Sep 15
Double Oh Dear
Courtesy of Luke “Dubai” Naismith. The original mashup here.
Sep 15
Dilbert Reads Green Chameleon
I got there first! Original here.
Sep 13
Connect, Contribute, Develop
Tony Burgess of Company Command fame made a very striking contribution on the Comprac listserve the other day, which I’m quoting here with his permission. As I read it, he’s talking at least in part about Wenger’s idea of personal trajectories of deepening involvement with a community of practice (moving from periphery to active participation). He suggests there are three main dimensions of involvement in a community:
”(1) Connection: As a result of this experience I am becoming connected to like-hearted leaders who I value. This is about relationship.
(2) Contribution: I am able to give back and make a difference—to contribute my unique experience and talent to something greater than self. I am making a positive difference for people and a collective that I value.
(3) Personal Development: As a result of this experience, I am personally developing and becoming more effective as a leader and a person than I would otherwise be. I am being exposed to people and experiences that change me. I’m learning.”
I’ve been doing some work recently on the value exchanges that take place in and around communities, and also on evaluating the different kinds of value that are created – for the host organisation, for the community as a whole, and for the people who become involved and participate in them. It seems to me that this last “value proposition” for want of a better phrase is the foundation for all the rest, and Tony’s summary of the progression from connecting to contributing to developing is a wonderfully clear way of expressing how the relationship builds.
This is not to say that it’s a mechanical step by step progression: first you connect, then you contribute, then you develop – for example, it’s hard to connect in a community without contributing, and personal development can motivate participation in a community from the start. But in terms of principal focus it’s spot on. When you first join, it’s hard to contribute in context, in a way that is tuned to the current conversations the community is having. You need to figure out who’s who, something of the history and context, and establish some preliminary working relationships before you can contribute with any great consistency and depth. And contribution at consistency and depth is hard to sustain if you’re not getting feedback and learning and development from the experience.
For more on this, read Tony’s paper (you will need to join the comprac group, but hey, that’s not going to do you any harm).
Sep 09
Ambient Awareness
Here’s a very interesting IHT article about the impact of social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter (thanks to my friend Michael Riggs via Facebook). Users of these tools develop “ambient awareness” of people to whom they are connected, whether strongly or weakly. So for instance I’m connected via Facebook to Bob who graduated from high school with me 20 years ago. We haven’t met since, but through his daily updates I now get a very good sense of his loathes and loves. Multiply this by many other connections and you get this “ambient awareness” of your entire network.
Sep 01
Enabling Conversations
Beth Kanter makes a useful distinction between the (a) use of social media to enable conversations and (b) the use of social media to support communities. (a) does not equal (b), although I suppose it could be used as a preliminary stage. Communities may be more likely to surface if the environment is inherently collaborative and open.
Aug 29
Easy Pickings
I don’t normally say “terrific” but Mary Abraham has a terrific post on the dangers of the “low hanging fruit” approach when drawing up a KM plan. The idea of going after low hanging fruit is to get low-cost buy-in and support for your KM initiative. It’s one of my most hated but alas most tolerated KM bugbears. As Mary points out, low hanging fruit:
- have likely been gone after many times before
- are often over-ripe or lack nutrition
- are often scattered randomly not strategically
Mary sums up brilliantly: “Collecting low-hanging fruit is a knowledge management tactic NOT a legitimate strategy. Strategy sets your goals and gives you a reason for the projects you undertake and the methods you employ. Tactics are fine, if they are deployed to advance an agreed strategy. Otherwise, they are little better than busy work.”
So what should we go after? We use the REACH acronym to pre-qualify early pilot projects to see if they are both do-able and worth doing:
R is for READINESS – is the target workgroup ready for the pilot? How much pre-work, persuasion and preparation is required?
E is for EXTENDABILITY - will you be able to apply what you learn in the pilot to other workgroups with similar issues?
A is for ACHIEVABILITY – is the pilot sufficiently self-contained and free of too many dependencies to be able to achieve its objectives? Is it realistic in a 3-9 month timeframe?
C is for CULTURAL IMPACT - will the pilot positively influence the operational culture by demonstrating that the KM efforts are both possible and positive?
H is got HIGH STRATEGIC IMPACT - will the pilot add demonstrable business value and support strategic goals? Will its success harness the support of senior leaders?
Aug 27
Making Managers Read
A couple of months ago I blogged on the difficulty of “Getting Management Read-in”.
So kudos to IBM for the way they handled their 2007 Innovation Jam as reported by the MIT Sloan Management Review – with upwards of 40,000 online contributions and discussions on how to commercialise R&D innovations, the organisers found that people don’t naturally build on ideas or converge towards solutions when interacting online (unless they have solidified into a consistent working group such as on wikipedia). So they had lots of idea fragments to deal with.
A pass through IBM’s text analysis software produced an initial clustering (lots of it way off beam), and then it was what looks like a month’s good hard slog by fairly senior managers to pull out usable ideas to build on. There’s nothing to beat a good hard read and the careful parsing of ideas through savvy brains in conversation with others. Note the absence of consultants in all of this. This is what I call taking ownership of your own business.
Aug 26
Web 2.0 Adoption in Singapore
It’s funny what one comes across in cyberspace. I was searching for the staff strength of two public organisations in Singapore when I came across this “Dipstick” report (dated 20 Jun 2008) on Blogs, Wikis and Workspaces adoption in Singapore. By “dipstick” the authors mean a quick and informal poll. But judging by the low response rate to the survey - 1.26% - I’d also add that it means “not likely to stand up to close scrutiny”. However, it’s enough to provide some interesting insights into the topic.
Aug 26
A Responsibility to Provide
So the US State Department is moving from a “need to know” to a “need to share” culture. The US Army is taking it a step further to a “responsibility to provide” culture. This is a bit harder. It means knowing what other people need.
Aug 25
Fishbowl on Building Internal KM Capabilities
This iKMS fishbowl discussion between Doreen Tan of the Singapore Sports Council and Mohd Bismillah Abdul Aziz of the Health Promotion Board was held on 12 June 2008 at the British Council. It covers a wide range of topics from their experience of implementing KM, including the role of consultants, the value of doing it yourself, the complexity of communicating the KM message, the use of Knowledge Champions, and more. The discussion was facilitated by Mark Hamilton. Apologies for the brief loss of audio at about the 28 minute mark.
Download the video file directly.
