Sep 12
Creativity, Courage, Charisma - What Has It To Do With Management Buy-In?
The KM Singapore 2006 conference is some two months away and I look forward to it for many reasons but one in particular. While most conferences aim for interesting presentations (not that this one doesn’t), what I value most from conferences are the networking and conversations I have with the people who turn up. Interacting with practitioners, experts and expert practitioners has proved to be very valuable for me in the past. Apart from making new acquaintances and swapping ideas, it also helped me when I was a practitioner to find out and gauge the maturity of KM implementations in similar organisations, a kind of “soft benchmarking” technique.
This time the conference has in its programme two forums scheduled for the afternoon which I am glad for, especially the one on “Getting Management Buy-in”. An actKM project, anecdotes are currently being collected via online contributions. It would be quite a treat to hear some of these accounts face-to-face as well, for judging from what I have read so far, the stories can range from the familiar to the almost unbelievable, to the incredibly hilarious.
Another thought I have is that while getting management buy-in is one thing, sustaining it is another challenge in itself. Having been involved in a support role at corporate planning sessions, I have seen situations where Management buy-in for an initiative start to waver, and it then becomes a struggle for project managers and sometimes even their Sponsors to keep the initiative afloat and still on the list of Management priorities. Questions are revisited, projects are stalled while awaiting re-validation, and so on.
Be it a KM initiative, an infrastructure development project or a major event, wavering management buy-in can certainly create doubt and fear in project managers, of whether, when and how things may change and affect their projects. Some project managers have sadly become less imaginative and creative as a result, preferring to stick to safe, tried and tested approaches to implementing their projects. They become ordinary ie. minus the extra. Somehow, I’m beginning to get the notion of the “self-fulfilling” prophecy.
On the other hand, we have to contend that Management does have a right and an obligation to constantly review their priorities for the benefit of the organisation. This therefore calls for a need for project managers to be sensitive to their accountabilities, and therefore change of heart. So, where does does that leave us? What level of rigour could we ourselves take before trying to soak up enough management buy-in for our own initiatives? Do we have the courage to admit and step down when really our projects are not going to be the “bright stars”?
And if we are in the midst of project implementation, and we know how projects can overrun in schedule, scope and resources, do we have the courage to cut our losses from our own projects if they are really not going to give the organisation the original justified returns?
Then, I also wonder if charisma and eloquence matter when getting management buy-in? It may seem like an absurd question but would Management members who are charming articulators and influencers have an edge in getting more of their projects supported at these corporate planning sessions?
I like this topic because I can relate to it with the voice of experience and curiosity. I hope we see a good mix of senior management representatives and project managers at the conference forum (and consultants who are sometimes also impacted by wavering Management buy-in), to explore and understand the various perspectives and dimensions of this topic.
Sep 05
Invisible Influence
The chaps over at Anecdote have taken to thanking the people who link to them or comment on their posts, once a month or so. It’s a nice thing to do, though the cynical might say they are showing off their network visibility and the insecure might say “hey I’d better comment, all these other people are”. But even if there is a bit of theatre about this, where’s the harm? They are out to make a living, they do great work, and we all display our feathers once in a while in our own different ways.
But a coincidental comment by Steve Denning on the com-prac forum yesterday made me think.
Sep 04
Barriers to Sharing Knowledge
A great summary from Shawn over at Anecdote of an article by Andreas Riege in the Journal of Knowledge Management on the barriers to knowledge sharing – together with a reference to Gabriel Szulanski (inexplicably missed by Riege). Here’s a catalogue of woes too often found in whole clumps and clusters!
Aug 31
This blog Is Not About KM
Lately, it seems like there is nothing but bad news in the world. Everyday, violent deaths occur in Iraq. The Israel/Lebanon conflict just ended, with neither side the better for it. Some parts of Africa are always at war. Some parts of the Middle East are always on the brink of war. Some parts of Asia seem like they’re itching to go to war. Some parts of America have brought war onto other people’s lands. Some parts of Europe are experiencing a new kind of war that knows no borders. Natural disasters seem less natural yet more disastrous, fuelled in part by relentless industrialization. People are displaced, starving, suffering from diseases, raped, pillaged, murdered.
Aug 31
Technology and Communities of Practice
Have just discovered Joitske Hulsebosch’s weblog. I’ve bumped into her in various forums and in some comments here, and now I’ve found her blog. Joitske is focused on communites for development but like so many people with a special focus, the things the magpie collects have much broader applicability. Inside recent posts you’ll find a treasure trove of trinkets, including references to “The ape in the corner office” (a book on how primate-like our organisational behaviours are), a free DIY animated movie site, and an absolutely hilarious transcript of a Skype conference call on a Ghanaian languages wikipedia project (Nancy, Shawn, Matt and Kaye will shiver with recognition).
Aug 30
Information Overjoy - Voila!
Bonjour! Just back yesterday from a 2-week vacation in France and catching up on the recent discussion thread on the actKM forum on infoluenza (Luke Naismith), info detox (Matt Moore), vacations and device-obsesssion (Kaye Vivian) and French women who don’t get fat (Luke again) makes me feel like I never left France afterall.
Proud to say I took only my mobile phone for emergency comms and my videocam to capture the memories of my sister’s wedding, I deliberately chose to leave behind my PDA and laptop and become (almost) incommunicado. While it was not an info detox programme I was on (don’t think that is possible with me unless I am able to shut down all my senses), I was absorbing loads of new information all the time and enjoying it. Medieval castles, Renaissance art, Benedictine basilicas and monasteries, vineyards and wine cellars, meeting with the who’s who in the Burgundian wine making industry, learning a Burgundian folk song and some of their wedding traditions, and so on. There were also many of own episodes of “Lost” in Burgundy when we travelled from Paris to Dijon by car, using only segments of maps of the route my bro-in-law had printed off the web (I’m sure this qualifies for another blogpost).
The holiday was delightfully hectic but I believe the “distance” I had from my various comms devices enabled me to enjoy the “here and now”. I was not distracted with email, googling or skyping but enthusiastically soaking in everything going on around me, my senses heightened by the entire experience. I had a gem of a guide, my sister’s father-in-law, a wine-maker who was a oenologist (even learnt that new word). I did not have info overload, I had info overjoy.
Back to the discussion on infoluenza, it seems to me that info overload has little to do with the amount of information we get. What we term as overload or overjoy depends very much on the level of utility we derive from the information we receive, irrespective of amount. For me, the level of info utility was high when I was in Burgundy because I was discovering new stuff in an enjoyable, experiential way. I guess other people would define utility in their own personal way.
I like what Luke said about being more like the French by eating our information fresh and in season – that to me is being in the “here and now”.
As for the French women, I have to admit that the majority of them that I saw were trim. Why even I lost weight after my trip : ) I was walking down to the Panthenon one sunny afternoon and saw this woman jogging, heading towards me. She had on a fitting T-shirt and a pair of cycle shorts. She was well-proportioned, had a super-curvaceous body and a great posture. I was absolutely impressed, so much so I had to turn around and look at her when she passed me. Then, there it was – reality. She had cellulite on the back of her thighs! Yes!! Trust a woman to spot even the minutest of “imperfections”!
Aug 30
Balance, Politics and Communities
This animation is a brilliant metaphor for the dynamics and politics of communities. Thanks Joitske!
Aug 29
Welcome to the Blogosphere, Luke
Luke Naismith, a regular and always insightful contributor on the actKM Forum has just started blogging. Luke is a great metaphorical thinker, and he also has a keen interest in “futures” – ie thinking about how surprising the future can be. His first few posts promise great things to come – covering “infoluenza”, Einstein’s theory of relativity translated into KM terms, and the impact of containerisation on docker workforces (parallel to the “near-extinction” of other workforces from miners to secretaries) – and what that teaches us about the capacity of the future to surprise. Welcome Luke! (Thanks Jack).
Meanwhile, over at Cognitive Edge, Dave Snowden seems to have gotten over his intimidating first flush avalanche of rich, deep posting, and has settled into a more regular pattern of posts – thanks, Dave… you were threatening the balance of the universe! ... or at least the cognitive capacities of this meagre netizen.
Aug 28
Prudence and Courage
Last week was one of great, irresolvable contrasts. I spent the week in Dhaka, Bangladesh, working with a client on how to use their knowledge about their customers to improve their customers’ journeys. The people I was working with were smart, switched on, keen and energetic. A delight to work with. A country of such people should be able to achieve great things.
The streets outside their office compound told a different story.
Aug 26
Money, Testosterone and Knowledge Management
This article chronicles an acrimonious schism in the KM association KM Pro in late 2004, and puts it into the context of other KM association schisms in the USA during the late nineties. I wrote this article originally for the Global Knowledge Review in early 2005. They decided not to publish it after one of the protagonists in the drama claimed there were “serious errors of fact” in the article and hinted at legal action (as you’ll see, lawyers were liberally used as instruments of intimidation during the KM Pro episode). Despite several attempts to find out what those “errors” were, I didn’t get any clear answer, so I shelved the article. However, I keep getting asked to share it, so am now posting it here. Feedback appreciated! The drama, by the way, continues, with the shutting down of three Yahoo Groups KM communities in early 2006 directly attributable to the differences between the warring parties in this fight.
