had been reformatting our KM Bullets and sending them out to their respective client organizations. We made a difference to some folks and were not even aware of it. Maybe I should have formed a queue like Johnny to hand out those KM Bullets. That would have given me immediate feedback.
It also says I suppose that even though a service does not receive positive feedback it does not mean that it is not viewed positively. Sometimes, the test is to just take it away and see if anyone notices 
Err… did anyone miss me these last 2 weeks?
Apr 13
Passionately Logging In
The term “passion” is increasingly being overused, dotted around recruitment ads and peppered into motivational talks – as if the use of the word itself can somehow inspire an otherwise lifeless topic. I’m just not sure anymore whether “passion” is a good term to use without qualification. “Unbridled passion” is definitely undesirable in the workplace, I feel, so my tolerance for the term would be increased if we used it with the qualifier “bridled”. Imagine the job ad, if you will: “WE SEEK PEOPLE WITH BRIDLED PASSION” ie people who are not likely to be carried away by a fancy without consideration of the consequences, but are driven by strong, directed, thoughtful, disciplined energy – and personal commitment. What other qualifications for the term “passion” can you think of to make the usage more legitimate?
This banner caught my eye on the way to work this morning, epitomising the depths to which the word “passion” has sunk. It’s from a campaign for wholesome family oriented internet participation from the main Singapore grassroots/community development organisation, the People’s Association. It’s amusing in an odd sort of way, but speaks about a deeper trend we lament from time to time, the disjunction between the words we use (the spin) and the deeds we do (the delivery).
I’ve just been decidng not to participate in a project where I got a distinct feeling that when one party was using the term “strategy” they meant a form of words on a piece of paper (which could be drawn up by anybody, including an external consultant), whereas when I used it, I meant an instrument for guiding and determining actions, decisions, allocations of resources, prioritising.
We backed off from the project because we weren’t sufficiently confident we had enough shared understanding of the objectives with the project owner to ensure a real world delivery of value might be possible. They wanted a document. Not a strategy. And somehow, magically, this document would effect change. It’s almost as bad as thinking that you can buy KM by buying an IT system – maybe worse, because at least you can do more stuff with an IT system than a consultant’s report. I had another conversation this morning with a good friend, who had been asked to analyse the internal information needs of a prospective client for an intranet redesign – but he wasn’t allowed to go talk to anyone, or examine their existing content – just read and analyse the summary of the needs they had compiled.
It’s disheartening sometimes. One of my most depressing moments in being a KM consultant was a couple of years ago, sitting across the table from somebody who listened very carefully to what I had to say about the work that has to go in to support a successful KM initiative. I leaned back and said rhetorically, “Of course, you don’t need to worry about all that if you want your KM initiative to fail”. My interlocutor (who was in a fairly senior position in a very large, high profile organisation, not in Singapore) leaned forward, looked me in the eye and said “Sometimes you don’t want to succeed”. He then told me that he had to look like he was doing KM to satisfy one senior figure who thought it was important, but if he did it seriously, he’d disturb too many people and rock too many comfortable boats. So he wanted the spin, not the delivery.
Perhaps he’d like this banner.
Apr 10
My Book Has a Webpage
I have finally set up a webpage for my taxonomy book, at www.organisingknowledge.com. You can preview snippets from the book and get a sense of what’s inside. Oh, and if you’ve read it, you can also make comments and give feedback!
Apr 04
Supermarket 2.0
OK, since we seem to be on a Web 2.0 theme this week, I couldn’t pass up this wacky Israeli take on what a supermarket would be like if it was Web 2.0 enabled – with user tagging, RSS feeds, semantic search, the works. Now I frequently use a “supermarket game” in taxonomy workshops where participants have to design a supermarket with a standard set of product cards. The idea is to use a real world analogue to teach basic taxonomy principles, and it’s pretty good at that. What this video demonstrates, however, is how far removed from the physical world the Web 2.0 world is, despite our ideas about it making the web more human-oriented. My favourite bit is where the checkout clerk tells the shopper “people who bought red wine also bought condoms” and hands her some… Thanks to David Weinberger for this link (he has flu, by the way, so drop him a comforting word).
Apr 02
23 Things
Tired of hearing all the propaganda about Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 and (most recently) KM 2.0, and unsure what exactly people are talking about? 23 Things refers to a programme of (23!) tasks that takes you through the “real stuff” of Web 2.0. You start by setting up a blog (which becomes your learning journal for the rest of the journey), you venture into Flickr and social tagging, setting up RSS feeds and blog readers, application sharing, wikis, and podcasting among other things. It’s an experiential journey to give you a taste of how the social dynamics of the web can change – unless you have experienced it, it’s very hard to evaluate or comment on it objectively, as Dave Snowden has recently argued in another context.
This freely available programme was devised by the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County to help their librarians see the potential of Web 2.0 for public library services, and has proven so popular it’s being adopted by other library services around the world. But when you look at the details, there’s no reason on earth why anyone else shouldn’t follow the same path. Part of the programme is that you set up your blog/learning journal within a community of fellows, however, so my guess is it would be most effective if you are following this journey with compatriots to share the insights, learnings and questions.
Thanks to Kim for this link.
Mar 30
Gary Klein and Dave Snowden on KM and Singapore’s Risk Assessment and Horizon Scanning System
On March 22nd, the Information and Knowledge Management Society hosted a dialogue with Gary Klein and Dave Snowden on how KM can contribute to a risk assessment system such as the RAHS system recently developed by the Singapore Government. With their permission we video-taped it and made a podcast, in four segments, each of 15-20 minutes in duration.
Mar 29
Have You Done Something Wonderful With Your Intranet?
My company Straits Knowledge is proud to be a supporter of the new Intranet Innovation Awards launched by James Robertson’s company Step Two Designs. James is famous for being feisty, practical and direct and one of his key insights into intranets is that they rarely work well as megalithic “enterprise solutions” using just a couple of big industrial software applications. Intranets are – where they work well – environments that service a variety of working practices and activities, attract participation, and foster coordination and collaboration across the enterprise.
Since work focus, work patterns, coordination needs and organisation structure change on an increasingly frequent basis, big, highly integrated homogeneous environments are just not adaptive or nimble enough. Intranets are increasingly becoming more flexible, evolving environments, becoming much more like an interdependent ecology of open applications talking to each other – whether they be workflow applications, calendaring, web content publishing, document management, blogs, wikis, media libraries, podcasting, staff directories, you name it. Some areas of the intranet will be quite stable and structured, some will be much more experimental, some will provide current awareness and content marketing on a daily basis.
This is where these new Intranet Innovation Awards stand out, because unlike other intranet awards, they focus on innovations within an intranet environment, rather than on the intranet as a whole – this should surface some really cool stuff, and I’m looking forward to the outcomes. The four main categories cover innovations in core functionality, communication and collaboration, frontline support and business process support.
So if you have done something cool, now’s your chance to share it! Closing date is 15th May.
Mar 23
Personal Knowledge Management: Age 8
Here’s an enterprising eight year old, attempting to take control of her own destiny…
http://www.esnips.com/doc/aa331f6b-8226-4cd8-a4c7-a33912efca48/Demolitioncall
