Category: Business-IT Alignment

Posted on

Two up-coming webinars

The first webinar:
Please register for KM Roadmap Process on Jul 23, 2013 12:00 PM EDT at:
https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/4565180326538419712

The process for determining supporting knowledge management technology is outlined in this webinar. The steps start with collecting organizational requirements and move through analyzing and resolving these to select the technology. Then moving on to designing and developing the technology platform, and testing the actual implementation. Finally, there is a discussion of the use and evolution the technology platform.

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

The second webinar:
Please register for Requirements for KM Success on Jul 30, 2013 12:00 PM EDT at:
https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/5591863602625495808

What are the requirements for KM success? Considering people, process and technology are key as is the roadmap process discussed in the fourth webinar, but what else is a vital part of success? Case studies of organizations that both ignored and paid attention to the requirements for success will be examined.

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Brought to you by GoToWebinar®
Webinars Made Easy®

Posted on

Knowledge Management by Design, part 2

Design thinking seems to be everywhere lately, but it seems to me that KM has always been “by design,” at least it was if it was done successfully.

Design thinking is characterized by being purposive; human centred;  a balance of analytical and creative; uses abductive reasoning, i.e. inference from best available explanation; and iterative, it uses prototyping and play testing to achieve success.

How are these principles applied in knowledge management?

Purposive: we look at the organization’s strategy, goals, and objectives and assess how knowledge management best supports those activities. The knowledge management strategy outlines how the organization’s goals and objectives are furthered through the application of knowledge management activities.

Human centred: the best knowledge management implementations consider the people of the organization, e.g. how they work, what makes their work-lives easier, what the culture of the organization is like and works with those requirements to make the organization more efficient and effective in its knowledge processes and activities.

A balance of analytical and creative: KM should be a balance of analytical and creative. It should capture knowledge and make it reusable, but it also needs to leave space, ba, to allow for knowledge creation. This space can look like lots of different things, e.g. giving employees 10% of their time for projects they want to work on/explore, foosball tables, basketball courts, gyms, art/creativity space, and communities of interest; activities that encourage different connections to be made.

Abductive reasoning: this sums up the belief in KM in general. It can be very difficult to prove a causal link between improved knowledge activities and improved organizational performance, metrics and ROI continue to be a significant hurdle for many organizations. However, anyone who has experience with implementing knowledge management successfully knows that efficiency and effectiveness in an organization are improved through the use of knowledge management activities.

Iterative: successful KM starts small and grows. It starts with an over-all strategy and plan, but then moves to pilots, which bring in small parts of the organization, so that lessons can be learned and adjustments made as the people, process, and supporting technology are implemented across the organization.

Is your knowledge management by design?

Posted on

Joyful Knowledge Management

Joyful knowledge management.

Yes, knowledge management is joyful, at least it is to me.

I enjoy it when I can find what I’m looking for: the answer to the question, the person who has done a project before and can share her/his experience and lessons learned with me. I enjoy pulling together the pieces to make a new picture, creating new pieces where necessary.

In fact, I think the creating is the best part, whether we’re talking about something that is completely new, something that is new to the organization, or something that is an improvement on something that has been done before (partly new).

How do we do that creating?

We can take a left-brained approach and use knowledge management activities, like expertise location systems, communities of practice, enterprise content management–processes and technology to help us find things that may be similar or provide a piece of the puzzle, activities that help make new/different connections.

We can take a right-brained approach and create space for knowledge creation activities like painting, drawing, photography, playing foosball, running, walking, swimming, playing squash. Activities that let us do something new, different, unexpected. Activities that create the space for us to make different connections and have different experiences rather than the “same old thing”.

I revel in the joy of finding a solution to a problem; I especially revel in it if it’s something new, different, unique. Something that someone else says, “wow, I’ve never thought of it that way before” or “I’ve been trying to figure that out for ages”.

I find things that I learn painting, helps me in my consulting, whether it’s to remind me of the importance of balance or giving things the time and space to develop into what they’re going to be.

This is joy, balanced, right-side, left-side, joy.

Joy with watermark sm

Posted on

LawTech Camp, KM Technology discussion

A few weeks ago, I participated in LawTech Camp in Toronto. Connie Crosby and I were launching our beta-test for our Law Firm KM assessment tool, so we had an opportunity to do a demo presentation and talk about KM, I’ve posted the slides on SlideShare, click on the <demo presentation> or <about KM> links to see the slides.

There was a lot of discussion both during and after the presentation about one of the slides, so Connie wrote a blog post about it, which you can see here: https://www.slaw.ca/2012/06/11/km-101-more-on-technology-complexity/#top.

 

Posted on

Update from Stephanie

Hi,

Sorry I haven’t posted anything in so long, I guess I have been busy with a project and business development and I actually fit some vacation in for the first time in 3.5 years. Why don’t I tell you about a couple of things I’m working on?

  1. I am going to be doing a course at the iSchool at the University of Toronto on March 2, 2012. The course is called How to Align People, Process, and Technology for Knowledge Management Success and is based on my Ark Group report from last year.
  2. An automated checklist to assess where to get started with your knowledge management initiative. This is still in development, but we’re expecting to release it in the next few months. We’ll be beta-testing it in a few weeks and already have  some small organizations lined-up for that phase. I’ll share more about this initiative in the future.
  3. I’ve also seen a couple of technology platforms that are quite interesting, not that KM is about the technology, but knowledge is social and these are two social knowledge management platforms. The first is Vedalis and the second is SpeechBobble, and if you consider that knowledge management is about connecting people to the knowledge they need to do their jobs, these two platforms will definitely enable that to happen.

That’s about all I can share for now, just wanted to share those few items and let you know that I am still out here completing puzzles.


Posted on

Knowledge Management Training and Technology

This past week I attended the CKM training in Toronto, hosted by the Knowledge Management Institute and Knowledge Management Institute Canada. I attended, not because I felt I needed training (although I don’t have enough ego to think that I know it all, I have been doing KM for 12+ years, and certainly know a lot) but because I was curious to hear about their model and their approach. KMI has trained over 4,000 people worldwide over the last 10 years so they are onto something.

Just to backtrack for a minute, I come to KM from a technology perspective, because that is how I first came to KM. The processes and people part of KM are absolutely necessary and critical, and are the hardest part of KM, but technology enables it all, and poorly designed and implemented KM technology is the death knell for KM in a lot of organizations.

Okay, so back to my training. I did training with APQC when I was first getting going with KM when I was at Hewlett Packard, it was what was available to me at the time. It talked about the phases of KM implementation and how to mature KM in the organization, something I still use/refer to in my work. KMI’s CKM training provides a much more comprehensive model for KM, it introduces a lot of concepts and ideas about KM that I have learned over my 12 years of doing it. But because KM as a discipline is based on the experiences of its practitioners, and isn’t mature enough to have standardized/coalesced its terminology I was frustrated with the descriptions by times.

As much as I enjoyed the course, meeting everyone, and hearing the experiences and challenges that they all face and have faced, I tired of KM technology being the great evil of KM and that is something that needs to be addressed going forward. I have no hesitancy in recommending the course to people just starting out in KM, it’s a great start. However as technology ever embeds itself in our lives (work-wise and otherwise) understanding how KM technology can enable KM activities is critical.

The poor implementation of KM technology is the reason why KM has a bad name in the minds of many, but it is a necessary component of the KM puzzle, ignoring it does not change this. The sooner KM practitioners understand this, the sooner it will get better.

Alas, I think I am a lone voice in the wilderness on this one.