Nov 26
Knowledge Continuity at KM World 2009
Here’s the video capture of my presentation at KM World last week – thanks to Maish and a new Flip Video camera for getting it done (though I had a habit of hiding from the camera!).
The video is in two parts of roughly 20 minutes each: the first part builds a case for expertise management in the context of knowledge continuity, to support the three core cognitive functions of an organisation: coordination, memory and learning (thanks to Matt for the Finian photo and the baby idea as a framing metaphor). It does this by looking at cases where those functions had broken down because of a failure to manage expertise.
The second part provides an interim report on the survey we have been running alongside our open source expertise study, where we can see some interesting patterns emerging around what organisations are doing or not doing with their expertise. Matt has also reported on this.
This survey is still live, and we need more responses from Asia, and from more private sector companies, big and small. So if you haven’t responded yet, please do so!
Feedback, comments, examples, counter-examples on the provisional insights are most welcome here or on the project site!
[14 December update: The videos have been reuploaded after Tony Joyce pointed out there was a file compression error some minutes into both videos – thanks Tony]
PART ONE: THE CASE FOR EXPERTISE MANAGEMENT
Download the MP4 video file by right clicking here
Go to the show page on vimeo by clicking here
PART TWO: EXPERTISE MANAGEMENT IN ORGANISATIONS
Download the MP4 video file by right clicking here
Go to the show page on vimeo by clicking here
Nov 09
Shawn Callahan on Building a Collaborative Workplace
Back in September I had the privilege of co-facilitating a workshop with Shawn Callahan on Business Narrative as part of Singapore’s International Storytelling Festival (we’re hoping to turn this into a conference on business narrative next year, drop us a line if you’re interested).
At the end of the first long workshop day, Shawn very generously also gave a talk for the Information and Knowledge Management Society on “Building a Collaborative Workplace With Stories” – and we captured it on video (in two parts). Enjoy.
Download the MP4 video file by right clicking here
Go to the show page on vimeo by clicking here
Download the MP4 video file by right clicking here
Go to the show page on vimeo by clicking here
Nov 04
Anecdote Circles at High Speed
I’ve been meaning to post this for ages: a speeded up video rendition of an anecdote circles and archetypes extraction workshop involving about 30 people, just so you can see the steps of the process.
Download the MP4 video file by right clicking here
Go to the show page on vimeo by clicking here
Oct 30
$1.3 Billion Slip of Attention
Pepsico this month was ordered to pay $1.26 billion in a default judgment after it failed to defend a claim by two Wisconsin men that the company had stolen their idea for selling purified water. The company was unaware it was being sued, because the legal notice was “put away” by the company secretary, who was busy preparing for a board meeting. How fragile large companies can be. Full article here.
Oct 29
Knowledge Retention Videos
Michael Kull has some nice crisp videos on knowledge retention (personally, I prefer the term knowledge continuity because it’s more future oriented, but who’s arguing) – look out for the interviews with Dorothy Leonard of Deep Smarts fame and Jeanne Holm of NASA). The videos are in the “blogcasts” section on the left hand side of the page. Enjoy!
Oct 28
Nancy
Nancy Dixon’s blog is blossoming (Army doctrine being updated by soldiers on a wiki, where KM is headed, how to get lessons learned into learning, and more). I’m doing a workshop with Nancy at KM World in a few weeks, and looking forward to it tremendously.
Oct 27
Expertise Workshop in Washington DC on November 10th
Thanks to the generous support of the National Defense University in Washington DC and some hard work by Neil Olonoff, Gretchen Schlag, Jeff Alexander, Janet Scheitle, Janice Herd and others, we’ll be offering a free workshop on “Managing and Leveraging Expertise” on November 10, from 8am to 2pm. Full workshop details are given below. There is limited capacity (25 max) so participation is by first come first served registrations to Dr Brenda Roth at . Do circulate this notice among any Washington DC colleagues you think might be interested.
Venue: Room 184, Marshall Building (Building 62), National Defense University, Fort McNair, Washington DC
Timing: 8am to 2pm (15 mins coffee break at 10am; 1 hour lunch break 12-1pm)
Cost: free, but you will need to cover your own refreshments at the cafeteria (we’re looking at whether we can kick the day off with coffee and danish)
Register: RothB@ndu.edu
Pre-workshop: you might find it useful to take our expertise survey at http://tinyurl.com/expertisesurvey
Directions: Directions sheet here. Do aim to arrive early to get through security.
The Workshop:
The workshop focuses on how organisations value and leverage (or fail to value and leverage) the expertise and experience of their people, so we prefer a diverse, multi-organisation group if we can get it.
The workshop activities are:
1. Introduction to our leveraging expertise project (presentation format)
2. Sharing stories/examples of how expertise/ experience are valued/not valued in participants’ own organisations (group activity)
3. Working with these stories and other stories from other organisations to identify common themes, values and patterns of behaviour (large group activity working on walls/windows around the room, tagging and clustering stories)
4. Thinking about intervention design to meet the issues identified (group work to discuss specific participant cases and to examine possible approaches – using our KM Method Cards as an aid).
The Benefits:
For participants it’s an opportunity to look at issues around expertise and experience management, compare issues with other organisations, and think about possible approaches… as well as an exposure to the narrative sensemaking techniques we use. As participants in the project they will also get access to the final report.
The Background:
Patrick Lambe and Matt Moore are running a public narrative research project on how organisations value and leverage their expertise. The social and organisational context of expertise management is not well understood – most research has focused on cognitive aspects of acquiring expertise, or generic knowledge transfer issues.
Our project starts by gathering examples of how expertise is actually managed or mismanaged across a wide variety of organisations and geographies. We are running a series of sensemaking workshops to identify significant patterns in these narratives, and the DC workshop is one of these. We have completed workshops in Australia and Dubai and will conduct another sensemaking workshop (with Nancy Dixon) in San Jose on November 16.
The story material produced by other workshops is at http://usingexpertise.blogspot.com, and at the raw outputs of the workshops are at http://usingexpertise.wikispaces.com (which we plan to consolidate and analyse early in 2010). We are also currently running a survey to explore some emerging questions from the first cycle of workshops, at http://tinyurl.com/expertisesurvey. Workshop participants should complete this survey if they can.
The final stage of this project aims to use the sensemaking material to develop an open source framework, diagnostics and toolset for better exploitation and management of expertise in organisations.
Oct 27
Storytelling Tips
Great, concise advice for telling stories from Scott Simon of National Public Radio in the US. Thanks to Shawn for this.
Oct 26
Electronic Records Management Lags Everywhere
The Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM) has published an illuminating if gloomy report based on a survey of almost 800 members earlier this year. It shows that electronic records management still lags badly behind paper records management (which means that records management lags badly the state of play in the world), and has some worrying figures and facts:
- Only 45% of respondents had a single set of policies to cover both physical and electronic records (meaning there’s scope for losing management visibility between the gaps)
- IT is usually entrusted with electronic records recovery eg for legal discovery, whereas records managers look after the physical records
- 55% had no policy guidance on the status of emails as electronic records
- Almost half of respondents said their e-records were “unmanaged”
- 60% could not confidently assert that they had processes and systems in place to protect the integrity and reliability of their e-records
The bulk of responses came from North America, and it would have been good to get deeper insight into Australia, New Zealand and the UK, where slightly different traditions of records management hold sway.
How does this relate to knowledge management? Well if you can’t manage your records, you can’t manage your memory. It’s time for records managers, content managers and knowledge managers to stop skirting each other looking for disciplinary boundaries, and start getting to grips with the common challenge they face.
Here is the link to the full report, which is available for free (you’ll need to register as a site member first). There’s also a short online self assessment tool. Try it.
Oct 23
More KM Tools and Techniques
Every now and then we’ve blogged about practical KM resources, tools and techniques out there – we’ve been impressed by the stuff that the gentlemen at Knoco have been putting out there for the KM community. Here’s a handy resource page with white papers, templates and guides for download (though you have to submit a request for the tools and templates). They also have a handy newsletter. The August 2009 issue has some great advice on packaging knowledge through video podcasts, and links to some fascinating research on the power of “ground up” video-making.
